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File Photo: Johannesburg film-maker Rehad Desai, who studied in India and Zimbabwe, while in exile.

As Johannesburg city fathers claim that they are winning the fight against the decay in the once vibrant city centre, the film: “The Battle for Johannesburg” by Rehad Desai has captured renewed interest at the inaugural Jozi Film Festival.

Organisers of the three-day festival which took place last week, said the support augured well for the planned annual event which aims to highlight films about and by the people of Johannesburg.

Desai’s production captured the changing face of Johannesburg as it prepared to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“It’s a tale of property developers vying for sections of the crumbling city with renewed excitement, of a city council determined to create a world class city and ultimately of how this affects the hundreds of thousands of people who have made the city slums their home,” he said.

“There is money to be spent, even more to be made and conflicting interests at stake. As whole areas around the stadium get a brush up and the middle classes, black and white, begin to move back in, beneath the scramble for property and space is a human story of survival.”

The film shows how foreign nationals from Africa and Asia appear to be exploited as they try to eke out a living from unscrupulous absentee landlords – their threatening agents on the one hand and the municipality.

But amid the squalor and suffering, there is also the odd positive story of tenants taking things into their own hands as they try to better their living conditions.

Two years after the film was first screened, the questions raised in it remain very valid as the Johannesburg city council relentlessly tries to take back buildings hijacked by gangsters and drug lords and hand them back to their rightful owners.

Desai said Battle for Johannesburg would be shown on SABC1 soon. - POST