True revival of the Johannesburg CBD will take more than new institutional investment. A holistic approach to managing the city is vital for its survival, writes Ferial Haffajee
THE tales about Johannesburg grow more fantastic every day. Did you hear the one about the cheeky gang in Smal Street Mall? They’re so brazen, all they do these days is sidle up to their prey and say: “Your tackies [training shoes] are my size,” and that’s your cue to take off your shoes, hand them over and hot-foot it out of there.
Dinner-party tales of seven-second car heists, eight bank robberies in a day and thefts right outside John Vorster Square, the hulking downtown police station meant to protect the city, keep the suburbs aghast.
Crime is also driving big money out of the city. Johannesburg started as a centre of wealth creation. Until six years ago, it contributed almost one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.
But no longer.
“The commercial heart of the city is in Sandton,” says Gerald Leissner, the head of Amaprop, Anglo American’s property division. He’s watched the makers of “To Let” signs grow rich, as law firms, some mining houses and insurance companies move north, often following their clients, who started the trek.
Many floors in huge office blocks, such as the diamond-shaped 11 Diagonal Street, where Leissner works, stand vacant. Beautiful air-brushed advertising leaflets photographed at night when the streets are empty and clean advertise grand offices at bargain prices.
“Office space is a huge problem. We just cannot replace the tenants with the same calibre of clients,” says Leissner.
Urban planning consultant Anne Bernstein says it is essential to keep big business in the cities to make them centres of global economies. “Cities must be made into good places to do business. The key lens for any large city must be economic growth, and what the city needs to do to retain current investment and encourage new growth.”
But the exodus of business from the cities is unlikely to be stemmed by even the grand announcement of billions of rands in inner- city investment. This week, again, headlines heralded “Jo’burg city on the comeback trail”. Reports like these have been heralding the rebirth of Johannesburg for some three years now; but such optimism has come to little.
“This is institutional funding,” says Neil Fraser, the executive director of the Central Johannesburg Partnership, which is at the forefront of city revival. It’s important, but Johannesburg needs investment that proffers greater and more visible returns.
It’s also a better indicator to tally the companies that are staying in Johannesburg than the investments that are about to be made.
There is some good news on this front. All the major banks are still head-quartered in Johannesburg; Anglo American has stayed (with a huge investment in its new headquarters a couple of years ago) and so has Gencor. Joining them are new state-of- the-art Woolworths and Edgars stores, whose tills are ringing up huge turnovers as the city’s estimated half-a-million workers show their buying power.
Retailers appear to be doing well; OK bazaars in Eloff Street is one of the busiest chain stores in the country. “People are not staying away from the city,” says Prema Naidoo, the executive chairman of Johannesburg’s southern council.
But Leissner says major accounting firms have moved out, as have big law firms. Recently, Anglo-Vaal took its headquarters to Sandton; stock brokers are leaving and the multinational Siemens pulled out last year. So while the shoppers may still be flocking to the city, its rates base is being eroded by big payers leaving.
Fraser says it may be well-nigh impossible to attract big business back to the city in the short term. But low rentals (prime office space in Johannesburg is going for about R20 to R25/m2) may give Midrand and Sandton landlords a run for their money in the medium term (prime office space there costs between R40 and R65/m2).
Fraser, who drinks from a mug emblazoned with “Mugged in Johannesburg”, says confidence in the city depends on Johannesburg being “safe and clean”.
Johannesburg is not safe: most people have developed that hard-staring, bag-clutching, constantly checking-over-my-shoulder gait. Many individuals and businesses are crime statistics. The city is also not clean: the pavements are a hazard of over-flowing bins and a range of hawkers touting everything from mealies to Moulinexes.
“I have difficulty in seeing the future at the moment,” says Leissner, adding, “The city needs to be managed better. Transport, crime and hawking need to be managed.”
He also says that city bosses need to market Johannesburg more effectively, both to businesses (as a convention centre) and to tourists (as a cultural heartland). Other business leaders would like to see greater flexibility from city managers so that they will re-zone more quickly and pass plans faster.
Johannesburg’s administration is almost brand-new. There is no clarity on which of the metropolitan council’s four sub- councils runs the city. And like most of South Africa, it must perform that fine balancing act of upgrading townships, while keeping towns running as economic heartlands.
Bernstein says cities cannot be ignored: “The government’s macro-economic programme must link up with, and indeed depends on, a successful approach to the big cities.”
It is something the Johannesburg City Council has recognised. Naidoo says the council’s new core of metropolitan police officers is bringing crime down. The council also employed an army of cleaners to give back the sparkle to the Golden City. “Every day we clean a mountain of dirt which [if stacked up] equals half the height of the Carlton Centre,” says Naidoo. And this week, the council is likely to pass a battery of new laws to regulate hawking in Johannesburg.
“I truly believe we’ve reached the bottom,” says Fraser. “In the next 18 months Johannesburg will start moving upwards.”