In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history and significance of the landmark Magistrates' Courts in Johannesburg. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 7 June 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's writing.
Twenty years ago this year two car bombs went off outside the Magistrates’ Courts in downtown Joburg. Three policemen died, and 15 were injured.
On 20 May, 1987 a decoy blast took place, and policemen from the then John Vorster Square (now the Central Police Station), six or seven blocks away, rushed to the scene. The second, more powerful blast killed three of those policemen.
These were the 11th and 12th bomb blasts in Johannesburg that year. Some of the others that occurred in the city were at the Sanlam Centre in Eloff Street, Sandton, the Civic Centre, Cosatu House and the Carlton Centre.
Carlton Centre (The Heritage Portal)
Twenty-four-year-old Hein Grosskopf, a member of the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, was responsible for planting the bombs. He also placed bombs outside the Krugersdorp Magistrates’ Courts and the Witwatersrand Command in Quartz Street. Two military personnel died in the Krugersdorp blast.
Bomb blasts through the 1980s escalated until by...
Gandhi and Mandela both began their crusades against injustice in Johannesburg, a city where historic buildings and places still map their journeys towards liberation. Half a century before the young Mandela's political history began in earnest, Gandhi launched his struggle, developing his technique of satyagraha (passive resistance or 'truth force'). Both men started out as lawyers for the downtrodden.
Gandhi became Johannesburg's first Indian attorney in 1903, establishing his law practice at the corner of Rissik and Anderson streets, opposite the courts. His offices soon became a haven for victims of discrimination, with a series of anti-Indian laws bringing many desperate clients to his doors.
A few blocks away and some 50 years later, Mandela and his friend Oliver Tambo opened their law firm in 1952. Their partnership was South Africa's only firm of African lawyers at that time, making them the first and last resort for countless victims of apartheid.
"To reach our desks each morning," Tambo recalled, "Nelson and I ran the gauntlet of patient queues of people overflowing from the chairs in the waiting room into the corridors. Every case in court, every visit to prisons to interview clients reminded us of the humiliation and suffering burning into our people."
Gandhi's offices were in Court Chambers, which derived their name from the law courts across the road. The building was ideally placed for lawyers' offices. The High Court and old Magistrate's Courts were located in Government Square (now Gandhi Square), at the southern end of Rissik Street. The old...
