HISTORY AND HERITAGE: Joburg: a city that leapt to life and still clings on

Johannesburg was never a city that grew up quietly – and not much has changed. It sprang to life in a rush of prospectors, diggers, traders and fortune hunters after the discovery of the main gold reef at Langlaagte, west of what is now the Joburg CBD, in 1886.

Gold-bearing reefs stretched east and west across the Witwatersrand and open workings were spreading along them within months. Tents and corrugated-iron structures covered what had been open veld. Soon there were hotels, theatres, churches, schools, newspapers, a stock exchange and shops selling luxuries that would have seemed extraordinary in the rough settlement from which the city emerged.

There were problems too: inadequate water, terrible roads, dust, mud, overcrowding and a local administration battling to keep up. For Joburg residents in 2026, some of that has a distinctly familiar ring.

On 4 October 1886, Randjeslaagte, the site of present-day central Johannesburg, was opened as a public digging. The date has come to be recognised as Johannesburg’s birthday. Today, on 4 October 2026, the city turns 140.

Forty years ago, its centenary was commemorated in a spiral-bound book, The City That Leapt to Life: A 1986 Diary Celebrating Johannesburg’s Flamboyant Origins 100 Years Ago, by Wilna Botha and Libby Husemeyer. Its photographs and stories show just how quickly Joburg was created.

The Witwatersrand discovery followed the gold rushes in California and Australia and the diamond rush in Kimberley. Then came the Rand. Stagecoaches bumped across the veld carrying passengers, luggage and mail. Joburg’s roads became clouds of dust in the dry months and quagmires after summer rain.

Water was a constant problem – an irony unlikely to be lost on residents who, 140 years later, still experience water outages. Nor were the roads much better – another irony for current Joburg residents.

Bree Street, one of the early town’s main routes, acquired its distinctive bend as the settlement was laid out around the existing mining claims. Today it is Lilian Ngoyi Street. In July 2023, an underground explosion ripped through the road, killing one person, injuring dozens and closing one of the CBD’s major routes.

The history tells two very different stories of the same city: first, the difficulties of building Joburg almost overnight, and now the huge task of maintaining the ageing infrastructure underneath it.

Canteens, theatres and caviar

Early Joburg was rough. Botha and Husemeyer record that by 1889, when the white population numbered barely 20,000, the town had 127 saloons, 17 hotels, several beer halls and nine firms of spirit merchants.

But Joburgers also wanted to be entertained. There were theatres, circuses, concerts, boxing, cycling and horse racing. Balloon ascents drew crowds. The shops became increasingly sophisticated too. One of the book’s chapter headings sums up the transformation: “Sultana figs and Russian caviar.”

Money poured through the town. Before the first stock exchange opened in 1887, mining shares were traded in bars, restaurants, hotel rooms and on the streets.

Fortunes were made and lost. Deep-level mining allowed gold to be extracted far below the surface and helped to create the great mining houses and fabulously wealthy Randlords whose mansions spread across Joburg’s northern ridges.

But the wealth had another side. The mines depended heavily on African migrant labour, and racial segregation and inequality became embedded in the developing city and were later entrenched under apartheid.

Joburg’s isolation disappeared quickly. Telegraph and postal services arrived. Railways connected the Rand with the coast. Newspapers, schools and places of worship followed.

There were disasters too. The Braamfontein dynamite explosion in February 1896 devastated a part of the young town. Three years later, the South African War emptied Joburg as thousands fled. Botha and Husemeyer describe an eerie silence descending on a place normally filled with noise and activity.

But Joburg recovered, as it has a habit of doing, largely because of the resilience of the people who live here. It survived war, the 1918 influenza epidemic, the 1922 Rand Revolt, the Great Depression, another world war and decades of apartheid.

By 1986, when The City That Leapt to Life appeared, Johannesburg was celebrating its first century. Another dramatic change was coming.

Joburg after 1986

The Joburg of the centenary year was still physically divided by apartheid.

The political changes of the 1990s eventually brought previously separate local authorities into new metropolitan structures and, in 2000, Johannesburg was restructured as a single metropolitan municipality.

But the economic centre had already begun shifting north. Corporates moved to Sandton and other northern nodes. Buildings in the CBD emptied. Some deteriorated and others were hijacked. The inner city changed too as people from elsewhere in South Africa and across the continent moved in.

Successive city administrations tried to regenerate it, with mixed results. Newtown and Braamfontein were redeveloped. The Nelson Mandela Bridge opened in 2003. Constitution Hill transformed the notorious Old Fort prison complex into the home of the Constitutional Court.

