Field of dreams — Jozi’s inner city gets an educational makeover

Dr Taddy Blecher. Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber

1 Apr 2025

The Maharishi Invincibility Institute in Marshalltown, Johannesburg is aiming to turn this downtown precinct into an enlightening space where thousands of students can learn, live and play.

In 20 years the Johannesburg CBD will be an education town, says Dr Taddy Blecher, chief executive of the Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII), a nonprofit skills-to-work educational institution in the inner city.

“By 2034, we hope to have over 10,000 students, and with multiple other educational institutions on their way or here already, our target is to get to 100,000 students within a five-square-mile radius of here, and Jozi will be completely transformed.

“Along with Wits University and the University of Johannesburg (UJ), it will definitely be the most powerful educational cluster in Africa,” Blecher explains.

An education town is centred on universities, colleges, schools and training centres. Like Boston in the US or Cambridge and Oxford in the UK, they generate wealth and ensure future wealth through learning. Education towns are safe and have shops, restaurants, accommodation and sports facilities. They are towns of hope, facing the future. But in Jozi’s inner city?

We’d navigated potholes, traffic lights not working, a power outage and cowboy traffic to get to the MII, which is on Ntemi Piliso Street in the southwestern corner of the CBD. It certainly didn’t feel like Boston or Oxford.

But now we are in Marshalltown, around the corner from the MII, standing in a tree-lined pedestrianised walkway in Main Street between two iconic sandstone buildings – 44 and 45 Main Street, the former HQ of Anglo American mining company – and it is easy and exciting to imagine this as the centrepiece of a grand university.

44 Main Street. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

Jozi Maharishi The centre of education town. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

“This will be the town square of education town,” says Blecher. Together with partners Anglo, which has donated two buildings to the MII, the Jozi My Jozi coalition and Wits Business School, which is soon opening a new campus close by, the MII plans to create a huge educational network that stretches from here all the way to Wits and UJ, with their combined student numbers making up 100,000 students in 10 years.

The plan is for 45 Main Street to be another MII campus and for 44 Main Street to become a centre for the arts. The MII has buildings nearby for its high school, crèche and preschool. “Education is the new gold,” says Blecher, “but it’s additive, not extractive.

“We are taking individuals, putting them through a refinement process and they will become gold.”

Security is the bedrock of an education town, and soon the MII will be putting 125 graduates from its own security academy on the streets. They will have undergone a three-year course covering technology, digital security and psychological and physical fitness.

“The security academy is going to change this city,” says Blecher. Jozi My Jozi is working alongside the MII to provide 24/7 security and roll out solar lights, with 650 already installed and 1,000 more on the way.

Providing safe places for students to live is another critical factor in building an education town and Blecher believes there are more than enough vacant buildings in the city to accomplish this. He says there are up to 1.5 million square metres available, “and when students are living in the city, that will create shops, restaurants, entertainment venues and sport facilities”.

The MII has already educated more than 24,000 formerly unemployed young people, placing about 21,000 in the fields of business, finance, banking, technology, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, management consultancy and more. It aims to develop a new generation of 100,000 African leaders.

Dr Taddy Blecher. (Photo: Bridget Hilton-Barber)

Consciousness-based education

Blecher’s vision for an education town in the Jozi inner city is extraordinary, and so is his approach to education. He calls it consciousness-based education: the student is at the centre of the education process. “Everything we want to be – happy, successful, caring, kind, able to learn fast, respected – all these things ultimately come from within ourselves. So how do we develop this in our students? How do we unlock potential?”

Read more: Gold beneath the gloom — five amazing things to explore in Jozi

Read more: Walks of life — stroll through Joburg reveals many sides of a renewed inner-city

Most students at the MII come from tough backgrounds and didn’t get brilliant marks at school. Blecher reckons 34% of them show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Meditation and yoga have shown to be remarkably beneficial in reducing this.

Consciousness-based education aims to foster a sense of connectedness with the world. It views education as more than just the accumulation of knowledge, and emphasises the importance of self-understanding while providing a calm and focused learning environment.

An actuary by profession, Blecher tells the story of how, in 1995, he received a R1.3-million job offer in the US and was set to emigrate. Then he had a crisis of conscience and decided to stay in South Africa and dedicate himself to education. He spent the next four years teaching transcendental meditation in township schools in Alexandra.

He and three partners then started the Community and Individual Development City Campus, an affordable business university for students who couldn’t afford higher education.

Blecher then went on to form the MII in 2009. He’s won a host of awards for his educational work and is also the CEO of the Imvula Education Empowerment Fund and the Invincible Group, among many other achievements.

Heaven in the inner city

From a grey and frantic corner of the city pops a purple-painted precinct where students are playing basketball and five-a-side soccer. There are colourful murals on the wall and the sounds of cheerful activity. This is the new Maharishi Park, featuring a modern sports clubhouse and multipurpose fields.

Six months ago, this was a derelict space where drug addicts lived and danger lurked. Now it’s a functional and safe sports field and centre. “This has become a miraculous piece of heaven,” says Blecher.

By the end of September, the Maharishi Invincibility Institute and Standard Bank will also have created a world-class soccer field in an empty parking lot nearby. It will be able to host international games and is aptly named the Field of Dreams.

“Maharishi Park is a testament to the power of collaboration,” says Bea Swanepoel, CEO of Jozi My Jozi. “Revitalising urban spaces isn’t simply about infrastructure. It’s about restoring pride in our city, giving hope to its people and creating economic opportunities. This park will certainly do that by providing young people with a place to dream, play and grow.” DM

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi, a business and community initiative to restore and renew Johannesburg.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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South Africa

Consciousness-based education

Heaven in the inner city