Meet the artisans breathing new life into Johannesburg

For much of the 20th century, Johannesburg’s Victoria Yards was a steam laundry, used to wash hospital sheets. By the 1990s the laundry was gone, its courtyards and red-brick buildings a grim zone of dumped paint, panel beaters and chained dogs. Then, in 2016, a far-sighted developer passed the yards and saw potential for regeneration. Today, koi carp swim in its channels, murals brighten its walls and peach trees grow in its gardens.   

Beyond the complex, Johannesburg vibrates with heat and traffic. This is a metropolis of six million people and Victoria Yards is a kind of sanctuary within it. It grows fruit and veg and runs learning centres to aid disadvantaged kids but, above all, it’s a hub for artisans. More than 40 occupy its 7.5-acre site, from glassblowers and screen printers to coffee roasters and ceramicists. One of them is jeans designer Tshepo Mohlala. In his early 30s, he has the relaxed smile of a man at ease with the world. His workshop is filled with finely tailored trousers of a brilliant blue. The Tshepo logo is a three-pointed crown, he tells me, to honour the matriarchs who raised him: his mother, grandmother and aunt. 

I wander to the Jukskei River, which runs through the site. On its banks environmental artist Io Makandal is working on a large wall stencil made from moss, which will read ‘Be The River’. “I was commissioned to create a public artwork,” she explains. “The moss will grow and reshape the form of the letters.”  

Victoria Yards is just one Jo’burg project putting creativity at its core. A three-minute taxi ride away is the Living Artists Emporium, which provides materials and gallery space for 22 local artists. The work is bold and riotously colourful. Splash Motong’s vivid depictions of township life stand next to Kelvin Dube’s human sculptures, made from discarded rubber wire, while Nisty Chatha’s acrylic-covered canvases blaze with joy. 

And then there’s Maboneng, once a district for manufacturing. It was given a cash injection by a developer in 2008 and its new name in 2010: Maboneng means ‘place of light’. Despite financial setbacks, it now crackles with creative energy. 

It’s a part of Jo’burg that moves to its own beat. People amble along Fox Street, its tree-lined main drag, where vendors sell fresh melon and pineapple, and art emblazons the brickwork. Music drifts everywhere. Its longest-standing restaurant, Pata Pata, serves peri-peri chicken and is named after the 1960s song written in the city by late singer-activist Miriam Makeba. I pass a youngster taking a selfie with local musician Samthing Soweto outside a streetwear boutique. Jazz echoes from Bertrand Café as couples share wine. 

At print workshop David Krut Projects, Sbongiseni Khulu talks me through the district’s short life. “Maboneng started off on a high, then flew too close to the sun, like Icarus,” he says with a smile. “Now the neighbourhood’s found its feet again, It’s cultivated a new creative environment.” 

I’m shown around the performance rooms of the Centre of the Less Good Idea by Athena Mazarakis. It puts on plays, concerts and exhibitions, with a difference. “It’s not about showcasing the perfect idea,” Athena says. “We give artists the freedom to experiment, to play, to fail, to follow their impulses.” 

Outside, the city churns away, all noise and flow. “Ideas have cracks,” Athena says, “but through those cracks, other ideas emerge.” It strikes me that this can be applied to Jo’burg itself. It might be a city of sleepless intensity, but it’s also a place where creativity and reinvention can burst through to the fore.