Infrastructure/explosion/pessimism  

ALICIA: I am innately a Joburg optimist. [But after the explosion]… suddenly seeing all these newspaper articles about the underground structures and the tunnels in Joburg—I’ve been battling with this feeling that the city is truly being hollowed out. Where we live, we see all these buildings being stripped, looted and hollowed out from the top to the bottom. You see people, businesses vacating. You see roads being hollowed out. 

DALU: The explosion is an indication of the [lack] of investment in the maintenance of city infrastructure…The city was designed many years ago [and] there’s a lot of infrastructure underneath…. we find ourselves just fighting fires. It is a wake-up call. 

BRIAN: Around Covid there was the second exodus out of the city. It was extremely traumatic as an architect and someone who is invested in the CBD. Because it’s not just Joburg. It’s almost a symbol of South African society. To see it smashed was very disturbing.  

ALICIA: Joburg is a lot of things, but it’s not a humane city. Joburg doesn’t take care of the people around it. There are no public toilets. There are no taps where you can just go and drink water. Homeless people get shunted from pillar to post. In the CBD specifically, but even in townships in the greater Joburg, there are so few amenities or recreational facilities for children. Parents are not around because they have to go and work. How do we make Joburg a more humane city?

EVA: The explosion showed us that there is a lot that we as South Africans run away from. All the things that are happening here were done during the days of the Apartheid. But the thing is, instead of us renewing for the future, we leave them like that. All the money that is supposed to improve people’s lives, we put it in our pockets.

DIY/city remaking itself

LAURICE: It’s very hard to have a sense of belief when the foundations are out of your control. That instability has been a shock to everyone. As positive as you can be, you don’t control that narrative and don’t know who’s in charge of fixing that and making sure that the city doesn’t explode. Joburg is in crisis, but there’s some weird equilibrium—people are doing things, and keep doing good work. And when you see that, your belief starts to lift. You start to think, well, there’s a level of functionality.

BRIAN: There’s a great book… called I Love You I Hate You. I think that really is the edge of Joburg. There’s no in-between. It’s not a lukewarm city. Sometimes you love it and hate it at the same time. Sometimes you have a great day, and you think, ‘Joburg’s so wonderful.’ And then, you have a really bad day and it’s, ‘God, why do I live here?’ 

ALICIA: They don’t call us Johustleburg for nothing.

FERIAL: it feels to me like our city is very much a do-it-yourself city and Joburgers are very good at doing it ourselves.

Inner city shifting 

LAURICE: A shift in the economy of the city is the
best road. Anglo [American] finally leaving [the CBD]… It’s the death of big business. Not that I think mining is what should rescue us now. This is the necessary transition into a new and different landscape, but who is that new person?

RASHID: The flight of big business to the northern nodes from the late 80s onwards has had a devastating impact. That was really emphasised when the JSE itself moved to Sandton…There were many initiatives over the years, but it was never sustained. [So] how do you reimagine the space? The big discourse internationally is about liveable cities. How do you make cities liveable? 

RASHID: I think we’re too slow in responding because we have an imagining of the city in a conventional European and North American sense. We [need to] shift our perspective. There are many cities around the world where the major financial hubs are not in the old historic centres.

SARAH: We fail to maintain our old and we keep building new. I was in Kyalami the other day. My GPS was fluttering. I just thought, there is development out here that I didn’t even know existed. And so, cities evolve, and we have to accept that… But why do we let the inner city die?

LAURICE: We’ve got an Ethiopian district. We have Fordsburg. We have Chinatown. We have a Congolese district. You go to a Nigerian food market and buy plantains next to Joubert Park. But sadly, all of those things, including Kwa Mai Mai, which is KwaZulu-Natal culture in Johannesburg, all of them are being eroded and degraded at the moment.

New economies/wastepickers 

ALICIA: Aren’t [the waste pickers] the new people? That’s a different type of mining that you’re doing, right? You’re building up the next mountains of wealth because you’re digging through the dirt, literally, like the miners did 130 years ago. You’re finding the new treasure, which is recycling, and at the same time building up the environment. But are you feeling that? Do you feel powerful in the city?

EVA: We’ve got plus-minus 6,500 [ARO members] in Joburg.The challenge we’re facing is that Joburg residents are complaining about reclaimers staying in the spruits and the parks. But when we approach the City of Joburg about the situation, the local government is not solid. Every director and every institution—like [Environment and Infrastructure Services] EISD, the [Joburg Property Company] JPC—will take you from pillar to post because they don’t know who to contact. That’s why our reclaimers are everywhere, because there is a lack of communication between the reclaimers and the City.

LAURICE: There has to be a new way of shaping the economy in the city. What would those forces be? We’re not going back to the mining barons and the banks. They’ve moved on. But the city has an economy and money is changing hands all the time…. it’s a R10 billion economy.

BRIAN: The thing that always astounds me is that you have this enormous economy and all these people coming in from all over sub-Saharan Africa. It’s incredible. You walk down Jeppe Street and there’s a million guys selling Ethiopian coffee and they’ve got crosses and fabrics. This is what Joburg is actually about, but we’re pretending that Joburg is the Louis Vuitton store in Sandton City. And that is not something that gives us a competitive advantage. Louis Vuitton is going to be much better in Paris than it is in Sandton City.

This disjunction is like talking about the waste reclaimers. The city comes up with these insane plans, like, we’re going to be a green city and we’re all going to cycle. Nobody in Joburg cycles. It is an enormous city. If you had cyclists, you would have cyclists even if you didn’t have a cycle lane. I have never seen a cyclist on those cycle lanes. You have all these reclaimers, and the roads are too narrow. And then, there’s a cycle lane and still no cyclists. How did the city not actually look and say, these are our citizens, these are people who live in Joburg, there’s a very real need here?

Let’s look at the people, let’s partner with them, and let’s create a city that works for the citizens. Not a picture of a city in Amsterdam.

Leadership/governance

DALU: The city has an obligation in law. We’re talking about amenities, public spaces, public infrastructure. The city has a responsibility to engage with its residents and stakeholders about what needs to go into the budget. Once it’s in the budget, the city needs to be accountable.  As residents, we don’t hold [government] accountable. As stakeholders—like you were saying, it’s do-it-yourself—we need to drive it. If there’s a lack of leadership in politics, let’s make them accountable. 

BRIAN: Unfortunately, at the moment, there is a lack of political leadership. We have amazing people on the ground. There are fantastic grassroots community initiatives, but they’re not supported by government, be that local or provincial. You can see the lack of leadership.