Height of adventure: Riding an elephant at Johannesburg zoo in bygone days. Photo: Supplied
One of the most valuable pieces of land in Johannesburg has been home to lions, leopards, elephants and Siberian tigers for over a 100 years.
This is not a riddle. I’m talking about the Johannesburg Zoo — a place that many of us have visited or driven past on Jan Smuts Avenue without giving much thought to its extraordinary history.
The story begins with Hermann Eckstein, a German-born British mining magnate who played a massive role in shaping early Johannesburg.
Eckstein was the first president of the Johannesburg Chamber of Mines, a man whose fingerprints are all over the city’s early development and, quite literally, the man who gave us the “forest” of Joburg.
He planted over 3 million trees in Saxonwold. Back then, the suburb was known as the Sachsenwald Plantation, named after the Sachsenwald Forest near the city of Hamburg, in Germany.
This is the same forest where Hermann Eckstein grew up.
In the late 1800s, his company H. Eckstein & Co planted millions of blue gums, wattles and pines across the open veld to supply timber for the growing mining industry.
When the mining needs eventually changed and the land was opened up for residential development, the name was anglicised to Saxonwold — literally meaning “Saxon Forest.” A fitting name for one of Johannesburg’s greenset, most historic suburbs.
When you look out over the leafy canopy of Johannesburg today, one of the largest manmade urban forests in the world, you’re seeing part of his legacy.
When Eckstein died, his company, Wernher Beit mining group, made an unusual donation in his honour.
In August 1903, they gave the Johannesburg Town Council 81 hectares of land and a few wild animals — on one condition: the park had to be called Hermann Eckstein Park.
And, just like that, two of Joburg’s most beloved spaces were born: Zoo Lake and Johannesburg Zoo, separated by Jan Smuts Avenue.
In the donation deed, there was a specific clause that stated the park must be accessible to everyone —regardless of race.
That one line of text, signed over 120 years ago, ensured that, even during apartheid, Zoo Lake remained one of the very few public spaces in South Africa that was officially not segregated.
It was a quiet act of defiance, written into law before anyone could imagine how much it would matter.
The park itself was designed around an artificial lake, landscaped for leisurely boat rides and picnics under the trees.
Then, in 1937, the Coronation Fountain was built to commemorate the crowning of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
If you’ve ever walked through the park on a Sunday and seen families feeding ducks, couples renting rowboats and runners cutting through the morning mist, you’re standing in a space that’s been offering Joburgers a breather from the city’s chaos for generations.
Back in 1904, the park’s early “zoo” — if you could call it that — housed a rather small but exotic line-up: one lion, a leopard, a giraffe, two sable antelope bulls, a baboon, a genet, a pair of rhesus monkeys, two porcupines and one golden eagle.
It’s almost quaint now, but at the time, it was a spectacle. Wild animals in the middle of Johannesburg.
And get this — some of the animals were donated by none other than Sir Percy FitzPatrick, the man who wrote Jock of the Bushveld.
FitzPatrick apparently kept wild animals from his hunting trips (as one did, if you were a wealthy white man in the early 1900s) and offered a few to the city.
Between 1913 and 1915, the Zoo built its first permanent animal enclosures, including a stone elephant and rhino house.
Over time, they expanded the collection to include Bengal tigers, black bears, llamas, an Asian elephant and even a Bactrian camel.
And yes, people could ride the camel and elephants back then. In those days, it was seen as the height of adventure.
Fast-forward to today and Johannesburg Zoo is home to over 2 000 animals across 320 species. It’s open 364 days a year (closing only on Christmas Day) and is still one of the city’s most visited public attractions.
It also holds a unique scientific record — it’s the only zoo in South Africa to have successfully bred Siberian tigers. A male tiger named Twist, who weighed a hefty 320kg, is the father of every single Siberian tiger in the country.
All this history leaves me torn. On the one hand, the zoo and Zoo Lake are inseparable from Johannesburg’s story. They’ve been a backdrop to countless childhood memories, school outings and Sunday strolls. They’ve survived wars, pandemics and political transitions.
But on the other hand … It’s 2025.
And I can’t help but wonder if zoos still belong in modern cities.
When Hermann Eckstein Park was created, the idea of a zoo represented progress — a way to study and admire exotic animals that most people would never see in the wild.
But the world has changed. Today, we have documentaries filmed in ultra-high definition, drone footage from the Serengeti and a deep (and necessary) awareness of animal welfare.
We can also visit wild animals in their natural habitat, like in the Kruger National Park.
Keeping a tiger behind a fence doesn’t feel quite so noble anymore.
Many zoos have shifted their focus to conservation and education. Johannesburg Zoo, for instance, has participated in breeding programmes for endangered species and research on animal health. That’s important work, especially in a country where habitat loss and poaching remain significant threats.
But I think we need to ask some difficult questions about what “conservation” really means in a city context. Are we preserving species or preserving a tourist attraction? Are animals here to be studied or to entertain us?
There might be a way to develop these spaces to honour their history while embracing modern values. Future zoos could look more like sanctuaries than cages, transforming into immersive conservation centres where technology replaces fences.
Visitors might explore the Amazon or the Okavango through virtual reality, with their tickets funding actual rewilding efforts.
Zoo Lake could evolve from merely a green getaway to a living classroom about ecology, sustainability and urban coexistence with nature.
Because, while I love the nostalgia of it all — the rowboats, the Coronation Fountain, the old oak trees — I also think Joburg has always been a city that is constantly reinventing itself.
Maybe it’s time that its zoo did too.
Should zoos remain part of our cities or should they evolve into something entirely new?
Ask Ash examines South Africa’s property, architecture and living spaces. Continue the conversation with her on email ([email protected]) and X (@askashbroker).