JOBURG has always been a hard drinking, hard partying town. It forged a close relationship with SAB in the early days, and is now celebrating SABMiller's good fortunes alongside its own regeneration in Newtown.
Neil Fraser
May 23, 2005
ON THURSDAY the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) was launched. A joint venture between the City, Wits University and a number of others, the centre is part of the programme to position Joburg as the African software, content development and testing hub that I wrote about in June last year.
The JCSE aims to promote best practice in software development within an African context; to grow South Africa's capacity to deliver world class software; and to set up research and training initiatives to strengthen the local software development industry.
I will provide details of the JCSE in a future edition - for now it is time to turn to beer.
Let's raise a glass to Charles
The SAB World of Beer in Newtown recently celebrated its tenth birthday with a superb dinner party. The World of Beer has become a city institution, providing excellent conference facilities as well as the "beer tour". Apart from a superbly presented history of beer that goes back thousands of years, the tour ends with two drinks - all for R10 a person - great value, great beer.
Behind the establishment of the facility in Newtown lies an interesting story.
I remember receiving a visit - probably in 1992 or 1993 - from an SAB project manager who was investigating possible sites in Johannesburg for constructing a project to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of South African Breweries. The brewer was in discussions with the City council of the time regarding Newtown as a possible site.
He wanted to know my opinion on the future of Newtown. I don't think I pointed out the chequered history of Newtown and the cynicism that existed at the time, but I might have suggested diplomatically that, as it was the site of the one of city's the earliest breweries, and as the council was talking about it becoming Joburg's cultural area, it seemed quite an appropriate site.
Brickfields
Historically Newtown, in relation to the city centre, was something of an ugly sister and almost always mired in controversy. It fell outside the initial city boundaries - early maps of Johannesburg reflect the area as
uitvalgrond. It was "goldless" and made up of quartzite and shale covered by a deep layer of clay.
The clay attracted many poor people to the area. Unable to get jobs directly in mining, they set up clay mixers and drying kilns to produce bricks for the burgeoning mining town - this history lent the name "Brickfields" to the Johannesburg Housing Company's residential development at the foot of Nelson Mandela Bridge.
Incidentally, the first phase of that project opens at the end of this month and the second phase is already under construction.
By 1896, just 10 years after the gold "discovery", the population of Brickfields was 7 000, 1 500 of them brickmakers. But it was the beginning of the demise of brickmaking as the government wanted to use the northern area of the site for goods yards for the new railways.
Burghersdorp
The brickmakers were moved on to the balance of the land, stretching up to Fordsburg, and the area became known as Burghersdorp or Veldskoendorp. Sections were designated for various "locations" - all on a racial basis.
Burghersdorp and the contiguous locations were very rough and tough. They were crowded with shacks and roads that were no more than tracks meandering between open clay pits. The area grew into a sprawling, multi-racial settlement. In the early 1900s the multi-racial nature of the site, as well as the poor quality of the environment, became anathema to the British colonial government.
In 1904 plague broke out in the Indian "location" and more than a hundred people died. This gave an excuse to the colonial government to remove forcibly the population to Klipspruit, near the sewerage works, and the shacks and buildings that were left were set on fire.
With the area cleared, the authorities had the opportunity to start building what they called the "New Town". It became the site of the fresh produce market, now Museum Africa; a livestock market and abattoir; workers housing, now the Worker's Library and Museum; a power station, the Turbine Hall whose buildings will be converted into an art gallery and head offices for AngloGold Ashanti; the Electric Workshops that have already been converted into Sci Bono, the state-of-the-art science and technology centre; a large shed to house the city's trams, now known as the Bus Factory that houses a superb arts and crafts display; and so on.
New Town
Early entrepreneurs were attracted to the site. They established trading companies, banks, a fishery, Imperial Cold Storage, Premier Milling and a brewery, among other businesses.
Then, in the early 1900s, Newtown emerged as the scene of political agitation, leading to strikes. It was in Newtown that feisty Mary Fitzgerald, a socialist political activist later to become the city's first female deputy mayor, threw her first brick at a policeman. She also organised a large number of women to lie on the tram tracks to prevent scab drivers from manning the trams. Today she is remembered by the square that bears her name.
By the 1950s Newtown was the city's main industrial sector, and as such was a hive of activity. However, by the 1960s many of the activities had been resited. The cooling towers were imploded, the power station closed, the abattoir and market facilities moved elsewhere and Newtown went into decline.
