On a recent tour of the inner city, the executive mayor and his mayoral committee members were brought face-to-face with the urban decay stalking the region. But he committed himself and his team to finding solutions. By Ndaba Dlamini

A lot needs to be done to deal with urban decay and growing poverty in the peripheral areas of the inner city, Executive Mayor Amos Masondo and members of the mayoral committee discovered during a tour of Region F.

The inner city is of strategic importance in ensuring Joburg is a world-class African City, and boosting economic and social development in its cultural and economic heart is key to cementing Joburg's position in the country and on the continent.

The City, at a summit held in early May 2007 looking at ways to regenerate the inner city, undertook to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the urban management challenges .

In a speech delivered at the summit, Executive Mayor Amos Masondo said: "We cannot under-estimate the strategic importance of the Inner City. The Inner City has not only just been the historical centre of Johannesburg, it has also been its symbolic, economic as well as its cultural centre."

He ended the speech by saying: "Within the next few years … we want the complete transformation of our Inner City. We want this Inner City to be clean and green. We want it to be safe for residents and visitors. We want a proper balance between residential development and business development. We want it to be a desirable location where both the wealthy, and those who are just getting on to the ladder of prosperity, can live, work and enjoy themselves in harmony."

Region F, which ranges from the Johannesburg central business district and the degraded suburbs of Hillbrow, Berea, Yeoville and Bertrams to the affluent middle- and upper-income suburbs of Glenvista, Mulbarton and Bassonia along its southern boundary, is a region of contrasts.

A victim of the urban flight of the 1980s and 1990s, when there was an exodus of business investment to decentralised nodes like Sandton and Rosebank, the central business district fell into disrepair and urban blight spread into surrounding areas. Top attractions like the Carlton Centre and the Johannesburg Sun Hotel closed down, leading to a drastic drop in visitors to and shoppers in the inner city.

The formerly middle-income residential areas of Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville degenerated because of overcrowding and lack of maintenance of infrastructure.

Efforts to turnaround the inner city include the Better Buildings Programme, which is aimed at accelerating renewal and bringing old buildings to market for new residential development. More recently, the Inner City Summit identified opportunities, focus on challenges and find possible solutions to the problems in the inner city.

Presenting a State of the Inner City report at the Metro Centre before the tour on Wednesday, 30 May, Region F's director, Nathi Mthethwa, said the road show was biased towards highlighting the effects of urban decay.

Clean up
Starting off in Joubert Park, Mthethwa took the mayor and his committee through Park Station. A pile of paving stones and uncollected rubbish at the corner of Noord Street and King George Street attracted Masondo's attention.

"What Pikitup needs to do is to develop a simple mechanism to increase the rate of collecting waste. There are too many people living and passing through the inner city and it is proper that rubbish in this area be collected 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he said.

Mthethwa said taxi drivers and shop owners contributed to the waste. "Taxi associations should have a responsibility to regulate cleaning in the inner city as well because they churn out a considerable amount of waste when they clean their taxis on the side of the road."

At the corner of Noord and Wanderers streets, Masondo had a few sharp words to say to a shop owner he spied sweeping rubbish on to the street. "Shop owners found dumping or throwing waste on to the street will be fined heavily in the future," he warned.

There was chaos at the Noord Street Taxi Rank, where heavy early morning pedestrian and motor traffic, exacerbated by taxis parked illegally on pavements, made it impossible to move freely. Masondo said a de-densification strategy and taxi management programme needed to be developed for the area to cater to growing demand.

From Joubert Park, the tour moved to Pretoria Street in Hillbrow, opposite Shoprite Stores; Masondo described the area as "the dirtiest place in the inner city". Asked to comment on the conditions outside his shop, the store manager said he had nothing to say. Masondo warned the manager that if there was no improvement in the next few days, the shop would be closed down – permanently.

Masondo acknowledged that grime was a problem in Hillbrow. "We need to find a solution sooner rather than later. We cannot allow the city to degenerate because of a few irresponsible individuals."

Homeless
At Banket Street rows of homeless people, sleeping on the pavement, greeted the mayor and his entourage. A few were awake and sniffing glue to keep the biting cold away. A man, probably in his early twenties, approached Masondo and began to pour out his life story. Originally from Pimville in Soweto, he had to leave home because of family problems and try to eke out a living on the streets of Johannesburg.

