Fordsburg Night Market

One of the things which makes Johannesburg a really exciting city to relocate to is its genuinely rainbow-like abundance of different cultural groups. Much like London or New York, this city has attracted immigrants from across the globe and they've all developed their own little corners, incorporating their indigenous styles and cultural identities into the fabric of the city.

The ethnic group most identifiable in the area where I live (Melrose/Illovo) is the Jewish community. On the floor of my apartment block, ten out of the 15 flats are Jewish. Some of the apartment blocks here even have their own temples! The Chinese community has their own Chinatown in Cyrildene, the Congolese are well set up in Yeoville's Rocky Road and Joburg's vibrant Indian/Pakistani/Bengali community is largely based in colourful Fordsburg, just west of the CBD.

During apartheid the government forced the "coloured" community to move out of Fordsburg, where they had established their own community, and made them relocate to the far off township of Lenasia (past Soweto). They did however let Asian business owners keep their shops - on the condition that they remain within the specially designated Asia Mall. Despite being forced to live several miles from their stores, the community's businesses continued to thrive through the difficulties of apartheid. Now that apartheid has long since passed the Asian community has reclaimed the streets of Fordsburg and the area is now bursting with a new generation of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent, further adding to the vibrant street life. 21^st Century Fordsburg is a fantastic place to shop, eat, get a haircut, visit a tailor…you name it, you can find it here.

The most fun time to come to Fordsburg is Saturday evening when the night market is in full swing. During the night market the area around the main thoroughfare Mint Street fills with stalls selling clothes, jewellery, DVDs, Bollywood films, spices, sparkly shoes and lots and lots of street food. The predominantly Muslim community turn out in their finest clothes to wander the streets, shop, eat, get beauty treatments, gossip and meet with friends.

We parked up a few blocks from Mint Street with empty stomachs and went in search of some top quality Indian food. Following our noses we quickly found ourselves drawn to the smoking street-side grill of the Tikka House where at least 20 tandoori chickens were being grilled over an open fire. With our stomachs happily filled we then went looking for stuff to buy. Like all good Asian markets you arrive in search of food and then decide you want to buy 10 of the latest blockbusters on pirate DVD, a handful of jewellery, a bucket-load of spices and maybe some incense to top it off. Incidentally if you are looking for variations on the traditional long black Muslim abaya…there are at least 50 shops to choose from.

Our next task was to find the Juice Den which Heather Mason of 2summers.net had highly recommended to me. Here they grind up fresh sugar cane and mix it up with freshly squeezed juices and ice into a very satisfying drink. I had orange and cane juice, although there were more exciting options like guava, carrot and avocado to choose from too.

My husband wasn't going to leave Fordsburg without getting a 30 Rand haircut at the Asian barbers and I certainly wasn't going to walk past the Sweetmeats bakery without getting some sticky treats to take home. I have no idea exactly what it was I bought - but what the hey, it was nyom!

How we got there: Fordsburg is located to the west of Newtown which is easily accessed on the Rea Vaya. It is not at all recommended to walk here from Newtown after dark though - the industrial wasteland in between is dark, creepy and super sketchy. Essentially the night market is best reached by car. Park where you can and you will find there's no shortage of car guards around to watch your wheels.

07.08.2013 Vilakazi Street, Soweto

For the last weekend of my in-laws visit to South Africa I was quite insistent that it would be a good idea to take a drive down to Vilakazi Street in Orlando West, Soweto and have some lunch. I'm pretty sure everyone had this terrible image of us getting lost in the wrong part of town (like when I was directing us through Alexandra instead of around it the previous week). But, this time I really did some thorough research, had very reliable directions - and hey, guess what? - Vilakazi Street actually has brown tourist signs pointing it out from the road so it is very easy to find.

Orlando's famous cooling towers

Soweto is by far the biggest township in South Africa and has always been the most politically active too. Vilakazi Street and the nearby Hector Pietersen Memorial Museum are probably Soweto's most popular tourist sights and give a very easy introduction to the area if you want to come under your own steam and just hangout. As a white tourist it's easy to feel uncomfortable here with events of recent history pounding in your ears - but, please don't let your self-consciousness bring you down. Soweto is a large, lively city in its own right, with very rich and very poor areas as well as a sizeable middle-class and as friendly people as you will meet anywhere. And if you start feeling all weird about standing out as the only white dudes in sight...remember this is Africa and statistically speaking that's actually how it should normally be all the time - embrace it!

