During rush hour every day tens of thousands of people experience the slow and maddening commute along William Nicol Drive in northern Johannesburg. The road connects Bryanston, Fourways and many suburbs beyond to Sandton and Hyde Park (and ultimately Rosebank and the Joburg CBD via Jan Smuts Avenue). Given its landmark status today it is hard to imagine that just over sixty years ago no road existed. The following brief excerpt from a speech by Bill Hedding traces the origins of the road that Joburgers love to hate.
On a Saturday in mid October 2015, a group of Johannesburg Heritage Foundation members gathered in Rissik Street in front of what older Johannesburg citizens knew as the Johannesburg City Hall. Today the building is the Gauteng Legislature. We met on the City Hall steps, standing on what was once the historic market square, laid out in Johannesburg in 1886. It is a space that has seen vast transformations, buildings have come and gone, ideas about city centre layouts have altered.
In the late 1980s Oscar Norwich (founder and longtime Chairman of the Johannesburg Historical Foundation) did a survey of certain parts of Doornfontein. As we were paging through the survey one property jumped out at us... a mansion with a landmark dome built two years after Johannesburg was established (1888). A site visit last week confirmed that the remains of the mansion including the dome still exist. Enjoy Norwich's brief description below.
We stumbled across this fascinating piece in a 1907 edition of the South African Railway Magazine. It tells the story of the discovery of some remarkable early Cape history. Thank you to the Heritage Office at Transnet for giving us access to their archives.
"Shandukani is a Venda word meaning 'change' and is an appropriate name for a facility that represents multiple aspects of positive change: the value of public/private partnerships; the transformation of a derelict building with heritage status into a thoroughly modern facility that nonetheless preserves its historical stature; and the positive impact on change we can all have." Yael Horowitz
A visit to the bustling Oriental Plaza today hides the dark history of its apartheid origins. Opening in 1971, it was the result of a compromise between the Johannesburg City Council and the Department of Community Development over the future of Indian Traders in Pageview. In the article below Nigel Mandy highlights the many tragedies of the flawed ideology behind the relocation of traders to the Plaza.
In 2009 local businessman Gerrit van der Stelt stumbled across a small demolition notice attached to a boundary wall of the highly significant Tait House in Benoni. What followed was a desperate struggle by the community to preserve the historic home. The Heritage Portal is happy to report that not only is the house still standing but it could also become a powerful symbol of the ability of old and new to coexist and thrive.
Stephanus Jesaias Ter Blans, eldest son of Heemraad Pieter Ter Blans (Terblanche) of the Reeboksfontein farm near Little Brak River, was the first colonist farmer to settle in the Knysna area. He named his loan farm Melkhoutkraal, which he established in 1770, on the east bank of the Knysna River. The farm stretched from the Indian Ocean to today’s Long Street in the town of Knysna. Stephanus Ter Blans died in 1794 after having had the loan rights for twenty years.
The Old Court House Museum is one the oldest buildings in the Durban CBD. It was built in the mid 1860s and has seen its fair share of history as revealed in the following fascinating article by G.W. MacDonald. The article first appeared in Bulletin, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa).