kagablog

The regeneration of Johannesburg’s inner city has yet to be realised. The middle classes are hesitant and the impoverished are fighting to stay put, writes Mary Corrigall

Commissioner Street is a good place to locate an inexpensive lunch of slap chips and Russians. This bustling city street is flanked by budget shops flogging clothing, cheap tupperware and faux gold clocks and is lined with informal traders purveying polished red apples displayed in tattered green plastic plates. It is a hub of crude commerce that seems an unlikely place for a contemporary art gallery with allusions to wealth and sophistication. But it is in this incongruous setting in Jozi’s inner city that Charl Bezuidenhout established Worldart nearly a year ago.

The bare concrete floor and exposed pipes that adorn the walls of his gallery visually root the gallery in its urban landscape. Downstairs is an empty basement that was once home to Jameson’s, a club that found favour with suburban whites in the eighties. A thick carpet of grime and dust covers the bar, the only trace of its former incarnation and the city’s illustrious past. Across the road is another icon of the city’s history, the Rand Club. A hungry fire gutted the landmark edifices’ interior in 2005 but like a persistent phoenix that won’t accept its demise this grand old edifice remains a swish destination and a permanent reminder that Joburg’s colonial history cannot be eradicated. Adjacent to the club are indications of Jozi’s future incarnation; a dusty construction site earmarked for a Vida e Caffe, a coffee shop chain associated with trendy shopping mall culture. Bezuidenhout is jubilant about the coffee shop’s expected presence. “It will change this little part of the city, it is a small thing but it will make a difference,” he observes.

Having inhabited metropolises across Europe and America, the Afrikaans-speaking Capetonian is a self-confessed serial city dweller, who feeds off the energy and buzz that accompanies city living. But his desire to dwell in the heart of Jozi’s inner city is rooted in a more complex matrix of human endeavours than simply an obsession with urban aesthetics.

Many progressive middle class South Africans like Bezuidenhout have bought into the vision of a revitalised inner city that the City of Johannesburg has propagated just prior to the turn of the millennium. When Thabo Mbeki launched a new vision for the area in 1997, dubbing it the Golden Heartbeat of Africa, it galvanised a plethora of development programmes by the Johannesburg Development Agency to uplift and revitalise a city that businesses had escaped a decade earlier, leaving it for dead. Since Mbeki’s grand gesture Jozi’s city centre has attracted a ruck of opportunistic entrepreneurs, looking to turn a buck while participating in the noble pursuit of re-erecting a flailing city. Like the thousands of prospectors who once flocked to Johannesburg to claim a chunk of the gold-laden reefs of the city, Bezuidenhout wanted to acquire a piece of a city rumoured to be ascending. It also made fiscal sense to embrace the vision while the city’s property was still going for a song.

“Joburg obviously has that allure for a businessman, the market is bigger. It’s the ideal place to come if you are looking for a challenge. I have been coming to the city for a number of years and noticed it getting cleaner and safer. The phase that the city is in now, rent is still affordable.”

“There is a definite optimism in the air I think it is because City council bought into the whole thing and a few people who were willing to try it. I don’t think it was rocket science it was a question of ‘this is too good to be true’ it was in line with international trends and few people willing to put their head on the block on going for it while the rest are just following their lead, slowly.”

Participating in the resurrection of a grand city, Africa’s most infamous conurbation, also offers a frisson of anticipation that is unquestionably seductive to financial daredevils.

“It’s exciting to be part of something special and I am playing my role in contributing to changing perceptions about the city,” says Bezuidenhout.

Jozi’s inner city promises more than just a pot of gold at the end the rainbow; it caters for a new breed of South African entrepreneurs who are socially engaged. Melding business ethics with a social conscience may sound contradictory but it just such an ethos that drives many entrepreneurs in Jozi’s inner city.

For Bezuidenhout setting up his business in this locale facilitates relationships with a wealth of African artists who he would never have encountered in the northern suburbs of the city. It also puts him in contact with a cosmopolitan society that takes its cue from African culture.

“I really wanted to put myself in the position where I am in contact with a more African experience. In Cape Town you don’t have that. You have to be proactive about striking up relationships with people from other backgrounds while at the same time you should not try too hard either, where the relationship is superficial. So the best thing is to put yourself in the position where it can happen to you.

“I think that you are cheating when you live in Cape Town and claim that you know anything about South Africa. I am not saying that everyone must live in Joburg but for me it is nice to know that I am gaining a certain understanding of (the country) by living here.”

Bezuidenhout’s desire to become part of an urban African culture hasn’t taken off yet; he is only gradually being absorbed into the bustling activity that takes places on the other side the thick glass windows of his gallery.

His clientele remain typically affluent whites - not the usual patrons that the inner city attracts. Not the market in town, expecting his market will change.

Some of Bezuidenhout’s clientele are afraid to come into the city. Bezuidenhout tries to allay his patrons’ misgivings about Joburg by relaying his own experience of the city or, failing that he sends a taxi to fetch them and bring them to the city.

“The streets have become cleaner and safer and there is a feeling that the city is being managed but people are not that convinced yet.”

It has been over a decade since Joburg acquired its new moniker, but Bezuidenhout believes that it is not yet the “Golden Heartbeat of Africa.” Optimistic investors have snapped up all the luxury apartments in town – Urban Ocean, one of the city’s most prominent property developers, have sold all the luxury apartments in the five odd buildings they have revamped in the city so far. But Bezuidenhout says that these swish lofts are sitting empty, indicating a lack of confidence in the city’s regeneration.

“A lot of people have bought in town but people haven’t moved into the apartments and started living in them. It is slowly beginning to happen once the retail side of things has picked up and you have more restaurants and bars and shops then things will change,” he asserts.

“The city thing is happening but it hasn’t reached that tipping point yet.”

Pockets of affluence

While Jozi’s inner city has yet to rise from the ashes, the establishment of Mapungubwe, a four star luxury hotel situated between Anderson and Marshall Streets, is being viewed as a sign that the ramshackle city is unquestionably upwardly mobile.

Once inside its slick, sophisticated Afrochic décor it is hard to believe that one is minutes away from the masses that pound the pavements on the hectic streets outside. The sepia photographs of rural African settings that decorate the lobby’s wall complete the fantasy but it is the hotel’s urban setting that makes it one of the most unique hotels in the country. Aside from a few dives that offer accommodation elsewhere in Jozi’s inner city, Mapungubwe is the only establishment that offers four star accommodation in the area. Since the Carlton Hotel and the Johannesburg Sun’s closure, there has been nowhere for tourists to rest their weary legs. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to hoteliers that tourists would be interested in spending time in Jozi’s inner city.

But it is not tourists that make up most of Mapungubwe’s clientele.

Tour companies that service foreign visitors are reticent about bringing groups to the city centre for an overnight stay, according to Carberry.

“They stay in Sandton or Rosebank and prefer to see the city from a tour bus. They don’t even get out of the bus; they just move quickly in and out of the city,” observes Carberry.

Mapungubwe doesn’t need tourists to stay afloat; the hotel can barely keep up with the present demand, says Carberry.

Primarily they attract businessmen who are in town to do business at one of the large corporations that have remained in the city, according to the hotel’s manager, Martin Carberry. Standard Bank, Absa and First National Bank’s headquarters compel people to visit the inner city and have kept Mapungubwe in business. Gustav Holtzhausen, managing director of Circlevest Properties, the company that owns Mapungubwe, says the presence of these corporate headquarters is what compelled him to look at investment opportunities in the city.

As with Bezuidenhout the affordability of the acquisition provided an extra incentive to purchase the defunct French Bank building and turn it into a reasonably priced luxury destination.

To make up for the limited range of activities nearby for the hotel’s guests to amuse a swish and trendy whisky bar is being built in the old vault located at the basement of the hotel, which will no doubt provide an oasis of luxury for those who live in the city.

Mapungubwe is not the only isolated patch of lavishness in Jozi’s inner city; there are pockets of affluence dotted around the city – sometimes one has to head into town on foot to discover them.

Newtown has been a mainstay of entertainment since the mid nineties with its funky bars and Afrochic eateries around the Market Theatre. The last year has seen the scene expand to include bars and an art gallery on Quinn Street and No 1 Central Place has become a must-do lunch spot with Capello’s and The Sophiatown Restaurant now attracting a trendy clique. A large amount of the patrons might well be suburbanites wanting to sample urban living without having to commit to it in practice but nevertheless they are contributing towards creating the impression that the inner city is cutting edge.

Main Street is now also offering what property developers call “the lifestyle element.”

Now a paved street with decorated with public art, it too is lined with fashionable eateries that show signs of an emerging street café society in the making.

Though a shopping mall is rumoured to be on the cards and a Woolworths food outlet will be open by the end of the year, further extending that ever illusive “lifestyle element” into the thick of the inner city, for now this brand of consumerism is restricted to just a few locales.

