Neil Fraser
August 15, 2003
ON Thursday morning the Premier of Gauteng, Mbhazima Shilowa, officially launched the Johannesburg Housing Company's (JHC) latest contribution to the revitalisation of the Johannesburg Inner City, the Brickfield's Housing Project in Newtown.
The JHC has been in operation for eight years during which time it has established 1 756 housing units, an investment of in excess of R112 million. The number of units equates to an addition of more than 5% of the inner city's housing stock. Its projects cover the full spectrum of new-build, refurbishment and conversion providing homes to more than 4 000 men, women and children in 13 buildings across the inner city.
But the JHC is more than just a provider of much needed inner-city accommodation. It is an innovator that believes passionately in improving the quality of life of its tenants. So apart from providing well-designed accommodation within a supportive environment, it actively is involved in building a sense of community and a culture of trust and responsibility amongst its growing family of tenants. It does this by offering training courses in a variety of life skills, counselling and community activities.
Its innovative approach is clearly evident in the financing arrangements cobbled together for this new project bringing together as it does Absa, the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC), the Anglo American Corporation, the Gauteng Government's Department of Housing and the Gauteng Partnership Fund. As the Premier pointed out in his address it was notable that these organizations were generally all based in the Inner City! The Premier made an outstanding speech that showed an astute grasp of the Inner City - I'm trying to get a copy which I will include in a future Citichat.
The welcome to the function was given by Murphy Morobe who takes over the chair of the JHC from Bishop Mvumelwano Dandala. Bishop Dandala has been an inspirational chairman of the JHC but has recently taken up a World Council of Churches position in Nairobi. Murphy Morobe has a strong activist background. I originally met him when he was with the Gauteng Government but today he is also Chair of the Finance and Fiscal Committee, Chair of the Parks Board, non-Executive Chair of Ernst & Young and a Director of Old Mutual. Great asset for the JHC and it's good to have him in the broad Inner City regeneration scenario.
Other speakers were Dr Steve Booysen, Group Executive Director of the ABSA Group; Mr. Samson Moraba, Chief Executive of the NHFC; Mr. Norman Mbazima, Deputy Finance Director of AAC; Mr.Paul Mashatile MEC of the Gauteng Department of Housing and Taffy Adler the CEO of the JHC. All were upbeat about the project and the inner city.
A fascinating 'picture' of the background and development of Newtown is to be found in Elsabe Brink's "Newtown Old Town" of which the following is a brief summary. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 acted as a magnet attracting thousands in search of wealth. Many who came had no experience in mining, in fact many were poor and had no skills at all but were looking for any opportunity to make a living. A year after the discovery of gold, a portion of the farm known as Braamfontein, which included the Fordsburg Spruit, was bought by the ZAR government for 4 000 pounds in order to secure a water supply for the rapidly growing mining camp.
This was the area that today is known as Newtown. Within only one decade of the discovery of gold, some 7 000 people of all races had settled on the area together with 450 wagons and 1 200 horses and mules! The attraction? Well, the area might not have been blessed with gold deposits but it did have an abundance of clay on the banks of the spruit. Clay meant bricks and bricks meant income.
A brickmaking licence from the government cost 5 shillings a month and a brickmaker with just a clay mixer and three workers could make 2 500 bricks a day which in turn sold for ten shillings a thousand. Not surprising that brickmaking became the third largest industry in the Transvaal after mining and farming!
The brickmakers dug clay pits and built drying ovens alongside of which they erected shacks of corrugated iron and green bricks to live in. The accommodation was a great deal cheaper than living in the boarding houses mushrooming through the mining camp. This was the Brickfields!
Unfortunately for the brickmakers, the area was also ideally located as a goods holding and distribution point for the new railway that was transporting the bulk of machinery and equipment needed for the mines. As much as they protested, and protest they did, they lost the land and by 1896 the last brickmakers had left the Brickfields.
The 'burghers' were allowed to purchase stands in a new township that had been laid out next to the Brickfields called Burghersdorp. It was located between Randjeslaagte (where the centre of the town was located), Fordsburg (which was established in 1887 for white miners) and the so-called 'Coolie Location' (the only area where Indians could legally buy land).
A massive explosion in February 1896 resulting from a shunting train crashing into wagons carrying 55 tons of dynamite for the mines, killed 72 people and damaged over 600 buildings in Burghersdorp and the Coolie Location. But Burghersdorp continued to grow and became a truly 'mixed' area - in 1902 a census showed that its population comprised 348 Boers, 70 immigrants from Europe, 276 Africans, 145 Cape Malays, 67 Indians and 12 Chinese. But the area had also earned the nicknames of "Poverty Point"; 'The Dark Side of Johannesburg' and 'The Fly in the Johannesburg Honey Pot".
The British, who had captured Johannesburg in 1900, decided that Burghersdorp and the Coolie Location was too valuable an area to be a slum and decided to declare it an "Unsanitary Area" which would enable expropriation, demolition and redevelopment. In typical democratic fashion they established a Commission of Enquiry which, in the face of massive objections and although recording that only 28% of the buildings were bad enough to be condemned, still ruled it to be an "Unsanitary Area".
There were in fact great concerns that the Coolie location into which more than 3 100 persons, half Asiatic and half African, were crammed under extremely poor conditions, was a potential health hazard. When 82 persons in the Location died of suspected (but never proved) Bubonic plague in 1904, the area was fenced off, the inhabitants forcibly removed to a segregation camp at Klipspruit, and the entire Location torched. The fire burned for three days.
So it was that land became available for a new town to be built, imaginatively named Newtown by the municipality! A fresh fruit and vegetable market (in 1913 the biggest building in the country, now MuseumAfrica and the Market Theatre), an abattoir, a livestock market, a corn exchange, restaurant, bank, post office, railway office, shops and large sheds to store thousands of bags of potatoes (now Benjy Frances' Afrika Cultural Trust).
A new power station, electric workshops (currently being converted into a R150 million Science Museum), a turbine hall (currently under option to Anglo Gold for their new corporate Head Office), cooling towers (imploded in 1985) and worker housing (now the Worker's Library). A shed to house and repair the city's trams (now the Bus Factory) - all of these combined to make Newtown a thriving centre of employment.
With the relocation of market and abattoir, the closing of the power station and relocation of the electricity department, the area's employment capacity dwindled. Remarkably for a city characterized by the rapidity with which it demolishes its historic buildings, Newtown buildings were generally left for other purposes to be found for them. Fascinating stuff!
So this is the area that has been so appropriately chosen by the Johannesburg Housing Company for their latest residential project. Appropriate because the area was in fact once home to thousands of persons of different races and now, a hundred years after they were 'relocated', a new project will rise from the history of the past, a project that will once again offer accommodation to all races but this time with a concomitant quality of life and an opportunity to live with dignity.
The project is to be built in two phases ultimately providing in excess of 1 200 living units. There will be four 'high rise' towers of eight to twelve floors together with a number of low-rise buildings similar to those to be found in JHC's Carr Street project.
This first phase will provide about 650 units to be built over the next 22 months. Monthly rentals will range from R1000 to R3000-00. And the units will be right on the edge of the city centre providing accommodation for people near to their places of work! I'm sure that this will be the catalyst for a number of other residential projects which will ultimately meet the targets of the Inner City Strategic Plan, an increase in the number of people living in centre city from the current 20 000/30 000 to between 60 000 and 80 000.
Murphy Morobe pointed out that the project and particularly its financial backing are an indicator of investor confidence returning to the inner city - a confidence vital for the future of inner city regeneration. I agree fully!
