Yeoville, Gauteng
Encyclopedia
Yeoville is a suburb
of Johannesburg
, in the province of Gauteng
, South Africa
. It is located in Region F (previously Region 8
).
in the United Kingdom
. The area was advertised as a 'sanitarium for the rich' in which the air was purer because it was up on a ridge overlooking the dirty, smoke-filled mining town that had sprung from nothing out of the (then) Transvaal
bushveld. However, the rich did not buy into the suburb. Instead it became a multiclass area, one to which many poorer people living below the ridge in Doornfontein aspired. It was also a place which attracted many of the waves of migrants from abroad that came to South Africa seeking a new life.
, a well known Jewish lawyer and politician was Member of Parliament for Yeoville from 1974-1991.
Over the years Yeoville, and its neighbouring suburb Bellevue, also attracted its fair share of artists, musicians, students and political activists. However, it was in the late 1970s that a process began which would change the nature of these two suburbs forever. The establishment of a small, discreet club by a well-known music producer called Patric van Blerk resulted in the main business street through the two suburbs, named Raleigh St in Yeoville and Rockey St in Bellevue, becoming the bohemian cultural centre of South Africa, with a number of night spots and restaurants moving from nearby Hillbrow, till then the night-time entertainment mecca of Johannesburg. Within two years, the high street was transformed from a quiet community street serving the local residents to an internationally-known cultural centre with restaurants, jazz bars, bookshops, arts and crafts outlets, trendy clothing outlets and record shops. On the down side, drug dealers and a criminal element also moved into the area, taking advantage of the opportunities arising out of the almost 24 hour buzz of activity in the street.
(UDF), a legal internal organisation sympathetic to (indeed for some a front for) the African National Congress
(ANC, the banned liberation movement), took the apartheid state on with a fury not seen since the 1960s. Rockey St (always mistakenly located in people's minds in Yeoville while it was actually in Bellevue) and indeed the entire area, became something of a liberated zone as black and white met and ate and listened to music together in defiance of prevailing apartheid laws. Some blacks even lived in the area in flats rented for them by white nominees.
and the Pan Africanist Congress and began to release political prisoners, the most famous of whom was Nelson Mandela
(Mandela has a link to Yeoville - he was apparently given refuge in the Webb St flat of one his white comrades when he was on the run from the police in the early 1960s). This started the process that led to the holding of the first-ever fully democratic elections in South Africa in April 1994.
The end of apartheid had a profound impact on Yeoville and Bellevue. In the early 1990s, Rockey Street remained a hotbed of radicals, activists, artists and musicians. Journalists from around the world lived and worked there during the transition, and places like the Harbour Cafe, Coffee Society, Tandoor and many others attracted large numbers of visitors.
However, in the hiatus period between 1990 and 1994, as South Africa's political opponents went through alternating bouts of negotiation and confrontation, and after 1994, urban management went into decline. Added to this, there began a dramatic demographic shift, with the population of Yeoville changing from 85% white in 1990 to 90% black in 1998. The flight of whites out of the area in some ways gave the lie to the apparently liberated nature of the area in the 1980s. While seemingly non-racial in that period, the area was still definitely under the 'control' of the white population. But after 1990, many realised that that control was gone and the period of white flight
began. The trendy types moved to newly-emerging night spots like Melville, while the majority of the Jewish population moved north to Sydenham and Glenhazel.
The death knell for that period was, ironically, the death of a black Jamaican. Ridley Wright had married a South African exile and returned with her after 1990. He was owner of Crackers Deli, a popular cafe, and head of the Yeoville Trader's Association. In an altercation with a street corner drug dealer, he was fatally stabbed. It was downhill from there and by 2000, all of the shops and restaurants that gained fame in the 1980s were gone or transformed unrecognisably. The lack of effective urban management also saw the area entering a period of rapid urban decay
and neglect, caused in part, by the new local government having to share what were resources for the previously-whites only areas with neglected black areas like Soweto
and Alexandra. Added to this, banking groups, unnerved by the change and worried about their money, 'red-lined' the area, refusing to grant 100% mortgages to prospective home-owners in the area, most of whom were black. This meant that the proportion of rental to owner housing stock changed, with a far greater number of people renting than owning. The majority of these are black South Africans from all over the country and increasing numbers of immigrants from all corners of Africa. Renting was not cheap and the relative poverty of tenants in these properties meant that many overcrowded the property so as to share the rental with a greater number of people. The result was neglect of and damage to the properties and an overloading of the infrastructure of the area.
