Happy Happy 119th BIrthday to Joburg!!!!
HEY JOZI IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!!
Yes, it’s our birthday, so party if you want to!!!!
Please send your birthday wishes to our fabulous city in our comments section!
Happy Happy Birthday Jozi, your streets and beats fuel the energy that keeps our bodies and minds moving on and up towards a shimmering glimmering future. Happy Birthday!
Youngster
Although more than a century old, Johannesburg – affectionately known as Joburg, Jozi, Egoli or City of Gold – is one of the world’s younger cities. In comparison, Damascus is believed to date back to the third millennium before Christ; New York was established in the early 17th century.
Over the years the city has grown from a tented camp into a haphazardly laid out settlement of tin shanties, into a town of four-storey Edwardian brick buildings, and into a mix of modern skyscrapers and complicated freeways that spiral around it.
Declared a city in 1928, this relatively young place kept pace with some of the great cities of the world, like Paris and London. Towards the end of the 19th century it was installing all the trendy new developments, like electricity, motor cars and telephones.
Cosmopolitan vibe
But what has made Johannesburg the great city that it is today? Definitely it is the vibe, the cosmopolitan feel and the mystery behind the shadows of the tallest building in Africa, the Carlton Centre. And, of course, the eerie mine dumps that brood above the disused mine shafts that interweave beneath the city like veins.
Who can forget the legendary township of Sophiatown, the cultural heart of black Johannesburg from which sprouted the vibe of today? Or Meadowlands and other Soweto townships that grew out of Sophiatown’s ashes to give birth to some of South Africa’s great people, like Albertina Sisulu, Abigail Kubeka and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela?
Africa’s mecca
Decades after the gold rush of the late 19th century, people of all races, creeds and backgrounds are still lured to what some have come to refer to as Africa’s mecca.
Drawn by the commercial supremacy of a city whose residents earn – between them – a total income of R28-billion a year, Johannesburg’s population has grown by leaps and bounds. This has resulted in informal settlements springing up on almost every available piece of ground.
But through its Housing Master Plan, Joburg aims to pull down informal settlements and give adequate housing to all its residents by 2009.
Like most South African cities, Johannesburg is largely divided by class. In the north live the affluent, while the south is mostly inhabited by the city’s poor. In 1995, an attempt was made to address these economic disparities by uniting the independent satellite towns, like affluent Sandton, Soweto, Alexandra, Randburg, Roodepoort, Kyalami, Midrand and Ivory Park, in one unicity.