Rea Vaya arrived in 2009 and Gautrain services in 2010. Then, on 11 July 2010, Joburg hosted the football World Cup final at Soccer City, putting the city and South Africa on the global stage. The mining camp had become a world city.

But Joburg has never escaped its mining past. Gold created the city and deep-level mining made it rich. When mines closed, pillars of gold-bearing rock were deliberately left underground to support the workings – and the roads, buildings and other infrastructure above them.

Now illegal miners are going back for that gold. They are stripping out some of those support pillars and mining beneath roads and other infrastructure.

University of Johannesburg mining engineering expert Professor Hennie Grobler says the pillars were not left because the mining companies did not want the gold. They were left to support what was above. He estimates there could still be enough gold beneath the old mining belt to keep illegal miners busy for another 100 years.

And the problem is not confined to old shafts deep underground. Gold-bearing material was used in some road construction, making the roads themselves a target.

The effects are already visible: sinkholes, collapsed roads, damaged infrastructure and businesses cut off by road closures. Repair bills can run into billions of rand.

There is a cruel irony in it. Gold built Joburg. The hunt for what was left behind is now threatening parts of the city above it.

Reclaiming the city

But Joburg at 140 is not simply a story of decay. Walk or drive through the CBD and there are pockets that show what the inner city can still be.

Gandhi Square was one of the early successes. The former Van der Bijl Square and surrounding buildings were regenerated through private investment and cooperation with the City of Joburg.

Main Street followed. A deteriorating stretch through Joburg’s historic mining district was transformed into a landscaped pedestrian route with restaurants, trees and mining artefacts recalling the industry that created the city.

FNB’s BankCity remains a major corporate anchor. Standard Bank maintains its large Marshalltown campus, and Absa’s precinct anchors another part of the CBD. Jewel City brought housing, shops, restaurants and a school into six inner-city blocks alongside Maboneng.

In the western CBD, the Maharishi Invincibility Institute is developing what has become known as Education Town from commercial buildings it has acquired or received through donations from companies and philanthropists, including Anglo American.

Thousands of young people now move through classrooms, computer laboratories, restored buildings and sporting facilities in an area once dominated by Joburg’s mining houses. Buildings associated with the companies that grew out of the gold economy are now being used to educate young people for an economy increasingly driven by technology and digital skills.

It is also bringing something the inner city badly needs: people back onto its streets.

What is worrying, though, is how much of the maintenance of these successful pockets depends on the private sector and precinct organisations. Businesses pay for additional cleaning, security, maintenance and management to keep the streets around their properties functioning, supplementing services, including bylaw enforcement, that remain the responsibility of the City.

The contrast can be stark: cross from a managed precinct into an unmanaged street and the difference can sometimes be seen within a block.

A newer private sector and civic initiative, Jozi My Jozi, is trying to push renewal beyond individual corporate precincts. Its work ranges from street and gateway clean-ups to solar lighting, traffic-light adoption, safer public spaces and revitalisation projects. Its Main Street Sundays have also brought walkers, cyclists, families, food and music back to streets normally dominated by vehicles.

Other civic and business organisations also work to improve the inner city. Among them is the Johannesburg Inner City Partnership, whose Walkable Network is aimed at making key routes and public spaces safer, cleaner and easier to navigate on foot. These projects cannot repair an entire CBD, but they show what happens when somebody takes responsibility for a piece of it.

A R220-billion problem

None of this disguises the scale of Joburg’s problems. The City put its combined infrastructure backlog at more than R220-billion in its 2026 budget speech, including huge backlogs in roads, electricity and water infrastructure.

Then there are the hijacked and illegally occupied buildings. The City says it has reclaimed 59 buildings since 2016, but it still faces the mammoth task of dealing with nearly 500 more. A badly deteriorating building does not affect only those living inside it. It can drag down neighbouring properties and eventually an entire block.

The successful precincts demonstrate the reverse: investment, maintenance and activity in one area can encourage life back into the streets around it.

The prospectors who arrived on the Witwatersrand in 1886 could never have imagined the metropolis their search for gold would create. But they might recognise one thing. Joburg has never been very good at standing still. People continue to arrive looking for opportunity. Buildings fall into disrepair while others are brought back to life. Roads collapse while new precincts emerge around them.

At 100, Botha and Husemeyer called Johannesburg “the city that leapt to life”. At 140, the challenge is how to keep it alive. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click on the cover of the newspaper below to access the e-edition.