Home away from Home

Apart from the colourful mosaiced patterns that snake along the pavements in the so-called Fashion District, there is little evidence of rejuvenation in Doornfontein. In fact some say the suburb has degenerated since a number of clothing factories closed down during a downturn in business in the 1990s. Where once bottle stores and dark café’s sold greasy vetkoeks to seamstresses on their tea breaks stood, now stands vacant, unkempt properties with broken windows held together with caked fabric off cuts.

Amidst the grime, crime and decay, however, Lawrence Lemoaona has established a comfortable and roomy abode in End Street. An artist by trade Lemoaona was initially seduced by the ample space that his Doornfontein loft boasts. No matter what fantasy realms his imagination may transport him too, the vistas of Jozi’s concrete jungle that beckon from the expansive windows of his apartment will forever keep him rooted in an urban African reality.

Although Lemoaoana feels at home in his sparse loft, he has yet to reconcile himself with the world that exists from the pavement outside.

“I haven’t really been able to integrate with community here,” says Lemoaona.

He feels like a stranger in a strange land.

“I feel foreign to the space. There are lots of Nigerian shops that have opened and there is a resistance (from my part) to integrate. I feel like a I am dealing with an unknown quantity; I cannot place the people I meet.”

Until a over a year ago Lemoaona has lived in Soweto with his parents. In Soweto Lemoaona was used to being part of a tightly knit community, where he felt looked after.

“It is so different from Soweto. Soweto is so communal and there are always so many people around you that you know.”

He chose to live in Doornfontein because he wanted to access to the northern suburbs without having to pay the high rentals that living in those neighbourhoods commonly entails.

Initially Lemoaona was reluctant to move to the inner city.

“Living in Soweto I viewed the city as just a passageway to go to somewhere else, it wasn’t’ a place you lived in.”

Dwelling in Doornfontein took some getting use to.

“I couldn’t sleep properly for the first couple months. The city comes alive at 5am. That is when the taxis starting to hoot. Now I take comfort in those sounds, they have become familiar to me.”

Lemoaona sums up his association with his adopted home as a love/hate relationship.

The poverty that he is constantly surrounded by and the fear of crime have kept his optimisim for the city in check.

“Crime is a factor. I was mugged on Nugget Street on the same street that Gito Baloyi was shot,” says Lemoaona pointing out the window.

“They have installed cameras, which has made it a bit safer but my safety is one of my main worries.”

The building in which Lemoaona lives is somewhat of an artist’s enclave. Nicholas Nhlobo, Usha Seejarim, Gordon Froud, Jackie Mc Innes are just a few of the high profile artists who rent studio space in the building.

“This building feels like a bubble almost, its like living in Sandton and there is all this poverty around us. It is the sort of environment where you are safe inside but not outside.”

Lemoaona travels to Melville or other northern suburbs of Johannesburg to socialise. Most of his friends are reticent about visiting his Doornfontein loft.

“They have got a barrier about coming to town. Also when they do come they display this tourist mentality; when you take them to the roof they gasp at all the poverty, take out their cameras and start taking photographs and these are Joburgers.”

It is tricky living in such close proximity to the impoverished, says Lemoaona.

“You really see the poverty, surrounded by it. Looking at it makes me feel claustrophobic because it is so many people living in such close quarters, it is not very freeing.”

Though Lemoaona recoils from the poverty that he is faced with everyday, experiencing it first hand has shifted his attitudes.

“I was very judgemental at first; thinking how can these people live like that. But then I tried to dissect their mentality and realised that people don’t’ treasure space that doesn’t belong to them.”

Lemoaona has noticed the effect of regeneration programmes in the city and while he does believe that the physical structure of the city needs to be altered to shift negative attitudes he is simultaneously sceptical about which communities will benefit from the revitalisation.

“Newtown has become a very upmarket place in town. For me it represents the Black middle class. The establishments around that area don’t actually cater for the people who live around there. So you have a lot of northern suburbs people and tourists going to that part of town to places that have a menu that is “black”. But they are such expensive restaurants that people who live in town can’t afford to eat there. But there is a vibe there so I do like going there.”

Witnessing the Red Ants, the inner city’s notorious task team charged with removing people from “bad buildings”, have further challenged Lemoaoa’s conception of regeneration. “When it is happening right in front of you, you find out first hand what regeneration means.

When I was walking through Hillbrow one evening I noticed that the Red Ants are now coming at night and they have got these big trucks that move people away. And you start to think what does ‘away’ mean and where is it?”

The more positive thoughts he has about the city are founded in its future possibilities rather than its current status quo.

