Mike Alfred

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

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Melanie Yap is a petite, attractive, Chinese South African. Until recently she lived in an old, beautifully restored house in Kensington. Her partner died, causing her to sell the house and move away from the general area in which she’d been living since birth. Speaking to her for this book made me realize that perhaps it’s not well understood that all the ‘dark’ South Africans suffered the indignities and prohibitions of apartheid; no group was exempt. Yap includes a description of such a life in her story which follows. 

Melanie Yap (LinkedIn)

I attended the launch of Melanie Yap’s comprehensive history of the Chinese in South Africa, Colour, Confusion and Concessions, written in collaboration with Dianne Leong Man. A short time thereafter I asked her about her next project? As they say here, she looked at me ‘skeef’ [dismissively, if you like], replying that she had absolutely no intention of undertaking any other similar venture. This is also a story about the agonies of writing a documentary history. We may be thankful for Yap’s dedication, for the discipline and correct...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Doris Mosikele has reverted to her maiden name. Her married name was Vilanculos. She came to Johannesburg some thirty years ago from Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. She works as a char four times a week. She lives in her own bitterly-fought-for home in Alexandra with her second daughter who is repeating matric. Her husband and son both died violently. Her first daughter is married and recently presented Doris with a lovely grandson. Her story is probably similar to that of many other women. She tells us about her life in her own words:  

I was coming to Johannesburg in 1968, that time I was 18 years. I was living with my grandmother in Queenstown. I come to Johannesburg to earn some money to help my Grandmother. My other auntie was staying in Pimville. I arrived there to Soweto to stay with her and then I looking for a job. The first job was in a fish and chips there by Pimville. I worked there maybe one year. I was helping in the till, taking the money, I was peeling some potatoes, I helped to clean and do everything. I leaving school in standard six. I can read and write but not so very good to write. I speak...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Irving Lissoos earns his living as a highly respected, specialist urologist. He consults and operates from Milpark Hospital. But his life embraces other enthusiasms, among them a love of Johannesburg, partially illustrated by his membership of the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust. Lissoos’s guided tours through Joburg’s old cemeteries in Braamfontein and Brixton are always sell outs. Lissoos lives in Victory Park. He grew up in Berea, attended Yeoville Boys’ and King Edward’s schools. I arrived in his rooms one day armed with a tape recorder and one or two simple questions, asking him to talk about his early life. Nothing had been planned. He quite spontaneously and easily advanced down ‘memory lane.’ He told me with many chuckles and obvious reminiscent enjoyment, about a social existence, the world of his childhood and youth, which no longer exists:

Braamfontein Cemetery (The Heritage Portal)

‘My mom was born in London. Her father was a cabinet maker who came to Johannesburg just after the turn of the 20th century. She went to school in London but never got a chance to...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

During those terrible, destructive seconds in a microlight crash, the aircraft’s aluminium tail strut is driven through the pilot’s chest and out of his back, narrowly missing his heart. The strut has to be sawn shorter in order to load the man onto the ambulance helicopter. He’s flown to Johannesburg Hospital directly into the care of the Trauma Unit. Photographs of the man on an operating table put one in mind of the results of medieval jousts between lance bearing knights. One wonders, how can anyone survive such an accident? Today he’s flying again, once more instructing learner pilots. To what agency does that man owe his life? It’s a question that might well be asked by Joburg bomb victims during the eighties, by those hundreds of poisoned schoolgirls, by the survivors of the Ellis Park soccer disaster who were attended to and rendered safe, in a super efficient manner.

Johannesburg Hospital (The Heritage Portal)

Ken Boffard, Professor and Clinical Head, Department of Surgery, University of the Witwatersrand, which incorporates one of the world’s foremost trauma...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

When I talk to 76 year-old Clive Chipkin in his Parkview studio, he tells me that the book was probably in him from the beginning, from as far back as University days, although he doesn’t know whether he intended to write it at that stage of his life. Almost in the same breath he tells me that he’s just returned from a first time visit to Israel where, against expectations, he liked it; particularly the modern, thirties architecture of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Slender, energetic Chipkin, is still designing, still traveling far afield for his work, still recording and relating the stories of Joburg’s always changing, architectural and social structures. His mind is as lively as a sack full of grasshoppers, as dripping with memory as a honeycomb. He’s an idealist, a gossip, intrigued as much by people as by facades and building fashions, perhaps more so. He loves associating buildings and spaces with their creators and linking the creators with their times. I think I might label him a pragmatic intellectual, or an intellectual pragmatist perhaps? 

