94. Downfall of Hillbrow Johannesburg
There are a number of specific places in South Africa that are firmly lodged in my memory of earlier years. Most contain happy memories, some not so much and some are a mix of happy and sad. Hillbrow falls into the latter category.
The Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow was largely developed after World War II. There was a massive shortage of accommodation for both whites and Blacks in what had become the biggest city in South Africa. Apart from the discovery of a fabulously rich vein of gold in 1886 on the farm Langlaagte by George Harrison, many of the country’s major industries had located themselves in and around Johannesburg.
The gold mines in particular required a massive input of labor as they became the world’s largest source of gold. The majority of the labor force was Africans who flooded into the area seeking work. Although the gold was plentiful, it required miners to dig deeper and deeper in pursuit of the veins of gold, so becoming the deepest mining operations in the world.
Well before the introduction of Apartheid in 1948, Black and white communities settled in separate areas. The Blacks located in a sprawling township complex called “Soweto.” Many people have erroneously thought this to be an African word but, in fact, its origin is simply an acronym for “South Western Townships.”
Meanwhile, the massive development of what started as a small mining camp known as Ferreiras Town, grew into a municipality in 1897 and just over thirty years later, in 1928, it was given city status, the largest city in southern Africa. It was named Johannesburg after two land surveyors for the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), Christiaan Johannes Joubert and Johannes Rissik.
The residents of the city were mostly white with small pockets of people of color in a few municipal areas such as Sophiatown. In 1954, all Black residents were eventually forced out of Sophiatown into the sprawling mess that was Soweto. Despite this, increasing numbers of Africans poured into the urban areas seeking work, often lured by the promise of good jobs on the gold mines. After World War II, more and more whites also left their farms and headed for the fabled city of gold, called E-Goli by the Africans.
Up until the mid-1940s, the suburb of Hillbrow (so called because it was located on a high ridge overlooking the city center) was considered one of the wealthiest and most fashionable suburbs of Johannesburg. Its location on a high ridge overlooking the city was considered a really clean and healthy area, well away from the smoke and general pollution of the fast-growing city below the ridge.
However, when housing was at a premium immediately after World War II, a massive program was undertaken for the development of high-rise apartments to accommodate the ever-growing white population of the city, the majority of whom were young, single or newly married. It was reputed to be the most densely populated square mile of real estate in the world in the ’50s and ’60s – but I doubt if it ever reached the capacity of places like Hong Kong.
Returning from Britain in 1959, I headed for Johannesburg where there were at least two sizable film companies, Killarney and Alpha Films. Although I did not initially live in Hillbrow, it was very much the place where all the “action” for young people took place. It had quite a cosmopolitan feel to it and in the early ’60s there were hints of a Chelsea, or perhaps Soho’s swinging atmosphere, about it. Numerous coffee bars, restaurants and night clubs kept the buzz going until the early hours. It was the place for young whites to congregate and I gravitated there soon after arriving in E-Goli (from living in England for some years).
There was also a cautious and well-hidden infusion of Blacks living in rooms on the roofs of the skyscrapers. They were not only there as a workforce for Hillbrow, there were also a number of men and women in the arts, particularly singers and musicians. Hillbrow did not have a Carnaby Street (London music, art and retail scene) but it came close to generating the vibe of the hippie and flower power era of the 1960s.
Before getting a job with Alpha Film Studios, I worked for a couple of months as a bouncer at Nite-Beat, a restaurant and club in Hillbrow that offered good music performed mostly by Black bands and singers. One of the young upcoming singers, Abigail Kubeka, later joined the cast of the musical “Sponono” in Durban, written by Alan Paton (famed for his novel Cry, the Beloved Country). I worked both backstage and as a driver for the production performed by members of DATA (Durban Academy of Theatre Arts) in 1963. It was the first nonracial theatre group in South Africa, in defiance of the Apartheid laws.
Chatting with Abigail one day about jazz and some of the famous jazz men and women I had known when working for BBC TV and ATV in Britain, she invited me to her room in a small apartment near the theatre. Although it was a completely innocent afternoon listening to her jazz records, there was always the slight fear that some heavy-handed cop would arrive and arrest us under the infamous Immorality Act, which decreed that there should be no sexual contact between white and Black. The fact that we were just listening to music would probably have cut no ice.