Community organisations and individuals have been working since 1995 to try to arrest the decay and influence the socio-economic future of the area. As a result of their efforts, Yeoville is currently undergoing some major upgrading including the physical regeneration of Rockey Raleigh Street through the replacement of all paving and the installation of two tier lights to make the streets brighter and safer. The park has been upgraded and the library is being moved to bigger and better premises. CCTV cameras have been installed on five intersections as an attempt to reduce incidences of crime. Enterpreneurs are also showing interest in the commercial properties in Rockey Raleigh St which may result in an economic revival.
Due to sometimes over-inflated house prices elsewhere in Johannesburg, Yeoville is slowly attracting middle-income groups again which is beginning to put the brakes on urban decay. The local authority has recognised that Yeoville and Bellevue, together with the rest of the inner city, are in need of special attention. In 2007, the City of Johannesburg signed an Inner City Charter with property owners, business people and community organisations, committing themselves to improved urban management and bylaw enforcement. The fruits of this agreement are beginning to be seen.
Suburbs of Johannesburg
The suburbs of Johannesburg are officially demarcated areas within the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. As in other Commonwealth countries, the term suburb refers to a "neighbourhood", although the term has a somewhat stronger meaning in South Africa as most "suburbs" have legally recognised...
of Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, in the province of Gauteng
Gauteng
Gauteng is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. It was formed from part of the old Transvaal Province after South Africa's first all-race elections on 27 April 1994...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. It is located in Region F (previously Region 8
Region 8 (Johannesburg)
Region 8 was an administrative district from 2000 to 2006 in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, located in the historic heart of Johannesburg centrally situated on the north-west axis, and towards the eastern border. Surrounding regions, from the north and proceeding clockwise, were Region 3 ,...
).
Founding
Yeoville was proclaimed as a suburb in 1890 (four years after the discovery of gold led to the founding of Johannesburg) by Thomas Yeo Sherwell, who came from YeovilYeovil
Yeovil is a town and civil parish in south Somerset, England. The parish had a population of 27,949 at the 2001 census, although the wider urban area had a population of 42,140...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The area was advertised as a 'sanitarium for the rich' in which the air was purer because it was up on a ridge overlooking the dirty, smoke-filled mining town that had sprung from nothing out of the (then) Transvaal
South African Republic
The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...
bushveld. However, the rich did not buy into the suburb. Instead it became a multiclass area, one to which many poorer people living below the ridge in Doornfontein aspired. It was also a place which attracted many of the waves of migrants from abroad that came to South Africa seeking a new life.
1970s
By the 1970s, it had a predominantly Jewish character, with a number of synagogues in the area and Jewish delicatessens and bakeries in the main business street. Harry SchwarzHarry Schwarz
Harry Heinz Schwarz was a South African lawyer, statesman and long-time political opposition leader against apartheid, who eventually served as the South African ambassador to the United States during the country’s transition to representative democracy.Schwarz rose from the childhood poverty he...
, a well known Jewish lawyer and politician was Member of Parliament for Yeoville from 1974-1991.
Over the years Yeoville, and its neighbouring suburb Bellevue, also attracted its fair share of artists, musicians, students and political activists. However, it was in the late 1970s that a process began which would change the nature of these two suburbs forever. The establishment of a small, discreet club by a well-known music producer called Patric van Blerk resulted in the main business street through the two suburbs, named Raleigh St in Yeoville and Rockey St in Bellevue, becoming the bohemian cultural centre of South Africa, with a number of night spots and restaurants moving from nearby Hillbrow, till then the night-time entertainment mecca of Johannesburg. Within two years, the high street was transformed from a quiet community street serving the local residents to an internationally-known cultural centre with restaurants, jazz bars, bookshops, arts and crafts outlets, trendy clothing outlets and record shops. On the down side, drug dealers and a criminal element also moved into the area, taking advantage of the opportunities arising out of the almost 24 hour buzz of activity in the street.
1980s
The 1980s was a time of political turmoil in South Africa as the United Democratic FrontUnited Democratic Front (South Africa)
The United Democratic Front was one of the most important anti-apartheid organisations of the 1980s. The non-racial coalition of about 400 civic, church, students', workers' and other organisations was formed in 1983, initially to fight the just-introduced idea of the Tricameral Parliament The...