He claims that he came to Wits in 1947, not knowing much about architecture. He thought it had more to do with town planning; more of a social discipline. In high school, when...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Geoffrey Klass was supervising the offloading of some old pieces outside his building when a young woman from a nearby business stopped to admire one, an Edison disc machine. ‘Ooh, that’s nice, what’s that?’ she asked. Klass told her it was a gramophone. ‘Oh, I’ve heard of those but I’ve never seen one.’ Klass smiled. She thought he was being friendly which he was, but he was also silently pondering how quickly familiar objects become forgotten; one generation’s marvel becomes obsolete in the next. Such is the speed of technological change stemming from the supercharged twentieth century that the Klass emporium of beauties, rarities and wonders, comprises, not only a collector’s paradise, but provides myriad cultural history lessons, in a vast uncatalogued museum.

Geoffrey Klass at work (The Heritage Portal)

To enter Collector’s Treasury at 244 Commissioner St, deep in the old city, is to enter a world of munificent chaos: piled cartons of books clog the entranceway stairs and the narrow passage leading to the main display room. This contains a great profusion of rarities: glass, porcelain plates...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Mervyn King spoke to me in a conference room. I asked to see his office expecting it to offer clues to an outstanding career. It wasn’t special: not particularly large, certainly comfortable and expensively furnished, but not greatly different to any other functional space in the building. No memorabilia were evident, just piles of paper for a project on which he was slaving. I asked about the two eighteenth century naval prints hanging on one wall and was told that they were left over when the other executives had selected their art. King has aged well apart for a little off the top. His eyes are steely blue and he exudes a controlled energy. He’s undoubtedly wealthy. He tells me that he’s arranged to ‘die a poor man.’ His money lies in trusts for the family. His wife has to nag him to buy new suits and shirts although he looks immaculate. He collects wine and legal tomes. They’re bequeathed to the family. He loves his car, a Jag. Annual holidays are indulgent, but life largely comprises work.

Mervyn King, well known Joburg advocate, former judge and businessman, has spent much of his working life telling people how they might behave. It’s comforting to acknowledge therefore, that his ethos stems...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Ronel Bischoff is forty two. She’s small and attractive; looks very good in uniform. She’s married, mother to three teenage daughters, one of them adopted. As Director, with the equivalent rank of brigadier, she has recently taken command of the 222 member, Jeppe Police Station, on the eastern edge of central Joburg. Her ‘government issue’ office features landscape and wild animal pictures. Two teddy bears huddle together on a chair. I assume they’re for kids whose mothers are letting their hair down to the Director. Perhaps they help the children themselves to speak? Jeppe has long been known as one of the tougher urban postings. Its area of jurisdiction encompasses Jeppestown, Ellis Park, Bertrams, Troyeville, Belgravia, Doornfontein and part of Kensington. Diverse, might describe the precinct well. It comprises major sports stadia, several industrial and commercial areas, million rand homes on Langermann Kop, restored old miner’s houses in Troyeville. It presents a complex panorama of early Joburg.

Ellis Park from above (The Heritage Portal)

It’s partly a rough area, full of people desperately...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

On a Saturday afternoon, after a morning spent in a similar manner, a man wearing black trousers, a black T shirt and cap, all offsetting his white hair and beard, is showing a group of tour guides around Newtown and Joburg centre city. He walks energetically and purposefully, one might even describe him as bulldoggish in the way he moves, and he recites the facts supporting the city’s revitalization. For three hours he demonstrates the renewal of Joburg. The visitors are stunned. Their pencils are never still; their cameras click away. They crane their necks, viewing this transformed city. What he doesn’t tell them is that were it not for him and some far sighted and dedicated colleagues and associates, our city, the repository of living memories, of history, of wonderful architecture, would be well nigh moribund and lost in irreversible decay. After the tour, Neil Fraser downs a quick beer and rushes off to another engagement.

Neil Fraser

I talk to Fraser, born in 1939, Executive Director of the Central Johannesburg Partnership, in his office situated in a magnificent reclaimed building in...

Part of Kitchener Avenue, in Kensington, Johannesburg has been replaced by Albertina Sisulu Highway. Perhaps soon, Rhodes Park, Roberts Avenue and Milner Crescent will be renamed to burnish the heroes of more recent history? Significantly, Cecil John Rhodes statue on the UCT campus has been recently vandalized in a fierce show of anti- colonialism. It might thus be apposite to record something about the lives of those British ‘heroes’ who played such a prominent role in South Africa during and around the time of the Anglo-Boer War, at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. These street names are a comment on the nature of pro-British sentiment just over a century ago. In an extension of the intense Anglophilia of the times, we note that many of Kensington’s other streets are named after British Navy warships.

The four short essays that follow are about men who served Britain when she was strong and ubiquitous. All men wore power with distinction. They were superior and one might guess, unconsciously arrogant, able to focus immense resources, ruthless when the occasion demanded and utterly loyal to British interests. They attended and managed Britain’s affairs in South Africa at the end of the Victorian Age. Might our history have been any different without them? Alas, one has to live with one’s history even though one retrospectively  ponders more positive outcomes.

Kitchener (source unknown)

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