Demand for church sites in Joburg skyrockets

03 February 2016

 

Unorthodox churches are inundating the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC), the City of Johannesburg’s property arm, with a flood of applications for land on which to build their places of worship.

 

This emerged on the first day of a two-day interfaith workshop spearheaded by the City at the Soweto Theatre in Jabulani on Tuesday. The workshop, attended by scores of religious leaders from various faiths, heard that out of every 10 applications received by JPC, eight were from unorthodox churches.

“Demand by religious institutions by far outstrips the supply of land,” Fanis Sardianos, JPC’s Client Business Operations Manager, said.

He said the City had acknowledged the demand for church sites and had to consequently respond to the growing need for land. He said as a result the company was reviewing its current criteria for land allocation. One criterion suggests that a church will have to prove it has at least 400 members to qualify for a site.

The City also proposes that since most churches operate only on Sundays, they need to open their doors to social and youth activities on the other days of the week. According to Sardrianos’s presentation, churches will also have to provide their developmental plans to justify why they should be allocated a particular piece of land.

The conference also heard that of the seven regions that make up Johannesburg, Region D had the highest number of churches – 155 – built on council-owned land. Second is Region G with 49, followed by Region F (44), Region A (19), Region B (11), Region E (9) and Region C (2).

Sardianos added that there were many churches using land belonging to the city illegally, while others were worshipping in abandoned buildings in the Johannesburg inner city. During question time, a representative of the Muslim faith told of their frustrations at trying to secure a site for a mosque in Soweto.

“We only have two sites in Soweto, which we had to pay an exorbitant amount for as the land was privately owned. Yet there are so many empty spaces in the township,” he said.

Another delegate said JPC officials were good at making presentations.

“But when you go to their offices you will be shunted from pillar to post, with no one attending to your problem,” he said.

Another delegate, from the Dobsonville Apostolic Faith Mission, said: “To make matters worse, they don’t even answer their cellphones.”

Concerns were also raised about by-law implications for contemporary churches, especially those that operate in tents in relation to noise pollution and the lack of sanitation. In wrapping up his presentation, Sandiaros promised to personally attend to all the concerns raised by delegates at the workshop.