(UDF), a legal internal organisation sympathetic to (indeed for some a front for) the African National Congress
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC, the banned liberation movement), took the apartheid state on with a fury not seen since the 1960s. Rockey St (always mistakenly located in people's minds in Yeoville while it was actually in Bellevue) and indeed the entire area, became something of a liberated zone as black and white met and ate and listened to music together in defiance of prevailing apartheid laws. Some blacks even lived in the area in flats rented for them by white nominees.
1990s
In 1990, the apartheid government unbanned the ANC, the South African Communist PartySouth African Communist Party
South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...
and the Pan Africanist Congress and began to release political prisoners, the most famous of whom was Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
(Mandela has a link to Yeoville - he was apparently given refuge in the Webb St flat of one his white comrades when he was on the run from the police in the early 1960s). This started the process that led to the holding of the first-ever fully democratic elections in South Africa in April 1994.
The end of apartheid had a profound impact on Yeoville and Bellevue. In the early 1990s, Rockey Street remained a hotbed of radicals, activists, artists and musicians. Journalists from around the world lived and worked there during the transition, and places like the Harbour Cafe, Coffee Society, Tandoor and many others attracted large numbers of visitors.
However, in the hiatus period between 1990 and 1994, as South Africa's political opponents went through alternating bouts of negotiation and confrontation, and after 1994, urban management went into decline. Added to this, there began a dramatic demographic shift, with the population of Yeoville changing from 85% white in 1990 to 90% black in 1998. The flight of whites out of the area in some ways gave the lie to the apparently liberated nature of the area in the 1980s. While seemingly non-racial in that period, the area was still definitely under the 'control' of the white population. But after 1990, many realised that that control was gone and the period of white flight
White flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
began. The trendy types moved to newly-emerging night spots like Melville, while the majority of the Jewish population moved north to Sydenham and Glenhazel.
The death knell for that period was, ironically, the death of a black Jamaican. Ridley Wright had married a South African exile and returned with her after 1990. He was owner of Crackers Deli, a popular cafe, and head of the Yeoville Trader's Association. In an altercation with a street corner drug dealer, he was fatally stabbed. It was downhill from there and by 2000, all of the shops and restaurants that gained fame in the 1980s were gone or transformed unrecognisably. The lack of effective urban management also saw the area entering a period of rapid urban decay
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
and neglect, caused in part, by the new local government having to share what were resources for the previously-whites only areas with neglected black areas like Soweto
Soweto
Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...
and Alexandra. Added to this, banking groups, unnerved by the change and worried about their money, 'red-lined' the area, refusing to grant 100% mortgages to prospective home-owners in the area, most of whom were black. This meant that the proportion of rental to owner housing stock changed, with a far greater number of people renting than owning. The majority of these are black South Africans from all over the country and increasing numbers of immigrants from all corners of Africa. Renting was not cheap and the relative poverty of tenants in these properties meant that many overcrowded the property so as to share the rental with a greater number of people. The result was neglect of and damage to the properties and an overloading of the infrastructure of the area.
2000s
Yeoville is once again a community of migrants, mostly economic migrants from all over the country and the rest of Africa. It is a vibrant, colourful, often chaotic pan-African area.Community organisations and individuals have been working since 1995 to try to arrest the decay and influence the socio-economic future of the area. As a result of their efforts, Yeoville is currently undergoing some major upgrading including the physical regeneration of Rockey Raleigh Street through the replacement of all paving and the installation of two tier lights to make the streets brighter and safer. The park has been upgraded and the library is being moved to bigger and better premises. CCTV cameras have been installed on five intersections as an attempt to reduce incidences of crime. Enterpreneurs are also showing interest in the commercial properties in Rockey Raleigh St which may result in an economic revival.
Due to sometimes over-inflated house prices elsewhere in Johannesburg, Yeoville is slowly attracting middle-income groups again which is beginning to put the brakes on urban decay. The local authority has recognised that Yeoville and Bellevue, together with the rest of the inner city, are in need of special attention. In 2007, the City of Johannesburg signed an Inner City Charter with property owners, business people and community organisations, committing themselves to improved urban management and bylaw enforcement. The fruits of this agreement are beginning to be seen.