I recently bought a copy of Hidden Johannesburg, a hardback coffee table book featuring 28 of Joburg’s most interesting (and difficult to access, in some cases) buildings and interiors.
I’m enchanted with this book; I love flipping through, gazing at the beautiful photographs, and reminiscing about my own visits to some of the places featured. I’m pleased to say I’ve been inside 15 of the 28 buildings in the book.
As many of you already know, I’ve been on a mission to discover Joburg’s best shawarmas. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than I initially anticipated.
First, I like to do my “best of” posts in groups of five. But there are a lot more than five great shawarma restaurants in Joburg. I thought I knew more or less where to go, but once I started researching I found Joburg’s shawarma culture extends more widely than I realized.
Several months ago I spotted a post in the @WhatsOnInJoburg Instagram feed. “Africa’s tallest Shiva Shakti Statue is in Benoni”, the post read, with a photo of the biggest, boldest, most colorful Hindu deity I’ve ever seen. I made a mental note to visit the Sivan Alayam Temple, a.k.a. the Shiva Temple, as soon as possible.
Last week I participated in a “motoring” media morning with Ford South Africa. The core purpose of the event was to get a bunch of woman journalists/bloggers/influencers together for a drive through the countryside in a convoy of bad-ass Ford Ranger bakkies (pick-up trucks). But we also went up in a hot-air balloon with Semakaleng (Sema) Mathebula, South Africa’s first Black woman balloon pilot, at Bill Harrop’s in Magaliesburg.
Over the past two weeks I’ve seen dozens of heartbreaking pictures of the recent flooding in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and there’s one image I can’t get out of my mind: a shot by photojournalist Jacques Nelles of a Durban beach piled high with plastic waste. Apparently many of the flash floods in and around Durban – which killed hundreds of people – were caused by storm drains choked with plastic. Single-use plastic is killing us, yet we keep voraciously consuming it because there seems to be no alternative.
Almost ten years ago, I did an exhibition of photos I shot in Maboneng and Jeppestown, two adjacent neighborhoods in downtown Joburg. I had nearly forgotten about this exhibition (which you can read about here). But then a week ago I received an Instagram message from Abdullah Dajee, owner of a men’s clothing and shoe shop in Jeppestown called City Hall (which is also known as City Outfitters or City Hall Outfitters).