Maboneng, the Harlem of Johannesburg

Maboneng, is a Sesotho word meaning “place of light” and a Johannesburg's district next door to the Central Business District. In 2009, Propertuity founder Jonathan Liebmann privatised the eastern areas of Maboneng to create an attractive gentrified urban neighbourhood. He started acquiring buildings and redeveloping the place. Maboneng is now considered by many as the centre of creative energy in Joburg with amazing street art, a mix of restaurants, coffee shops, clothing boutiques, art galleries, retail and studio space. Although this redevelopment is credited to bringing life back to this downtown, once downtrodden Johannesburg neighbourhood, it has to be said that Maboneng already had a rich heritage, especially for Black Culture before gentrifiers came to town. That's why we coined it "the Harlem of Johannesburg".

Chancellor House Photo Credit: Jo Buitendach

In our eyes, Maboneng is first and foremost a historical site of Black resistance against Apartheid. It is for instance, on Fox Street, couple of miles away from Maboneng precinct that Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo set up South Africa's first black-owned law firm in the 1950s. It is now called Chancellor House and features a public outside museum.

As explained by South African guitarist Mpumelelo Mcata in news24.com in 2021, The inner city, and especially the eastern areas that became Liebmann’s “Place of Light”, was actually a historic site of black resistance: a place where the solidarity of Johannesburg’s black working class was forged.

He states: "Doornfontein in the late 19th century was “Millionaires Row”, [...] But close by, in “locations”, factory compounds, servants’ quarters and some freehold housing, black workers lived. Those workers were always predominantly migrants, from across South and southern Africa, actively recruited by capital or drawn from underdeveloped rural areas by access to city opportunities: men and women; job-seekers; factory and service workers; clerks, teachers and more.

By the teens of the 20th century, city officials noted a rise in “mixed” residence and a need for more permits, as industry expanded. After the Boer War, the 1922 Rand Rebellion and the crashing property values of the worldwide 1929 Great Depression, the millionaires moved north, and speculators bought up their great houses and gardens to subdivide into tiny workers’ rooms for formal and informal letting: what became known as the “slumyards” of Doornfontein. [...] But Joburg’s black residents were already asserting their right to the city: demanding decent, municipally funded homes close to their work. That assertion flowered in mass, well-organised and politically explicit informal settler movements in the years following World War II: “Sofasonke – we all die together” was their slogan", led by James Sofasonke Panza, leading to the creation of Soweto.

"Many of the black workers active in this movement had come to Johannesburg when the war increased demand for industrial products. Doornfontein became a place crowded with light industry. Linatex House – now a city rehousing facility – began its life then, as head office for a mining supplies manufacturer. Some black residents hung on, but the more systematic clearances of apartheid after 1948 removed them brutally to peripheral townships. Yet black people still worked in the city – they made its functioning possible – and made determined efforts to evade restrictions and live closer to work. With the fall of apartheid, white disinvestment stripped the CBD of many businesses and richer residents. The end of residence restrictions and the desperate state to which apartheid had reduced the former “homelands” led to large numbers of work-seekers and petty traders returning. They settled formally where they could afford to, and informally where they could not or where, as often, residential space was scarce."

Therefore, it is not surprising to find iconic places such as the Hide Out bar, where legend has it that the space was once used as refuge by Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders during apartheid, or find a Jazz Club named Pata Pata, after the song by Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba.

Source Web

Kwai Mai Mai Market, one of Joburg's oldest markets, also known as Ezinyangeni, or 'the place of healers', is also located just a few blocks from the Maboneng Precinct. It has for decades been one of Johannesburg's most established muthi (traditional medicine) markets and also known as a down-to-earth spot to grab traditional South African street food.

Source: Web

Finally, this creative hub also attracts a new generation of South African celebrities and creatives such as South African DJ, Black Coffee who has a penthouse apartment in the Hallmark House, a hotel situated in Maboneng district, or again rapper, record producer and entreneur Jay-Z who, in 2019, chose the Hallmark Rooftop as the setting for a six-week pop-up for D'Usse Cognac, the "supernova hip hop star's" label with Bacardi Limited with a brunch menu by one of Joburg's finest chefs Katlego Mlambo (see website below).

So if you are looking for an African Cultural Holiday Destination, here is one for you. Make sure to check out Maboneng!

Hallmark House Hotel - Johannesburg - South Africa

Johannesburg, the commercial hub of sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the world's grittiest, most eclectic and cosmopolitan cities. The city hosts a truly unique mix of cultures, music, performance, art

https://hallmarkhouse.info/

Sources

https://www.news24.com/life/arts-and-entertainment/arts/inner-city-joburg-and-maboneng-a-tale-of-two-cities-20210504

https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-sofasonke-mpanza