"My name is Sibusiso Nzuza and when I came here I was living in a shelter, but they made me pay R4 a day to live there. I had to leave because I found absolutely nothing that would have made me improve my life," he said.

Masondo assured the group that the City would do everything possible to help them get skills and, possibly, jobs. However, they seemed more interested in asking for food from the officials and Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, the mayoral committee member for community development, promised she would visit again to try to resolve their plight.

Bertrams was "a suburb with a long history as a residential area", according to Lael Bethlehem, the chief executive of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA); the visit to the suburb revealed almost the same problems as Hillbrow – derelict buildings and piles of rubbish in the streets.

"This area is characterised by buildings that have been taken over illegally by some people. Because of the proximity of the suburb to the city centre, sports infrastructure like the Greater Ellis Park sports precinct and good transport links, Bertrams is a good place to invest in. There are a number of projects commissioned by the JDA, like the new housing and retail developments on Gordon Avenue, meant to regenerate the area," Bethlehem said.

Shacklands
At Jeppestown, Masondo met the residents of an informal settlement called Platform 5. Here people live in shacks, some built on pavements and encroaching on the road. A group of men were digging among the labyrinth of shacks, preparing to install a water pipe. On one side of the road a resident had illegally connected electricity from a street pole into his house.

One resident, Alex Simbini from Mozambique, said he paid R60 a month rent to "a man" who owned the place. He had no idea where the man stayed.

At Denver Main Reef Road, the officials stopped off at a warehouse that had been turned into an informal housing complex. There were about eight units made of iron and wood and a web of electricity wires criss-crossed the dark roof. More shacks spilled into the courtyard and some families were living in trailers. Residents said they paid R10 a day for electricity and R100 a month rent.

A few blocks away, under tall electricity pylons, an informal settlement is developing. One resident is breeding more than 20 greyhounds in an enclosed area "for purposes of game hunting back home in KwaZulu-Natal". Masondo advised the residents to vacate the land because their shacks would be demolished in a day or two.

Mthethwa noted that all the people living in the informal settlement were spill-over from the nearby hostels. Because of the escalation in urban decay around hostel boundaries, the management of these areas would form part of the multi-disciplinary investigation on possible interventions by the inner city task team. It was looking at by-law enforcement, regeneration initiatives, educational and empowerment projects and the provision of adequate infrastructure.

City Deep Hostel Complex
The scene brightened considerably as the party moved to City Deep, where a mixed-income housing project is taking off. The City Deep Hostel Complex is off Heidelberg Road; already 123 housing units have been completed and occupied by council staff in phase one of the project.

James Maluleke, from the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco), said phase two, which comprises the renovation of 92 units, was in progress.

"A total of 654 units will be built by the end of the project and the estimated cost, including building of roads and pedestrian walkways, will be R108-million. Council staff will be given first preference and the public will be considered later in the allocation of houses," he said.

The next stop was the Rand Stadium, which is undergoing refurbishments valued at R69-million. Construction started in December 2006 and the 28 000-seater stadium is expected to be complete by October 2008.

Winding up the tour on a positive note in the inner city, Masondo was briefed about the revival of the Johannesburg Sun Hotel at a cost of R20-million. The towering blue building, bounded by Jeppe and Pritchard, Smal and Von Wielligh streets, once open to the public, is expected to act as a showcase for corporate investment and a draw-card for those who want to enjoy the revival of urban life. Already, the hotel garage and garden have been spruced up. – Ndaba Dlamini

Article courtesy of City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za).

For more information contact info@investalist.co.uk. or visit www.investalist.co.uk.

Readers' Comments
Hi, [I've] just read the article on "Jhb: Mayor Wants 'transformation' - 2007/06/07". I am a business owner in Jeppestown and have been trying for the past 15months to have an area which was initially a squatter camp and then was cleared by the "red ants", and has now become a dump site for 15 months. It hugely affects my business as customers continually ask, "how can you work here?"

[I have sent] emails to the role players just last week, including City manager, JMPD, JRA, PIKITUP & Health dept. Nothing gets done as they pass the buck from one person to the other.

I think the Mayor has a MASSIVE task at hand, with the current situation, im not sure he will get it done, as no-one is bold enough to make decisions. - John Christensen>/b>

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