Johannesburg

Rodney Grosskopff, one of the architectural team that designed Ponte from 1970-75, looks back on his life and the story of Ponte. This article is based on a U3A presentation delivered in 2019. The piece was prepared for The Heritage Portal by Kathy Munro in 2023.

“Nothing you know about Ponte is true...  In many ways the Ponte story is the Johannesburg story. Almost everyone you meet in the city has a tale to tell. Tales about it being a den of drugs, illicit sex, suicide, corruption and refugees - tales that perpetuate and polish the building's reputation as a makeshift ‘United Nations of criminal hit-men and whores'... but this 'the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa' and Johannesburg’s most notorious building, is just a building and for more than 4 000 people it is Home. I think Ponte is about breaking the prejudices we all have.” Ingrid Martens, filmmaker

“Ponte [is] a pivot of multi and overlapping transitions that hinge on it, from the Urban, economic, Political and demographic shifts around 1969... Ponte can also be seen as an expression of the pivotal Architectural element, its plan is a cluster of circles or as a Nucleus, as its shopping center was aptly called.” Hannah Le Roux writing in 'Ponte as A Pivot' 

“Ponte speaks to a very Johannesburg condition. It has spoken to a city through cycles of decline and prosperity and decline and prosperity.” Melinda Silverman, speaking on a podcast compiled by Ryan Lenora Brown.

The clever things people say about Architecture always...

The concept of a ‘Lido’ is not familiar to most contemporary South Africans, least of all the idea of one situated in Johannesburg. However, in the 1930s the city might have had its own Lido – right in the heart of what is now Sandton!

The word ‘lido’ is Italian, with its origins in the Latin ‘litus’, meaning ‘a beach’ or ‘shore’ (giving us the English word ’littoral’). The world-renowned Lido is the Lido di Venezia – a barrier island off Venice with a sandy beach that has been a bathing resort and a place of entertainment for a very long time. The annual Venice Film Festival is held there. In the 19th century, the Venetian Lido was a fashionable holiday destination for the rich, particularly from England and the rest of Europe, and apparently its attractions and sophistication were the envy of seaside resorts elsewhere.

Bathing in the Venice Lido by John Lavery

So popular was the idea of a Lido, the very word resonating with notions of luxury, relaxation, sunshine, and wealth, that Lidos sprang up all over Europe in the late-19th century, particularly in England – and not only at the seaside. Before the age of cheap and easy travel, urbanites who craved a beach experience could find one inland. These were especially...

The Johannesburg Heritage is delighted to announce the installation of two iconic blue plaques at Tolstoy Farm near Lenasia and close to Lawley Station. The plaques have been mounted alongside a poster from Indian Opinion, which was the mouthpiece of Mahatma Gandhi’s Passive Resistance Campaign.

The plaques were installed on 18 May 2023 within the series 'Johannesburg City Heritage' by the City of Johannesburg and the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation.

Installation of the blue plaques

The plaques honour Hermann Kallenbach, the early Johannesburg architect, follower and friend of Mohandas Gandhi, who purchased what we now know as Tolstoy Farm; and the Russian Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace and the man who was honoured in the naming of Tolstoy Farm. The connecting link with Tolstoy was in a shared belief in non-violence while taking a stand against injustice, whether in the Tsarist empire or in the Transvaal.

The two blue plaques read as follows: 

Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945)   

Tolstoy Farm (1910-1913) was conceived by Gandhi and his friend Hermann Kallenbach, who named the place in honour of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy:  “ No writing has so deeply touched Mr Kallenbach as yours, and he has taken the liberty, after consultation with me, of naming his farm after you”. Kallenbach’s...

Following the article on the visual history of the Pretoria Railway station (click here to view), I received an email from Germany-based Enno Schlechter (co-author) which contained a photograph of his great-great-grandparents, Theodor and Mary Fiebiger.