The Kaiser Chiefs are one of Soweto's two major football teams (their rivals being the Orlando Pirates)

Vilakazi Street's claim to fame is that it has produced two Nobel prize winners - Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Although Rev. Tutu lives in Cape Town, he still has his second home here for when he visits Johannesburg. Mandela's house just up the road was made into a museum a few years ago by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who lived here for many years. It was also from Vilakazi Street that the school children of Soweto marched in 1976 in protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of education. Hector Pietersen (aged 13), who was one of the first of hundreds to be killed as police violently attacked the protest, was shot just a few blocks up the street from Mandela's house.

There are various heritage trails which you can follow from Vilakazi Street with helpful info signs explaining the events which took place here under apartheid and why. The trails are well sign-posted so it is very difficult to get lost (despite the fact that most streets in Soweto confusingly look almost exactly the same) making this an easy self-guided history stroll before you head to one of the popular restaurants that also line Vilakazi.

A memorial showing the kids of the 1976 Soweto uprising facing off against police with viscous dogs 

This poster outside the Mandela House Museum had messages for Mandela on his 95 birthday. This one was one of my favourites: "I drove freely across town, I live where I want and not where I have to. All because of you and other heroes!"

Seeing as we were here it seemed only right that we should pay our 60 Rand to visit Mandela's home. The Mandela house is a classic 'matchbox' township house with three rooms, an outside toilet and surrounded by a small plot of land. I have to admit I was a little disappointed not to find a complete replica as to how the house would have been before Mandela was sent to Robben Island - I visited so many 'museum homes' of famous people in Russia and they were always like that, quite atmospheric. However, the minuscule size of the house makes it impossible to set the place up exactly as it was when the Mandela family lived here, especially with at least 15 people wandering around it at any given time.

Instead the house is filled with various items given to the Mandelas by well-wishers from around the world. There is a whole cabinet of honorary degrees, loads of pretty things donated by world leaders, photographs and some great posters. There are a few items of original furniture remaining and a cabinet containing some of Nelson Mandela's writings from prison (he has lovely handwriting, but I guess to save paper he wrote very small). 

Mandela stoep

We didn't make it all the way over to the Hector Pietersen Museum (I think by this point in their holiday the in-laws had already overdosed on apartheid history) but we did pass the memorial marking the place where he was shot (not to be confused with the other main memorial near the museum). It was covered in graffiti which made me feel very sad.

The monument reads: "Hector Pietersen, a 13 year old school boy, was shot and died at this corner during a clash between the police and students in the uprisings against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction."

Finally we got down to the sitting and chilling on a nice terrace business (which was my whole objective of coming down here on a weekend in the first place). We settled outside under the trees at Sakhumzi (watch out for the pigeons pooing!) with some beers and watched the world go by. If you are hungry, they have a massive all-you-can-eat buffet thing for 90 Rand. All's said and done this is a tourist restaurant and is relatively quite pricey, but it's got atmosphere, great local food and one of the most prestigious locations in town - right next to Desmond Tutu's backyard. 

Getting There:

By Car: We went by car and it was surprisingly straightforward. You need to get on the Soweto Highway in the south of the city. After some kilometres and after passing the motorways and old mining slag heaps you will eventually come to a big roundabout. You need to take a left here heading down Klipspruit Valley Road. The Hector Pietersen memorial will be signposted second on the right (Pela Street) and Vilakazi Street third road also on the right. Go up a short distance on this third road (Kumalo road) and you will see Vilakazi as the third street on your left. You can park at the bottom of the street or drive up to find another small car park. Some young 'car guards' will watch your car for you and you can give them 5 Rand or so for the service when you leave.

By public transport: The Rea Vaya bus route F4 passes straight through Vilakazi Street. You can pick up the bus from the Main Street stop in Johannesburg CBD. The Rea Vaya website has a helpful route map which points out all the relevant sights along the way.

09.06.2013 Market on Main and Maboneng property

This Sunday we headed down to Maboneng's Sunday market, Market on Main to shop, eat, drink and look into the properties on offer in this growing inner-city gentrification project.

Somewhat similar to the Sunday pop-up markets in London's Brick Lane, Market on Main is largely focused on selling fresh food made from local products cooked right in front of you. Stalls sell all kinds of tasty things such as Thai noodles, dim sum, Ethiopian platters, gourmet burgers, sizzling paella, Durban style curries and barbequed pork ribs. On the drinks side there's homemade lemonade, mojitos, craft beers (that's South African for real ale/microbrewery), good strong Ethiopian coffee and, as we are now in South African winter, hot toddys and mulled wine. The food hall is constantly jam packed with fashionable foodies grabbing lunch at the communal tables and is hectic, but in a festive way.