“I like it for what it potentially has,” admits Lemoaona.

The rich versus the poor

Near what was once the Financial District (and still is, depending on who you talk to), near Rissik and Market Streets are quite a different brand of loft apartments created by Urban Ocean, a property company headed by Alfonso Botha and Duan Coetzee. The duo snap up dilapidated architectural gems, return them to their former glory, fitted them up with all the best mod cons before selling them off for decidedly large sums of money. So far they have revamped five buildings in the inner city. And they haven’t exactly scrimped on fittings; from the best wooden flooring money can buy, designer sanitaryware, stainless steel appliances, oak veneer and solid oak carpentry, in-door coffee bars, spas and wellness centres, these two mavericks have caught the attention of the moneyed classes, compelling them to return their gaze to the inner city. Some of their deluxe penthouses – some of which have access via helicopter - have fetched as much R4-million – an unprecedented sum for living space in Jozi’s city centre. Not too surprisingly Urban Ocean’s successes have caught the attention of the media, engendering the impression that Jozi’s inner city is no longer the mainstay of the impoverished.

However, many say that these opulent abodes were snapped up by investors who had no intention of living in town in its present state.

Botha refutes these claims.

“In the beginning investors did buy into a lifestyle that did not exist yet, now that is not the case.”

Holtzhausen believes that Urban Ocean jumped the gun with their super deluxe apartments. He says that the city’s revitalisation has a long way to go before the affluent will happily settle in the city.

“We have a long way to go before we get there,” asserts Holtzhausen, “Revitalising a city is long drawn out process, which often creates the impression that little is happening the in the city, says Botha.

“People aren’t taking into consideration the technical processes and lag time that is involved in converting a building.”

Botha says the public should remember how far the city has come in the last decade.

“People forget that the whole city was like a slum, it has been a long process of changing behaviour. But there have been massive changes.”

More parks, schools and upmarket retailers would be needed in order to coax the well-heeled to settle in the inner city, suggests Holtzhausen.

Though Lael Bethlehem, chief executive officer at the JDA, says that all these kinds of facilities are on already on the cards, she suggests that the real focus has been to create residential developments for the low to middle income groups.

“That’s where the real action has been. The upper end of the market is a small niche market, it’s the lower income groups that need housing. One property developer will be building 3000 new units this year in the city and that is just one developer,” says Bethlehem.

The Inner City Charter, the document outlining the objectives for regeneration developments in the city for the next five years, looks set to put more revamp projects in motion, starting with infamous no-go areas as Hillbrow and Berea, where so-called “block by block blitzes” and the upgrading of public property will be set into motion.

While everyone agrees that Jozi’s inner city needs to be revamped and upgraded, regeneration strategies aimed at this part of the city have not been welcomed by the city’s current residents – mostly the poor, who are under constant threat from the municipality.

Mostly it is the City’s approach to dealing with “bad buildings”, which tends to entail forcibly removing its “bad” residents out of the city., that has drawn criticism from among others, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) at Wits University, an organisation that have tirelessly battled the municipality on behalf of Jozi’s disenfranchised, fighting for their right to remain in the city centre.

Assumed to be criminals and the like, engendering a negative impact on perceptions about the city centre, it is thought that Jozi’s regeneration cannot be fully realised as long as these “bad” elements continue to inhabit and flourish in the city.

Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, of the Trinity Sessions, a company that manages public art projects in the inner city, and have been commissioned to oversee the erection of R3,5 millions worth of public art in Hillbrow, in an effort to change the face of this notorious no-go area of the city are all too aware of the implications that regenerating has for the city’s apparent undesirable inhabitants.

“There has been criticism that this is an exercise to spruce up the neighbourhood so that one day the property developers can move in buy up all the buildings and kick the community out, which is a realistic threat wherever you go and you are working in these kinds of environments,” says Neustetter.

Revitalising a city automatically has consequences for the poor.

“The regeneration is not for the people that are there; the upgrade is pushing the value of the property up so that it has to be marketed to a middle class that is afraid to go there,” says Hobbs.

Bethlehem insists that regeneration programmes are meant to benefit the all echelons of our society. She says that the inner city is a diverse area that can accommodate a variety of economic groups.

The R170-million that has been set aside to spruce up Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville – the city’s next big regeneration programme – is designed to benefit its current occupants as well as potential residents.

“It is about making their quality of life much better.”

One must not think of the regeneration of Johannesburg as course of action that necessarily pre-empts a struggle between rich property developers and the poor, according to Bethlehem.

