Former residents of 80 Albert Avenue in Marshalltown, who were removed from the slum in the wake of a devastating fire, are facing eviction from a recreational centre in Johannesburg.

They have been given a warning to leave the centre by Friday.

Around 80 people live at the Hofland Park Community Centre in Bezuidenhout Valley after their home caught fire on 31 August, taking the lives of more than 70 people.

These were their neighbours, their friends, and their family members.

On Thursday, former Constitutional Court Justice Sisi Khampepe will open the formal inquest into the incident.

It will hear evidence from witnesses and professionals on the cause of the fire and the prevalence of hijacked buildings in the CBD.

It is starting three weeks behind schedule.

Five kilometres from where the inquest will be held in Parktown and east of the CBD, families whose lives were most affected by the fire were told to vacate the centre.

On the day of the fire, city manager Floyd Brink told reporters temporary shelters had been located for victims.

At the time, he said the shelters would be available for two weeks.

Alfred Mandindi, 24, is a father of two.

His youngest was a month old when he, his wife, and their four-year-old first born fled the blaze.

Mandindi supported his family with a shop inside the Usindiso building but lost it and everything else they owned in the blaze.

On Wednesday, he and the other residents taking shelter at the centre found out through a journalist there would be an inquest into the fire. 

Mandindi said they had not been asked to testify but would like to have the opportunity to do so.

Eyewitnesses said the fire started on the ground floor of the five-storey building after 01:00 during loadshedding.

The bottom and top floors were open plan, with the top floor used as a court during apartheid to prosecute those who did not have passbooks.

The building was originally built in 1954 as the Non-European Affairs Department to carry out the brutal apartheid laws and is still owned by the city.

The open-planned floors were a maze of shacks, and the middle storeys, which housed 100 women when it became the Usindiso Women's Shelter, became home to families who paid rent to so-called hijackers.

Escaping that Thursday night was almost impossible because the fire escapes and stairways were also turned into dwellings.

Around 200 families were living in the building when the incident happened.

Those that could have left the city. "We don't know where we are going to go. We've just been told we must go before Friday," Mandindi said.

Part of the reason low-income earners end up in hijacked buildings is the lack of low-cost housing in the city.

These residents were moved into "temporary" shelters because the city only has four shelters offering around 1 000 beds to 20 000 known homeless people.

Mandindi and others are most concerned about the young children at the temporary shelter. There are 10 children, three of whom are of school-going age. 

They have not been able to go to school since the fire.

When News24 visited on Wednesday, the dire situation was audible with a melody of crying babies and buzzing flies.

Many of the residents were tired of talking about their pain.

Visitors to the centre who used to come often to give them food are now scarce.

Many come, take photos and leave.

The smell of food that has been packaged and spoiled in the heat lingers, and little fingers still scrape what they can from the polystyrene boxes.

Women with babies rely on formula as they are hungry and do not produce enough milk.

The Red Cross donated R2 000 to each family, but a woman, who did not want to be identified, said she had to give half of it to a loan shark because she had borrowed money to buy nappies and formula for her baby.

Women said at night, they felt unsafe and were rattled by an incident where men came looking for someone who had borrowed money but could not pay it back.

While all this plays out, the Khampepe Inquiry will start without them for the next six months.