Fietas

In 2014, a blue plaque was unveiled on Adam Asvat's Pageview home. Lucille Davie, one of Joburg's legendary journalists was there and compiled the following report (originally published in the Saturday Star on 3 May 2014) . Click here to view more of Davie's work.

They tore up the roads. They cut off the water and electricity. They made sand mounds on the sports field so that the community couldn’t play soccer or cricket any more. 

“They” were the department of community development, the apartheid government’s euphemism for dislocation and relocation if you weren’t white. First they relocated people from Sophiatown, and demolished their homes, then they moved to Pageview, where they did the same thing, except they were up against a determined bunch of diehards.

I was in Pageview on Sunday for the unveiling of a heritage plaque outside the home of Adam Asvat and his wife Khadija. Asvat, soft-spoken and unassuming, had been the driving force behind the Save Pageview Association back in the 1970s and 80s.

Home of Adam Asvat Blue Plaque (The Heritage Portal)

Although thousands were moved from Pageview, he and 66 other residents in the suburb simply refused to move. They persisted with their campaign for close to 20 years, until their eviction orders...

According to members of the Gandhi Mahlangu branch of the ANC, which covers Pageview/Vrededorp in Johannesburg, the branch has been discussing a proposal to re-name a street in the historic locality.

Krause Street, one of only two streets in the locality that is non-ordinal number named, is the target of the proposal presently. The other street with a name is De La Rey Street. These streets border Pageview to the west and east respectively. Every other street has a numbered name, running parallel, north to south, from 11th Street to 26th Street. Each connects with Krause and De La Rey streets respectively at either end. Krause Street and De La Rey Street frame this lattice and define the compact space that is Pageview, otherwise fondly known as Fietas.

Until its eventual destruction by the Group Areas Act in the mid-1970s, Fietas was a colourful and vibrant community, profoundly integrated in terms of its people, space and use. African, Indian, Coloured, Malay and Chinese people, of Hindu, Christian, Muslim and indigenous African faiths, workers and professionals, shopkeepers, artisans, rich and poor, all lived together cheek by jowl. Fietas was said to lack for nothing on its doorsteps - or stoep-steps rather. It boasted mosques, churches, bioscopes and shebeens, schools, sports grounds, corner cafes, dance halls and bazaars. And it permeated community caring and sharing of a time less fractured by class.

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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.

Fourteenth Street was a highly successful trading area with a unique atmosphere. The shopkeepers desperately wished to stay there. Admittedly it was run down physically; but that was only to be expected because the owners had no security of title and they were continually being threatened with eviction. Furthermore Pageview had been "Frozen" so that people were actually prevented from repairing or improving their properties.

The Fourteenth Street precinct could easily have been upgraded into a superbly individualistic and profitable shopping centre at no cost to the taxpayer. Fourteenth Street itself could have been reserved for pedestrian use with deliveries being made at off-peak hours and from the rear. An unobtrusive multi-storey parking garage could have been erected nearby as a self-financing proposition. Entrepreneurs would have mobilised private capital for adaptive re-use and for new construction. The energies of the very able Indian population would have been chanelled into productive activities to the benefit of all. Thereby the city as a whole would have been strengthened and relations between the races would not have been damaged. Property taxation revenue from this area would have...