“It is a false dichotomy. It is not about property developers versus the poor. We need property investors; they are able to service working people.”

The Wrong side of the Tracks

The name “San Jose” conjures up visions of an exotic Spanish holiday home. The infamous building that stands in Berea on the border of Hillbrow that goes by the same name is by no means a pleasurable haven. There is no electricity, running water or working toilets. Most of the window panes of the 10-storey building are broken or missing. Graffiti is sprawled across its dirty walls and the heavy stench of urine permeates the air. For all sense and purposes it is the quintessential “bad building” that has given the inner city its pejorative reputation.

Fifty-five-year-old Nelson Khethani has been living here for over five years. Unemployed and destitute he moved into San Jose after the municipality cut off services to the building - a move engineered to coerce residents to move elsewhere. But with limited finances, Khetani and the other 600 odd residents of this derelict eye-sore had nowhere else to go and have had to fight the municipality– with the aid of Stuart Wilson, a researcher from Cals – to keep their foothold in the city.

“If it wasn’t for Cals we would have been on the street,” says Khetani.

Even thought it is a bright and sunny day, inside Khetani’s flat it is dark. In contrast to the dilapidated interior of the building, Khetani’s home is a well kept, tidy space. even during a sunny day no electricity, it is sparsely furnished but spacious flat with a lounge, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

“This is a home Even if I don’t like to stay here I am forced to stay here. I would like to live somewhere with lights but I don’t have money so what can I do.”

Khetani uses candles and oil lamps at night and must trek outside to a portable toilet when he needs the toilet. Having lived without electricity and other amenities most of his life he is resigned to an impoverished living standard.

“It is not strange to me I am coming from the village and I am used to this life. It is not new to me I have grown up inside this (poverty).”

Khetani moved to Johannesburg from a small hamlet in the Eastern Cape in 1970. After losing fulltime employment in 1992, he has eked out a living selling a variety of goods on the city’s streets. Although the municipality would have it that Khetani and his ilk, lived on the outskirts of the city, Khetani has to live in Jozi’s inner city to survive – he says transport costs to and from the city “would kill me.”

“They are pushing the poor out of Joburg (inner city) they even said they want us to go. They want us to go to Soweto, Kliptown. We are too poor to stay in town.”

He also believes that it is in only this bustling metropolis, brimming with opportunities, that he still may have the chance to alter his fortunes and change the course of his life.

“Everything is here, close to everything, if you want to change your life you must change it here. In the village you will never change your life.”

So far the regeneration programmes in the inner city have not had any impact on Khetani’s life, or his outlook for the future. He believes that transformations in the city are not designed to benefit the poor.

“I have seen the buildings that they have fixed. It is okay for them but not for us. It is not for us and I cannot manage to live. I feel neglected.

Khetani disputes the idea that “bad people” live in purported “bad buildings”.

“It is not the case at all,” he sighs.

The residents of San Jose are at pains to curb criminals from inhabiting or operating in the building, according to Khetani, who functions as the chairman of the residents association. A set of strict house rules were drawn up by the inhabitants of San Jose to ensure that a “bad” element cannot flourish in the building.

One such rule stipulates that no resident may park a car in the garage on the ground floor.

“If we allow that then we have a problem because people could be bringing stolen cars and we don’t want that here.”

San Jose may not have been maintained since the managing agents of the building stopped reicieving remittances from the owners of the building to pay rates and services since the early nineties but the residents of the bulding seem determined to do what little they can to maintain the building.

At 4.30am on Sunday mornings San Jose’s residents wake each other up so that by six am they can begin their weekly clean up of the building, , according to Khetani.

Though they mop up the sewerage that fills ground floor, which is responsible for the stomach churning stench of urine that permeates the air, it has been a losing battle since the municipality cut services to the building.

If regeneration programmes had a positive impact on any of Khetani’s acquaintances at San Jose or in the environs, it would restore his faith in the regeneration of the inner city.

“I would like to see changes in my life and the lives of other like me. Even if it (regeneration of the city) doesn’t make my life better, if I came across someone I know that has struggled and I see that things have got better for him that would give me hope.”

For now, however, Khetani believes that revitalisation plans are profiting the rich.

“The poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.”

Khetani and the residents of San Jose will not be living in the building for much longer, Wilson has helped negotiate with the municipality to secure a new home for all of them in Hillbrow. Although their flats will be half the size, their new abode has electricity and running water.

San Jose will then fall into the hands of the property developers and be assimilated into the new vision of Johannesburg. No one is sure, when the new improved city centre will finally emerge. It is a work in progress.