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There’s a guided tour for that — experience Joburg in all its glory

mandela portrait rand club. Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber

2 Dec 2024

Rather than retreating into the privileged bubble of groomed parks policed by WhatsApp groups in affluent suburbs, venture out to where cultures collide and life happens in the here and now.

I recently returned to Jozi after 22 years of living in rural Limpopo. Those glorious old mountain views have given way to suburban sprawl, endless malls, highways, skyscrapers, buses, trains, taxis and the thrum of hundreds of thousands of people going about life.

Jozi, you restless, relentless beast. Fascinating, friendly, edgy, violent. One of the most complex cities on the planet.

Luckily, I landed gently, deep in the city’s green heart called The Parks, a series of urban villages, each with its own shopping strip and vibe, where medical aid fixes the potholes and the homeless are pointsmen at the intersections of streets with names like Kildare, Buckingham and Hamilton. There are fabulous parks, treed and forested, policed and patrolled, not least of all by the fearsome administrators of the suburban WhatsApp groups.

The parks. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

It’s been tempting to retreat into this privileged green bubble, but there’s just something about Jozi, the mining camp whose mother tongue is money and survival. And so instead I’ve become a tourist. It’s easy enough to do – there are tours and tour guides aplenty, and Jozi certainly caters to the curious.

Looking up from Gandhi Square. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

Inside Constitution Hill. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

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

I’ve done Constitution Hill and the Apartheid Museum: both are heavy and enlightening; take tissues.

I’ve been around the historic Fietas of Vrededorp, Fordsburg, Brixton and Sophiatown: charming and gritty. I’ve checked out the Keyes Art Mile in Rosebank when, on the first Thursday of every month, the galleries stay open, the wine flows and the arts uplift.

I did an amazing night walk through Soweto, a brilliantly guided tour of Orlando West and Vilakazi Street, taking in historical spots, accompanied by the sweet sounds of the Phakama Youth Choir. By night it’s much more dramatic, Shakespearean even. The 1976 uprising, the story of Winnie and Nelson Mandela, the bravery of the schoolchildren, the brutality of the police.

Soweto nightwalk. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

A guided night walk in Soweto. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

I also did a lekker street art tour in Noordgesig, the first coloured community in Soweto. The place pops with colour as you enter off New Canada Road, the gateway to Soweto. From street art, murals and shop signs to entire buildings colourfully painted, it was an inspiring thing to see how public art has united a community.

And I couldn’t resist going to the top of Ponte. Staring over the city at sunset is both bizarre and exhilarating. At 54 storeys and rising 173m into the sky from Hillbrow, panopticon Ponte has been an interesting symbol of Jozi. It rises, it falls, it rises.

A popular address for European immigrants in the 1970s, Ponte declined into one of Africa’s worst urban slums in the 1990s – brilliantly captured in the book Ponte by Mikhael Subotzky – and today it’s a clean, well-run residential building. You can take tours to the top and around Hillbrow.

Joburg Ponte The breathtaking view from Ponte in Hillbrow. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton) Barber

The view of Jozi from the top of Ponte in Hillbrow. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

Recently, I took friends from Limpopo and Maputo to the Rand Club for lunch. This colonial relic with the longest bar in South Africa (31m) has a fabulous collectibles bookstore below. The occasion was inspired by a walkabout in Marshalltown, the old mining district of the CBD, which has been upgraded and renewed.Read more: High-rises, hellholes and healthcare — Hillbrow’s heritage story

Read more: Joburg is too big to fail. It’s time to give it back to its people

The walk was hosted by LocalAbode, in partnership with Jozi My Jozi, basically a public-private partnership (with partners including Nando’s, Anglo American, IQbusiness, Absa, FNB, Standard Bank, Wits University, the Maharishi Invincibility Institute and the City of Joburg, among others) looking for creative and sustainable solutions in the inner city.

The grand staircase at the Rand Club. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

A portrait of Nelson Mandela at the Rand Club. (Photo: Bridget-Hilton Barber)

We strolled from the Carlton Centre, around Gandhi Square and down Marshall, Main and Fox streets, where the architecture ranges from Victorian to brutalist and Art Deco to modern. The fountains were tinkling, there was public art, plenty of security, and pedestrians walking freely around.

Jozi My Jozi calls itself “a movement born out of a deep passion for the city and the desire to see it thrive again”. I’m in. DM

Visit www.sowetonightout.tours; Call Fabian on 076 838 3296 for a tour of Noordgesig; Visit www.dlalanje.org for a Ponte tour; See www.jozimyjozi.co.za to help out.

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

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