On the upper floor of the former warehouse is a smaller market selling vintage clothes, funky furniture, handmade jewellery, artworks and some beautiful African fabric inspired shoes and handbags. The selection is small, but enticing. Back down in the warehouse's courtyard entrance you can also find little studios with art exhibition spaces and galleries, which form both the creative and commercial spaces of the artists who live here.

During our exploration of these little studios surrounding the market we came across the Smack! Republic Brewery (do they know that 'smack' is slang for heroin in the UK...?!). Smack! is two months old and run by two young craft beer lovers who had the dream of creating Joburg's first inner-city microbrewery. Their brewing space was most definitely micro - I think even my local pub in England has a bigger production - but we could not fault the beer. This was absolutely delicious, seriously some of the best I have drank in a long time. I can't wait to find it in some bars around town. And check out the bottles, very cool.

At Smack!'s terrace, fancy loft conversion in the background

Bargain Maboneng property

As we sat up on Smack!'s balcony with our pints of Bree Street Belle, we spotted a house viewing across the courtyard. We had landed in Maboneng on open day and the local sales team were there in force to tell us about the area's excellent investment gains. Apparently properties here see about a 12-14% yearly value increase, easily beating inflation. Furthermore, by 2015 the Maboneng precinct plan to develop an incredible 25 more buildings which they now own in the area (I didn't quite catch what that means in unit numbers, but I would say they are looking at adding thousands more flats). More and varied retail space is their next big focus (an area can't survive on a Sunday market alone) and they also plan to build student housing to bring some economic variation to the area, and of course to make it really, really cool.

The first property we saw was a converted factory loft. The ceilings were sky high leaving potential to add space with a mezzanine, although noticeably there were not many windows in the main living space. The showers (two, one for each bedroom), with old industrial windows used as doors, were about the size of your average bathroom and from the balcony you could easily zip-line your way over the courtyard and straight into the brewery bar. It was a large (125sqm) and unique space, which would suite young creatives with imagination and I can only imagine the kind of parties they could have there. Price? 1.5million Rand, which is around  £100,000.

Designer bathroom

Next we moved over to Main Street Life, a seven storey building with a boutique hotel on the top floor and an independent cinema and theatre on street level. The cheapest properties here are the studio flats (around 33sqm), which with their current furnishings unfortunately resembled hotel rooms. These units are on sale for 360K (about  £23K) and apparently rent for around 2,000Rand per month. For something slightly bigger they also still had a corner studio left, which came in at a considerably larger 55 square metres and was surrounded on two sides by full length windows (with views). Price? 550K (about  £35K).

Every floor of the building has its own artworks

The view from the top of Main Street Life

Maboneng are also selling properties 'off-plan' in two other nearby building starting at 580,000Rand for 50sqm in 'Revolution House' and 650,000Rand for a 65sqm loft style space in a building which, when construction finishes, will offer balconies and a communal swimming pool.

The redevelopment of this part of the city is certainly ambitious, poses many questions and has raised its fair share of controversy. The property mogul behind it all, Jonathan Lieberman, believes that in order to really redevelop and lift this tough inner-city area out of poverty and neglect, middle income and rich residents need to be looked after, as well as the existent poor population. Hence high-end properties, bijou dining spots and artisan shops have taken centre stage in the first part of the development. However, many people also argue that Maboneng currently only caters for those with money to the detriment of the local population, and certainly judging by the prices in the local bar I'd have to agree, life is pricey.

More local buildings slated for redevelopment

However, when all is said and done, as the endless spread of Joburg's northern residential sprawl is unsustainable, the regeneration and re-branding of these downtown areas is essential. Getting well-off South Africans to change their perceptions of inner-city living is a highly commendable thing. What these new urbanites do when they get there is another story.

24.05.2013 In Linden

Due to various set-backs in our flat-hunting mission, we have been forced to rent a temporary place for another 2 weeks before we can finally move into our proper home. The upside to this has been the chance to explore a new 'hood, which we wouldn't otherwise have spent much time in - Linden.

It may be a bit out of the way, but Linden is a special little place. It's got that friendly small town feel to it, with a healthy smattering of local shops and cafes, just one supermarket and not a mall in sight. There's a real sense of community here which many areas of modern Johannesburg seem to lack.

Here are some of my favourite places in Linden:

The Argentinian

Corner 7th Street and 4th Avenue, Linden

An Argentinian bakery specialising in croissants. You can get a really good fresh breakfast roll (or croissant) with eggs, mushrooms and more here, plus a juice and a coffee for about 50Rand - excellent value. The music is good old-fashioned 1960s folk from Bob, Janis and the gang, staff are absolutely lovely, there's free wifi and not a whiff of pretension. I'd breakfast here everyday if I didn't think such behaviour was absurdly extravagant.

