Legging it through Hillbrow, the chaotic heart of Joburg on a journey of renewal

This is Hillbrow is a walking tour into one of Jozi’s toughest neighbourhoods and includes a visit to the top of Ponte, the infamous 54-storey tower with a hollow centre and a dark past. It’s a chance to explore the city’s most misunderstood neighbourhood, according to Dlala Nje, the tour company, and we were advised to arrive with walking shoes, hats and curious minds.

We drove into the innocent-sounding Number 1 Lily Avenue, Berea, Ponte’s address, and passed through security to be met by our guides, Cynthia Sabela and Delight Sithole, as well as photographer Mbongiseni Ngwenya. These are young people who grew up in the area and live in Ponte, a new generation who call Hillbrow home – that low-income neighbourhood where 100,000 people live within a square kilometre.

Grey areas

We started out at the Dlala Nje (“just play” in isiZulu) community centre at the base of Ponte, a warm, lively space where kids from Ponte and surrounds can come do their homework, get a reliable internet connection or play soccer or music. Tours like this help fund the centre.

We headed out and straight up to the top of Lily Avenue, which overlooks two abject buildings. “No photographs, please,” said Delight. “This is a dangerous block.” One building is hijacked – an old Victorian house with no roof, and the lounge and fireplace exposed, forming the shoulder of a squatter camp. Delight explained that about 200 people live here, each paying about R600 a month. There is no electricity and they are charged extra for water from the one tap on the street. The other building is completely stripped of everything: windows, balconies, doors, lifts, stairwells. It’s a filthy burnt-out shell inhabited by nyaope users.

Cynthia told us that the owners of both buildings fled in the 1980s when Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville began to show signs of neglect. The apartheid government considered them “grey areas” since they were already mixed despite segregation laws. The banks redlined the grey areas, meaning residents were denied access to finance for home loans or property maintenance.

As South Africa’s states of emergency kicked in, municipal services were cut off in grey areas and buildings began to decay dramatically. By the time democracy dawned, these neighbourhoods were utterly broken.

Then the interest rate rocketed, property prices plunged, white capital fled and there was a massive influx of poor people. It was the perfect poverty storm.

Good blocks

We continued our walk and entered Alexander Street, a wide, clean, tree-lined street with enormous high-rises all around. Here, there were street cameras, visible security, and Cynthia explained that there are small shops and ATMs inside the buildings and pointed out the superette on the corner.

It felt like a decent neighbourhood, and that’s the thing about Hillbrow: it changes from block to block, from bad buildings, as locals call them, to good ones. This was a good block with good buildings, largely because of the efforts of property owners, in partnership with civil society and the private sector.

Our tour took us past the house of mining magnate Barney Barnato and through the scruffy Alec Gorshel Park. We saw cleanliness next to filth, brothels alongside churches. We walked under the now defunct Hillbrow Tower, a strange beast, and to the Gumtree of Hillbrow, as it’s called, a wall where people literally use gum to stick up their notices, mainly ads for accommodation and work seekers. A balcony was going for R1,000, a stairwell for less. There was even a call for a shared bed (not for nefarious purposes), often the only way people can cover their rent. Gumtree is poignant.

We walked under high-rises that are called building schools, unregistered and mainly for foreign national kids who have no hope of cracking a model C school. As we walked, Delight pointed out some of the rooftop houses on the high-rises that were built as “servant’s quarters”, now occupied by entire families.

Then we headed up Claim Street and into the heart of Hillbrow, featuring everything from butcheries, hair salons and mahala shops, to a clinic, bars and electronic outlets. It was noisy, vibrant, chaotic. Nostalgia kicked in among my fellow walkers. Wasn’t that where the old Hillbrow Records was? Isn’t that the old Chelsea? Wasn’t that where so-and-so lived?

But today, Hillbrow is a rough pan-African neighbourhood. People are polite, curious. Everyone is just trying to survive. The Summit Club is still there, Hillbrow’s premier nightclub, as it advertises itself, but Delight tells us it’s pretty much a fancy brothel. Hillbrow Radio continues to broadcast from Claim Street. The diversity of architecture continues to crumble – Victorian, Art Deco, brutalist, Sixties, overlaid now with spaza shops, beauty parlours and nursery schools.

We didn’t visit the skankiest parts, such as the infamous syndicate-run Vannin Court with its sewage, slimy ground-floor water and rubbish piled high, women and children peeking out of cracked windows. We felt quite safe, however, as we wandered the pavements of Pretoria Street. The Saturday morning market offered cabbage and plump tomatoes for half the price of the suburbs, as well as okra, bananas, dried fish and spices.

An iconic address

We walked back to Ponte via Fife Street where several buildings have been revamped – a love bomb instead of a hijack. Successes like these come about through property owners keeping their buildings well maintained with lighting and private security, enabling residents to build communities inside buildings and feel agency.

Companies such as the Johannesburg Housing Company, Trafalgar, Ithemba and eKhaya Neighbourhood are doing good work, block by block. eKhaya, for example, started in 2004 with two previously hijacked buildings and now manages more than 80. Organisations such as Jozi My Jozi and the Joburg Inner City Partnership are helping with clean-ups, lighting, cameras and repairs. But it’s tough, and water and electricity services are sketchy.

We were all still processing it all by the time we returned to Ponte, a place that is in the psyche of every Jozi city person, as a fellow walker observed. It was one of the most desired addresses in the cosmopolitan suburb of Berea in the Seventies, but by the mid-1990s, writes the Joburg In Your Pocket guide, “Ponte was in such a bad state, overrun by gangs and piled high with trash, that there were even proposals to take the building over and turn it into a high-rise prison”.

Ponte’s turnaround from a panopticon to a well-run and occupied building is remarkable. And the views from the Dlala Nje shebeen on the 51st floor are the best in the city. We had cold beers and a warm lunch as Cynthia and Delight told us how Ponte was cleaned up and restored in 2009, with more than 10 floors of rubbish removed from the legendary pit, the heart of darkness, the hollow centre of the building built on bedrock.

Rubbish included old fridges, beds, appliances and skeletons. (Ponte was once a preferred suicide spot. Apparently the men jumped outwards, the women into the pit.)

What a fascinating walking tour. It gave Hillbrow a human face, and perhaps that is the best starting point for any discussion about what to do with the area. People are living there.

Going up to the top and right to the bottom of Ponte had a wow factor. In fact, it was all so interesting, I went back and spent a night at the top of Ponte. And, boy, was the view beautiful. 

Sleep on the 52nd floor

For the quintessential Jozi experience, head 52 floors up and spend a night at the top of Ponte in an Airbnb. It’s definitely not for those who are afraid of heights. But if your curiosity can override your fear, you will be rewarded with the best nighttime city views you’ll probably ever see in Jozi, plus a crazy sunrise.

The self-catering apartment sleeps four people in two en-suite rooms, and has an open-plan kitchen lounge and dining room area. If you’re not in the mood to cook, order a pizza from the joint on the ground floor.

Amazingly, you can open the windows (they’re at chest height) and look down at the view below – miniature buildings, ant-sized people, tiny highways. It’s so high up you can barely hear a sound, not even gunshots. Do I get a refund for that? I asked the manager the next morning.

The Airbnb gets mainly international visitors, he told me, from Japan, Russia, the UK and neighbouring countries.

Apart from a strange feeling in my solar plexus and somewhat wobbly legs, I felt totally safe. There is secure parking for visitors and a friendly check-in. I was so startled by the views I barely slept. Would I do it again? Absolutely. DM

To book the tour, visit Dlala Nje.

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