Despite all the negativity about the City of Johannesburg due to how it has deteriorated over time and become generally unsafe, as someone who has worked there for years and always had the most amazing views from the iconic Carlton Centre, I must say for me, it remains a place gold. Not so much real gold from the belly of the earth, but the opportunities that still abound for those remain who creative and innovative.
Having said that, there is a lot that needs to be done to protect these potential opportunities. These days, some parts of the city become very dirty, especially on Mondays, for some reason, despite the daily efforts of the Pikitup employees who try their best to diligently clean the city.
Somewhere close to Fordsburg, there is a park that was once so beautiful in the old days you would enjoy stopping there, on a hot summers day just to chill and enjoy sip of your favourite drink. These days it has become a dumping ground of rubbish and it is always full of people who loiter and generate more rubbish. It is such a painful sight, I always wonder what the local councillors think of it. As much as that route is the shortest for me to get to town (only 21km), in order to avoid seeing this deterioration in and around the city, sometimes I prefer to use a longer route that goes in to town via Gold
Reef City, coming from the Soweto township direction. I normally join this route on 14th avenue and take N1 southbound towards Bloemfontein and exit on N12 to Witbank, and branch off by Southgate towards Gold Reef City. When traffic is bad, I find other back routes.
Enough about the bad news and how I travel to Johannesburg CBD. In my book titled 'From Small Beginnings to Big Brands,' which is aimed at encouraging a culture of entrepreneurship, there is chapter where I speak about a thriving entrepreneurship culture that I witnessed in the
Johannesburg CBD, especially around the Carlton Centre precinct (one of the tallest buildings in Africa!) for many years now. Just outside the precinct, there is always a hype of activity throughout the CBD, with many people involved in different entrepreneurial activities, formal and informal, for instance: fashion shops, tailors, saloons, fruit and veg vendors, general dealers, cellphone shops, shisa nyama (braai meat spots), computer shops, tuck-shops, music shops, traditional medicine etc.
There is even a place where they sell used clothes and shoes, which are placed in big piles and some people shout out to invite passers-by, as buyers pick and choose items from the piles. On the eastern and southern side of the Carlton, the place is teeming with mostly automotive and related businesses. That is where Martin Mashalane’s business, MM Motors is based and they specialise in the maintenance and repairs of Mercedes Benz vehicles. Martin used to work for a Mercedes Benz dealership as a mechanic, before launching MM Motors to fulfill his passion for the brand, and he likes the German carmaker’s slogan “The best or nothing.”
Martin was once a guest on our Westside FM small business show. Another business similar to MM Motors is run by Jowi in Chiawelo, Soweto, where I have become a regular customer. Because of the great service that he provides, I have referred a few owners of used Mercedes Benz cars to him. What I like about these two gentlemen, is that they insist on the use of original parts from the Mercedes Benz dealerships and their rates are quite reasonable.
Further east of the Johannesburg CBD, there is a market called KwaMayi Mayi, where they sell mostly traditional products. I went there in 2021, to buy traditional attire and I was impressed by the attitude of one of the small business owners there. Because Mayi Mayi is a "cash market", the gentleman who makes and sells the traditional shoes, offered to accompany me on a walk to the nearest ATM, to draw money. Along the way, as we spoke about this and that, he enthusiastically told me, "I love what I do! I would not want to work for a boss.”
When I asked why he said, “I determine what time I finish work as there are no limitations on how late I can close my shop." When he volunteered to accompany me to the ATM, he knew that of the three items that I wanted to buy, I would only be buying one pair of traditional shoes from him, but he understood that it was also in his interest for me to go draw the money as he is part of an ecosystem. On our way back, he asked if I would start by buying from other people, before proceeding to his shop. I thought to myself, “Here is someone with the right attitude, who will go very far in business.”
Just a few meters away from the Carlton Centre, over time I witnessed the start and subsequent failure of several small busi-nesses. Some of them were my fellow tenants in the properties owned and managed by OPH, an inner-city property developer. OPH has since 1989 purchased rundown buildings mainly around the Gandhi Square and Carlton Centre precincts and re-imagined into modern, A-grade offices and retail spaces while reviving and enhancing the public spaces, in which these buildings are located (I rented an office from OPH for Mabedlana Group at Gandhi Square).
The small businesses that I witnessed closing down over time, included: a fish and chips shop, a burger outlet, a fully-fledged restaurant, a music shop, traditional food outlets, and many more. However, as others closed down, their spaces were subsequently taken up by other budding entrepreneurs, ready to try their luck. The closure of one of the traditional food outlets was a personal loss for me, because I used to have lunch there from time to time.
When the owner of the shop, a young black lady, decided to celebrate her shop’s one-year anniversary, she invited most of her regular customers and I also went there with my colleague, Loyiso Mfubesi. It was a very cold winter day and the launch was held on the roof of the building. Sadly though, the shop did not last long after that. The shop owner, a young lady, had tried but I am sure that she would try again, and take her business idea from small beginnings to a big brand. In one of the daily newspapers, I once read an article about taking a business idea to the market.
It was a story about two ladies who identified gaps in the market and started or improved their businesses. One lady, who was a clothing designer, wanted to buy clothes as a birthday present for a friend’s child. She struggled to find what she wanted to buy and as she was sharing her frustration with her husband, he asked her why she did not make the clothes herself. That is how she started a new clothing range for kids. With all the recent negative developments that have been widely publicised about the City of
Johannesburg i.e. gas explosions, hijacked buildings, unsafe buildings catching fire leading to the death and injuries, rubbish dumpling on the streets, influx of people wandering about in certain parts of the city etc, how does the future of the city look like? It think it remains bright.
There are still opportunities, all it requires is the political will to make the local government sphere function properly, without it being used as a political football field for point scoring. Service delivery should be the name of the game at local government level.
Businesses, large and small need stability and rule of law to be able to function properly, create employment and ensure stability in the communities. I know this city used to look like, even though it was because of the former government policies of exclusion of limitation of movement for certain races. However, just because the city is now open to everyone, I don't think anyone can be allowed to be chaotic.
Recently, I have seen have seen how the European cities which are many many years older than Johannesburg have been preserved, and their heritage buildings used to draw tourists to bring money into those cities.
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