I haven't eaten many croissants in Africa,  but these are definitely very good

The Whippet

Corner 7th Street and 4th Avenue, Linden

This is Linden's trendy cafe and it's always packed at lunchtimes. They have all kinds of smart, well-appointed design details like light bulbs in jam jars and Phillipe Starck inspired tea pots. The Whippet has an impressive selection of exotic tea blends from across the continent and great coffee too. The wifi is not wholly efficient (just 25mb at a time), but the food is gorgeous, they open late on Fridays for after work drinks and they are very dedicated to the local community - as they say themselves it's all about 'South Africans rediscovering their neighborhoods and their own history'.

The Whippet in Linden

Yugo Store

56 4th Avenue, Linden

Yugo store is an historic relic that looks like it just fell out of 1980s Bradford, although apparently according to some web reports Yugo dates back as far as 1946. Impressive. It says it's a supermarket, but actually it's more a warren of all kinds of random odds and ends, some of which have real obvious use, such as the African brand pots and pans, and others which have evidently been here for the past three decades waiting patiently for someone to come in and say 'yes, that's it! The pineapple shaped ashtray I was looking for!' It's like Poundsaver only most things cost around three pounds and some of the stuff is really old.

In fact I might go so far as to say that Yugo Store needs a blog post all of its own - it is just such a unique place in this land of countless anonymous shopping malls. It's an absolute Aladdin's cave of random stuff; bucket and spade, bicycle wheel, photo frames, nails, strange local soap brands, toy soldiers, loose cigarettes (sold individually - many people queuing up for these), sweets (so many sweets), seeds, towels, coca-cola. You can buy it all in this one shop.

There's an old fella (Mr Yugo I presume) who mans the till all hours, greets everyone by their first name and knows where literally every item in his store is. I've come here on numerous occasions in the last week looking for tin openers, irons, saucepans etc and he always reels off the exact directions 'left side of the store, 3^rd shelf, bottom' in a heartbeat. He seems to know everyone and always has time to chat. He is the reason that local stores are so important in the 21st Century - they keep communities together and remind us to be friendly to each other. Love Yugo Stores.

The Cheese Shop and Cheese Cafe

71 7th Street, corner 3rd Avenue, Linden

I love cheese. Me and my husband even had a cake made entirely of cheese at our wedding, because that was my cheese dream. For me cheese is basically an improvement to pretty much any meal. At the Cheese Shop you can not only buy fancy small-farm South African cheeses such as extra strong Karoo cheddar, you can also have a cheese meal in the cheese restaurant next door – class.

Rembrandt Slaghuis

57 4th Avenue, Linden

Slaghuis means slaughterhouse in Afrikaans (one of many amusing Afrikaans words) and Rembrandt is the real deal. This meat is really outstanding stuff, some of it is so succulent and fresh you could eat it cooked up just with salt and pepper. Damn, it just has so much flavour, it's pure meat feast luxury. Mr Rembrandt likes to give me a gentle ribbing over my terrible Afrikaans, which I actually find quite charming and not annoying as I have been wont to feel in other places. In fact he's actually trying to help me learn. Sweet.

Rembrandt Slaghuis

Oh and on Saturday mornings they set up a braai outside the shop – nyom!

Linden Cycle

63 3rd Avenue

At some point I think I am going to quit walking everywhere and splash out on a bike. When I do, I am definitely getting it from here. They have decent looking second-hand bikes from as little as 500Rand (about 35quid).

Herby's

Need a Swiss or Bavarian hairstylist? Call this guy.

The Blue Room

57 3rd Avenue, Linden

This is a cute little store specialising in 1950s era furniture and other sweet design pieces. They have a set of sparkly early 1960s kitchen chairs in there which I am in love with, but alas I think sensibility will win out. They also sell Lenin bust candles (randomly) and have a good value clothes store next door.

Amuse Cafe

34 5th Street, corner of 4th Avenue, Linden

Unfortunately there are not many bars in Linden. In fact I could rephrase that and say there are next to no bars in Linden. Thank heavens the football season's over.

Linden's one contribution to nightlife is the inviting, vaguely bohemian and gay friendly Amuse Cafe. They have live music from local bands Thursday through Saturday (acoustic night on Thursdays) and the friendly owner Dirk is so laidback he doesn't mind punters just hanging out drinking after-hours and getting on stage to mime the West End Girls video while listening to the full whack of Pet Shop Boys Greatest Hits, as we did last weekend. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Local folk singer Lucy Kruger

05.2013 Because this is Sandton

We've been living in Sandton Central, Johannesburg for almost two months now. Despite housing the headquarters of numerous major corporations, there is little going on here and I'm going to go out there and say it loud and proud - this is probably the most soulless place I've ever lived in. This week we are finally breaking free, so as a farewell to this strange era I've listed up the most notable features of our 'life' in Sandton CBD.