The information available to the family, resulted in an initial link made that the Fiebiger couple ran the Pretoria railway station restaurant. What probably contributed to this initial view was the photograph in their possession of the Fiebiger couple by the Pretoria-based photographer, Munro.

A German and an English woman - Cabinet format photograph by Pretoria-based photographer Munro of Theodor Fiebiger and his wife Mary Alice. The couple got married in Krugersdorp in 1897. This photograph shows Mary with a wedding ring. She passed away in 1899. The photograph, therefore, dates from circa 1898, whilst the couple were based in Vereeniging.

Further research, however, indicated that the couple was not Pretoria-based, but rather Krugersdorp,  Vereeniging and Johannesburg based – either involved in mining, or managing a railway station restaurant at one station and a bar at another.

Later, Enno forwarded me another incredible image of Theodor and Mary with the restaurant staff in front of the Vereeniging railway station restaurant. This photograph, proudly displayed in the family home in Germany, assisted in stitching together...

This article explores the presence of an Asian freshwater food snail species discovered in Zoo Lake in Johannesburg in 2019. These non-indigenous snails could be a fascinating, living legacy of anonymous Chinese indentured labourers brought to work on the Witwatersrand gold fields in the early 1900s.

In 1904, 64 000 Chinese indentured workers were brought to Johannesburg to work on the newly established gold mines to overcome a shortage of mine labour. Other than a few photographs, the identity of these individuals is long since lost, but perhaps not entirely forgotten. It is possible that these migrants brought the freshwater snails with them as food items for informal aquaculture, and that these snails quietly live on in and around the old Witwatersrand goldfields.

Zoo Lake is an urban impoundment fed by the Parktown Spruit from a nearby Westcliff ridge and by the storm water drains of the catchment. The water is habitually heavily polluted and experiences seasonal algal blooms.

A peaceful scene at Zoo Lake, Johannesburg, 2019 (Sue Taylor)

An unusual water snail is discovered

In 2019, I noticed a single large water snail on the northern weir and took a photograph. The photograph was sent to Dr Chris Appleton, a retired mollusc specialist in South Africa, and he passed the image on to Dr Nelson Miranda, another...

I was Assistant and for extended periods, Acting Curator of the previous South African Railways Museum in Johannesburg from 1972 when it was still housed under Rissik Street Bridge at the station as it had been since 1956 and then from 1973, in South Station Building which housed the 1932 station concourse and the famous ‘Blue Room’ Restaurant - reached from the main entrance to the old Johannesburg Station off de Villiers Street – corner of Eloff St.

This is the Museum staff in 1973 photographed in the 1932 Station Concourse in front of the NZASM ‘Emil Kessler’ 14-Tonner locomotive. Left to right: Charles McLean, Museum Assistant, Dan Grib, Correspondence Clerk, Mr.Venter, Museum Carpenter, Johnny Orsmond, Museum Display Artist, Les Pivnic, Assistant Curator, Jan Coffee, Curator, Winnie Venter, Research Officer, Frank Cage, Museum Guide, Harold Rennie, Carpenter, Pietro Sabatelli, Workshop staff and Gordon Payne, Accessions Clerk.

Returning briefly to the Museum as it was under the Rissik Street Bridge, here are a few photos of the Museum in that period 1956 – 1972:

A small portion of...

Each year since 2011, walls in Newtown, Jeppestown and the Johannesburg CBD have been decorated by both international and local graffiti artists who are invited to decorate designated buildings with high-quality graffiti and wall art. The annual graffiti festival was originally in 2011 established with the aim of marketing Johannesburg as an international graffiti viewing destination and to dispel the negative notions associated with this art form. Although it never seems well advertised at the time, the outputs, especially in Newtown, are really spectacular.

