October 10, 2006
By Lucille Davie
IT'S been a week of unveiling plaques as the City celebrates its 120th birthday this month. The latest were on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) building and the Miners' Monument, both in the CBD.
Explaining the placing of the plaque on the building, Eric Itzkin, the deputy director of immovable heritage in the city, says, "The building is architecturally very striking, its labour history is very important and its link with the gold mining industry is significant."
Art Deco NUM building, at 7 Rissik Street
The plaque was unveiled on 4 October, the date 120 years ago when Johannesburg was declared open for prospecting.
The NUM bought the building in 1995 and changed the name, formerly Hudaco House, to reflect the new owners. It is an elegant Art Deco six-storey structure at 7 Rissik Street, built in 1934 for Hubert Davies and Company. Davies was a consulting engineer from Scotland who arrived in Joburg in 1889. He imported, manufactured and installed engineering equipment and machinery, in particular for the mining industry in southern Africa. The company's first big project was the installation of electricity in various mines on the reef.
Davies started his business in 1891 in Simmonds Street, according to Felix Stark in Seventy gold years: 1886 – 1956. In 1894 he leased a piece of land from the Robinson Gold Mining Company to house workshops and stores. In 1897 he employed 70 people and by 1956 that figure had grown to 2 300 people.
In 1937 the company became a public company with branches in Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London and Welkom, and further afield in London, Salisbury (now Harare) and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, Lusaka in Zambia, and Windhoek in Namibia.
It employed a large staff of engineers specialising in every branch of engineering, and could design, supply, construct and erect nearly every kind of engineering machinery needed. It was involved in colliery plants, steam turbine pump plants, cooling towers, lighting and power plants, railway construction, concrete and steel bridges, and reservoirs.
The NUM was formed in 1982 after many years of a lack of black representation in white trade unions. It was launched in Klerksdorp, in North West province, and consisted of only four regions at the time: Free State, Klerksdorp, Westonaria and Carltonville.
Detail of Miners' Monument, now on the monument at the top of Rissik Street
Membership stood at 14 000 then, but today it represents workers in the mining, construction and electrical energy industries. It is the largest affiliate of Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, with offices in all nine provinces.
Another plaque unveiled in Joburg's birthday week was a replacement of the original bronze plaque on the Randjeslaagte beacon at the top of Boundary Road in Parktown. The beacon marks the apex point of the original leftover triangle of land that became the town of Johannesburg.
The Miners' Monument at the top of Rissik Street also received a plaque. The sculpture, by David McGregor, represents a typical underground team of the 1930s, facing westwards towards Langlaagte, where gold was discovered by George Harrison in 1886.
It was presented to the City by the Chamber of Mines in 1964 and is a "people's monument", paying tribute to the working people of the city.
A new plaque was also unveiled last week by the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, and Johannesburg Executive Mayor Amos Masondo, commemorating the centenary of Satyagraha or passive resistance. It marks the opening of a permanent exhibition at Number Four prison on Constitution Hill, acknowledging Mahatma Gandhi and the birth of Satygraha in Johannesburg.
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