A view of Johannesburg’s rich and turbulent history and heritage.
2021 marks 50 years of Liz’s connection to 79 Lancaster Ave. As a young couple we purchased the house in 1971 from the original owner who had built it in 1948. We gradually altered to accommodate a growing family and then, with changed marital circumstances and children growing up, in 1994 Liz opened the Guesthouse […]
Read More »Lucille Davie’s Sophiatown tour I wrote briefly in my last blog about the history of SophiaTown, and its destruction in the late 1950s. This wholesale and devastating destruction of buildings left only four standing: Three that escaped were Christ the King Anglican Church, where Archbishop Trevor Huddleston preached, Dr Alfred Bitini Xuma’s house and St […]
Read More »Re- presentations of Sophiatown I am ashamed to say that the closest I had come to Sophiatown before February 2020, (more of the tour with Lucille Davie in my next blog) was attending the production of Malcolm Purkey’s play by that name at the Market Theatre in 1986. And of course I also knew Gerard […]
Read More »Gerald Garner of Joburg Places I first met Gerald Garner over 8 years ago when I joined him on one of his walking tours of Jozi inner city. Back then I wrote about his informed, fascinating and passionate account of Joburg – from the early mining days, to its Modernist heyday at the height of […]
Read More »Parks as sites of activism In addition to being places of leisure and recreation, parks and public spaces are containers of values, bounded spaces of inclusion and exclusion, sites of political, social and cultural activism whether overtly or by default. During the 1980s in the height of Apartheid repression people’s parks in South Africa were […]
Read More »Shembe Church It all started with a plan to attend a Shembe Church service in the Madala Hostel in Alexandra but ended up quite differently as the worshippers had left for a gathering in Potchefstroom! In pre-Covid times (yes there was such a time), Harry Nakeng, an Alex tour guide, arranged for a group of […]
Read More »Wits Art History Department in the 1980s Once upon a time a very long time ago, in a past life, I taught History of Art at Wits (for over 20 years). Traditionally art history courses in colonial institutions emphasized western art with some local subject matter included. However, the Art History Department at Wits was […]
Read More »Most creatives like to claim complete originality. In later life Picasso famously denied being influenced by African art when painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907, even though there was ample source material in what was then the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris. So Moerdijk, the architect of the Voortrekker Monument, was not alone in denying […]
Read More »Maboneng Township Arts Experience with Jozi Walks May 2019 For three years running, over a May weekend, the Johannesburg Development Agency has organized Walk My Jozi #JoziWalks, a series of sponsored walking tours in partnership with local community activists, tourism entrepreneurs, walking-tour operators and heritage specialists. 2018 saw me exploring Orlando East with His and […]
Read More »First 15 Brewery, 66 Carr St, Newtown On the last Saturday of 2019, I joined a Joburg Places tour with Gerald [Garner] and Charlie [Moyo]’s of their “Favourite Secret Jozi Places”. And the first place we stopped was First 15 Brewery at 66 Carr St Newtown. What an amazing space, concept and story. The […]
Read More »