Attractive Nuisance

BY: SAMKELE  LETESE

Have you looked around your neighborhood, town or city lately? How many abandoned buildings do you see? If none, your neighborhood, town or city is healthy or has a healthy municipality. According to an article published in www.infrastructurene.ws, entitled ‘Challenges in Smaller Municipalities’, smaller municipalities struggle to operate and maintain their services infrastructure in a cost-effective and sustainable way. The amount of abandoned buildings is in direct correlation with the efficiency of the towns’ municipality, meaning the abandoned buildings are a sign of the town’s health.

Alice and Beaufort are riddled with abandoned buildings around its towns respectively. These buildings pose a potentially dangerous threat to the community at large. Within them it is common to find gang related activity, gang graffiti, drug dealings and other more horrid activity. Another common finding in these buildings is waste which may be potentially hazardous. These building can also be used by squatters.

These buildings can also be very dangerous if the structure is very old and neglected, because they are often falling apart. The article ‘The Dangers of Abandoned Buildings’ by Rebekah Brooks, warns against the exploration of these buildings on the count that one might get “lost, stranded or physically hurt”. These buildings are called Problem Buildings or a better way of putting it, Attractive Nuisance.

Attractive Nuisance, in law, a doctrine of tort law under which a person who creates or permits to exist on his or her land a dangerous condition attractive to children, as an unfenced swimming pool, is liable for their resulting injuries, even though the injured are trespassers.

Now with that said, looking at your neighborhood, your town or your city, how safe do you feel with these buildings sitting there, near businesses, or even residential areas? How healthy is your municipality?