1.    Hydropark

This is the 'luxury apartment complex' where we have been living in a seemingly endless flat-waiting purgatory. I wouldn't complain about this at all if it weren't for the fact that we have also spent at least four months living out of our suitcases in other temporary accommodation during the visa-waiting purgatory.

Notable features of Hydropark:

- They clean the place all the time - hotel style - and they also do our laundry constantly, even if it's only a few pairs of pants and socks in the basket.

- There's an immaculate swimming pool with three barbecues (braai). Nobody ever uses either of these things, ever.

- The capped internet. Don't get me started on this crappy internet...

2.    Nelson Mandela Mall

Outside of Hydropark I spend an uncomfortably large amount of time at this massive shopping centre (where the husband's office is). Being probably one of the biggest malls in the country you would think you could buy pretty much anything here. The only thing I have not been able to find here is a computer shop. But clothes, food, books, dry-cleaning, hair-dressers, shoe-repair, dentist, banks, rifles, fridges, coins with Nelson Mandela's head on...they have all of that.

Notable features:

- Giant statue of Nelson Mandela

- Joyful, joyful - the Sandton library! It's actually rather good. Just bring a proof of address and passport to join.

- Restaurants, loads of them. Stand outs are the Wangthai and the Butchery. For snacks it has to be Bread Basket. Duds include the hugely greasy Trumps Grill.

3. The Bar

There are loads of restaurants in the aforementioned mall, but strangely only one bar. This bar due to its proximity to the office is our de-facto after-work bar. The other things it has going for it are the sports on TV, indoor smoking and...ah I pretty much ran out of things.

On the shady side the supervisors seem to be complete bastards and are often seen publicly shouting down the wait staff in a pretty humiliating manner and there are always hookers hanging around. Oh and the house music gets really loud.  Caffe della Salute is certainly no Silvers, but it will have to do.

4. Delhi Dhabar

Tucked in next to the Benmore Gardens Mall (where the supermarket is) is a small strip of restaurants, ranging from super luxe to Fish and Chips. In between it all you have Delhi Dhabar which is a great Indian restaurant. There's also a strange little Lebanese shop and cafe which does a fine business in nargile smoking pipes.

5. The bus stop

I walk past this bus stop on the corner of West Street and Grayston Drive every day and I still don't really get what this is about. I mean, surely love is the bottom line, no? Conundrum.

Between 15:30 and 17:30 there are hoards of people waiting here for the buses which head directly all the way over to Soweto in the south-west.

Love sits way above the bottom line

6. The robots

South Africans call traffic lights 'robots' here. I like that. As for the robots themselves...bloody hate 'em. With not much 'street life' going on in Sandton people just tend to hurtle through the main streets of this area. Watching the robots changing colours and then preparing to dash across the cross-sections here is an uncomfortable game of chicken.

Just another Sandton street

7. The hotels

Hidden behind the big walls here are some very fancy hotels. So far I have only infiltrated a few, of which these are probably my favourites:

The Balalaika – for the name obviously. Also nice restaurant.

The Maslow – I went here for the Internations event and was very impressed by what lies out the back. A beautifully lit pool, surrounded by palm trees, looked over by some minimalist glass fronted cocktail bars and lounges. Glam.

The Radisson Gautrain – you wouldn’t know from the front but it has a roof terrace with a pool. The view is much of a muchness, but the general atmosphere is unexpectedly fancy.

8. The tuk tuks

In the back of a tuk tuk

Outside the Citibank building on West Street is the rank for Sandton's tuk tuks – Shesha tuks. They only travel a maximum of 10kms from Sandton (for 55Rand) so are perfect for short trips which would actually wind up costing you more if went the Gautrain plus bus route. For example you can get to Illovo Junction (home of Wolves Cafe and the Griffin Pub) for just 30Rand.

If you do go the tuk tuk route (and I would recommend you do) you need a map, as they never know where they are going. Also time your trip. Tuk tuks have a maximum speed of 40km p.h so it is pretty easy to figure out if they are trying to rip you off, which they will be.

Tuk tuks stop working at around 20:00.

9. Gautrain

Of course the best thing about Sandton is the Gautrain. It takes you straight into Braamfontein and the CBD in just 10minutes. I would seriously be lost without my trusty escape Sandton lifeline. Thank you Gautrain!