Back in Hillbrow, I had a few incidents of bouncing unruly customers out of Nite-Beat (described in an earlier blog), but I was thankful that one of Hillbrow’s most notorious tough guys, George Ivanisevic, spent a peaceful evening there without incident. George the Duke, as he was known, was reputed to be part of the Yugoslav royal family. He was tall, lean, incredibly good looking and deadly. His favorite weapons were his feet. He could kick as high as any ballet dancer and usually connected with his victim’s face. An acquaintance of mine lost an eye in a fight with George. I often wondered how I would have coped, never having lost a fight myself, but I suspect I would have been no match for him.
Later on, I did live in a couple of apartments in Hillbrow, but the noise at night from drunken revelers was not my idea of fun. Ironically, only a block away from Hillbrow were some very upmarket apartments in the neighboring suburb of Parktown where Hero, my wife-to-be, lived with her parents Zacharias and Athena Falas. Although they had a large house next to the Zoo Lake in the outer suburbs, Dr. Falas and his wife rented out their house and divided their time between their Johannesburg apartment and what was then Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique) where Zach owned two large factories.
Hillbrow slowly lost its luster and was becoming a haven for drug dealers. By the 1970s the suburb was increasingly populated by immigrants from Europe. There were also large numbers of colonial Portuguese who had fled the Communist incursions of both Mozambique and Angola. Sadly, criminal elements from Nigeria had arrived in South Africa and began to control and terrorize the local Africans. Many of them lived in Hillbrow. Because of this, in the 1980s there was an exodus of white middle-class South Africans from Hillbrow to the outer suburbs.
My now in-laws along with other residents also moved away from the edge of Hillbrow when crime rates soared. As the tight bonds of Apartheid began to loosen, with the pernicious pass laws being relaxed in 1986, Hillbrow became a haven for Blacks wanting to leave the unruly and increasingly dangerous life afforded them in Soweto. As early as 1982, the government declared Hillbrow to be a “mixed area” which meant that Indians and Coloreds (people of mixed race) could now live in Hillbrow.
For a while, this mélange of different nationalities and ethnicities worked surprisingly well and Hillbrow became the focus of what was hoped would be the new South Africa. However, by the 1990s, shortly before the new democratic government of Nelson Mandela came into power in 1994, the infrastructure of Hillbrow began to crumble. Public utilities such as water, electricity and garbage collection were constantly breaking down. The landlords of the high-rise buildings, faced with having to reduce rentals for the ever-growing working-class population, let even the most basic amenities go to rack and ruin. Crime, prostitution and disease soared as the owners of the high-rises earned the epithet of “slumlords.”
I was commissioned to make a documentary about conditions in Hillbrow at that time. Not having been there for some years, I was truly shocked. My camera team and I entered some of the buildings, gingerly picking our way across the mounds of rotting food and other rubbish. None of the elevators worked; water inevitably dripped from pipes and the smell was unbelievable.
The only surprise that occurred, when I knocked on one of the apartments at random, was that the door opened to reveal a neatly dressed middle-aged woman who with typical African friendliness and hospitality invited us into the apartment. It was spotless, a little threadbare perhaps, but it was a certainly comfortable abode for the lower-income family. In discussion with the lady, she explained that, despite the appalling conditions outside her door, she and her husband had made a comfortable little home for herself and their children. She said that many of the tenants made the best they could of the circumstances because there was literally nowhere else to go.
We left Hillbrow that evening contemplating the history of the place, from an upmarket suburb with large comfortable homes to a crowded yet vibrant and cosmopolitan place for the young and, finally, the gradual descent into an appalling ghetto. I am told that efforts are being made now in 2021 to clean the place up. I really hope so. The local Black residents left Soweto for a better life and hopefully one day that dream will be fulfilled.
In much the same way as we see so much of current so-called Western Civilization also decaying, the magical simplicity of ExoTech will provide a banner of hope and truth for a future and better world for all!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.