Then, in the early 1990s the City council decided that it should become the cultural hub of Joburg. It provided only limited and token funding and a variety of that council's revitalisation claims provoked little but a cynical response.
The World of Beer
It was against this backdrop that SAB made the decision to invest R35-million in its centenary project, known at the time as the Centenary Centre. Today, of course, it is The World of Beer.
To take that decision must have taken an awful lot of guts, a great commitment to Johannesburg - not shared by that many local businesses at the time - and tremendous vision. On the other hand, maybe SAB's vision was influenced by an intimate knowledge of what really made this city tick - and I am not talking about gold.
Johannesburg has never been a city for the meek and mild. Those who came here at the beginning in their search for wealth were young, adventurous and enterprising - and drank an awful lot.
When Johannes Rissik and Christiaan Johannes Joubert came to the Witwatersrand from Pretoria in 1886 to investigate the proclamation of the goldfields, they addressed a meeting of about 250 men, near Ferreira's wagon.
After the meeting the audience moved on to Edgson's canteen, one of the first pubs on the goldfields and, it is said, drank firstly a toast to President Kruger and then continued drinking until they had cleared the pub of all stock.
In late 1886 when the new mining town was visited by Bishop Brousfield, he recorded that of the 26 shanties erected, 16 were for the sale of drinks. Three years later the 16 had become 127 saloons. Anna Smith in the publication Pictorial Johannesburg reflected that, considering the dust storms, it was not surprising that beer brewing was one of the town's first industries.
In 1891 an enterprising newspaper editor organised a Barmaids Referendum - of a population of 30 000 men, women and children, 17 000 votes were cast using the then 288 bars as voting stations. At the final count a Mrs Groth of Kimberley Bar was declared winner by 2 000 votes - she was described as an "Aphrodite, amply blessed and with great personal charm".
Joburg's growing population
The population of Johannesburg grew at breakneck speed, making it the fastest growing city in the world and providing huge beer-drinking potential.
Within four years of gold being discovered there were 26 000 residents, four theatres, three social clubs, many sports clubs and 312 bars and hotels. Incidentally, the first liquor licence issued in June 1886 actually preceded the September proclamation of the goldfields - forget about gold, this is a city founded on liquor.
Six years later the population had quadrupled to 102 500 and the number of bars to 552! By 1928 the population had quadrupled again to 442 000 and eight years later, at 620 000, the population exceeded the combined populations of the much older cities of Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban.
As the population skyrocketed, so did the number of pubs. This was a fun loving and hard-drinking town; people's favourite occupations were drinking, gambling and billiards - as well as brawling - closely followed by womanizing.
The number of brothels almost challenged the number of bars, with gangster pimps from New York bringing in continental and Russo-American prostitutes by the hundred.
A young lady who arrived from England at the end of 1886, after trekking from Cape Town by mule wagon, described the trip as "one prolonged picnic and screaming fun".
A Mrs Venn, who arrived in 1887 with her family, brought with her a German maid, Matilda, who was "spirited" away within weeks to work as a barmaid. Barmaids were employed essentially to attract the thirsty.
Huge quantities of cheap potato spirits poured in from Germany to form the base for the most popular drink of the day, raw potato spirit mixed with tobacco juice and pepper.
Brewery
With that history, the establishment of a brewery was a given. Not surprisingly, the SAB was founded in 1895, just a short nine years after gold was discovered, with an initial production of Castle Lager of 50 000 barrels a year.
In 1902 the Thoma Brewery was established by Anders Ohlsson on what is now 2 Jan Smuts Avenue. It became SAB's head Office in 1963.
SAB's relationship with the Johannesburg has been an exceptionally close one. Its fortunes continued to grow, unlike those of the city which started to decline in the 1970s and plunged to its lowest point in the middle 1990s - just when the building was being completed.
In that year, 1995, SAB celebrated its centenary with a share price of R100, a market capitalisation of R30-million and a record R10-billion in added value for the South African economy.
Five years later, just in time to celebrate the beginning of the remarkable urban recovery of the city, total sales at SABMiller (as it is now known) reached 77 million hectolitres. Yesterday SABMiller announced a 15 percent increase in turnover over the previous year and in rand terms a 15 percent (33 percent in dollar terms) increase in earnings.
Total lager volumes have grown to 148 million hectolitres, or just under 100 000 drinks of 300 ml every minute.
Although these figures are obviously worldwide, the early population of Johannesburg would have been delighted - imagine 100 000 drinks every minute. Well done SABMiller, the World of Beer and, of course, Charles Glass.
Cheers!
Neil