The Public Art Festival and Pinki’s Inn, Jules Street, Jeppestown

It is now 2023, about eight years after the 2015 Johannesburg Graffiti Art Festival. By some unknown arrangement, the outside walls of a very old corner shop building in Jeppestown, and  operating as “Pinki’s Inn”, were painted with world class graffiti during the 2015 graffiti art festival.  While many of the Newtown examples of wall art have been painted over with new art several times to retain their quality and originality, this wall  art has been allowed to deteriorate.

The original Jules Street and Auret Street corner shop art work, showing work in process in 2015. Art work by SOLO ONe from Britain. Jeppestown, 2015 (Unity Murals)

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James Stevenson-Hamilton (1867-1957) is familiar to most South Africans as a naturalist and game conservationist. A Scottish cavalry officer, whose regiment fought in the South African War, in 1902 he was appointed Warden of the Sabi Game Reserve, later to become the Kruger National Park. He remained there until his retirement in 1946. What is less well known, however, is that before joining the Transvaal civil service, he had already spent some time in South Africa, had an important military career behind him, and had contributed to European knowledge of the African continent by his largely self-financed visit to Barotseland under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society in 1898-1899. Stevenson-Hamilton had another virtue – he was an inveterate diarist and recorder of his experiences. Clever, educated, perceptive, and observant, with a well-developed sense of humour, his writings are of great interest. The following is a lively account of a visit he made to Johannesburg in the winter of 1889. The account is enhanced by his own contemporary sketches that form part of his diary. The text has been lightly edited by Jane Carruthers, who is grateful to the Stevenson-Hamilton family for allowing her access to their records.

Originally published in Africana Notes and News 27(3), September 1986, pp.93-104

Portrait of James Stevenson-Hamilton

I was serving as a very young subaltern in the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, which had been stationed in...

In 1994, the article below appeared in the Sandton Historical Association Annual Magazine. It provides a glimpse of primary health care in Witkoppen, now an outlying area of Johannesburg but previously part of Sandton. The author, Dr Margaret Fouche, one of the doctors who worked at the clinic, allowed the Association to use the material for the article from her longer and more detailed history of the clinic. 

Together with the article by Agnes Kulenkampff on Witkoppen School, published in the Association’s Magazine of 1978, and reproduced on the Heritage Portal (click here to read), readers will gain a sense of the deleterious conditions of life for Africans in our region in past decades, but also of the strength of volunteer assistance and contributions.

The early years

The Witkoppen Clinic has been in operation for nearly fifty years, and it seems appropriate to write an account of it while some of the original workers can help with their recollections. Since the Witkoppen School and the Clinic have always been connected, and since the School preceded the founding of the Clinic a brief account of the school's beginning is given here.

Sketch of the Witkoppen School buildings (via the Annual Magazine of the Sandton Historical Association)

The Witkoppen School began in 1942 when Mr...

In 1978, the following article was published in the Annual Magazine of the Sandton Historical Association and has been lightly edited for re-publication. It was written by Agnes Kulenkampff (née Pedlar), an enthusiastic contributor to the Sandton Historical Association for many years. A librarian at the Transvaal Education Department, Agnes died very young in March 1991. 

Sandton was founded as a separate municipality in 1969. The area is now within the enlarged city of Johannesburg. See also 

See also: Memorial to President John F Kennedy in Sandton

Sandton is a young municipality. Most of its 18 modern schools were built for the children of white residents who had settled fairly recently in the area. Shortly after the end of the South African War, Rivonia Primary School (the successor to Rietfontein 15 School) was the first to instruct the children of the outlying small farmers. Witkoppen Farm School was the next, in 1927, to try to spread the use of the three Rs.

An Englishman named George Mason farmed along the old Pretoria Road just past Fourways in what was a very rural and sparsely populated area. Mason asked his maid, Selina Moshimane, to sound out the wishes of the local people and they welcomed the idea of opening a school. Mason consequently donated about two acres to the “local native people”. The land was bequeathed in perpetuity to them in his Will.

The Anglican Board of Management controlled the new school because Africans could not own land in “white” areas...