# Life in Alexandra — Friday Photo-Op

Friday Photo-Op · Steemit · 29 Sep 2017

# Life in Alexandra

by your-nomad-soul · posted to Steemit

Hey folks. So, every Friday I'll be putting up a set of photos and factoids of interesting places and people that I encounter on my wanderings.

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Today, they're from one of the most interesting (and least understood) parts of my home-city of Johannesburg:

## The Township of Alexandra.

For those who don't know,
Local nickname Alexandra Township Founded in 1912, Alex is one of Johannesburg's oldest townships. Its name comes from Alexandra Papenfus, wife of the original landowner H.B. Papenfus. Crucially, Alex was established before the 1913 Land Act, making it one of the few places where Black South Africans could own freehold land. → Wikipedia (as most folk down here call it) is just across the highway from
Neighbouring suburb Sandton — "Africa's Richest Square Mile" Home to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Sandton City mall, and headquarters of major corporations. Less than 1km from Alexandra across the M1 highway, Sandton is one of the wealthiest business districts on the continent. → Wikipedia , which has the highest average per-capita income per household in Johannesburg. Seriously... Although the rich living across the road from the poor is a feature of Johannesburg's unique geography.

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Like most of the
Context South African Townships Urban residential areas established under segregation and apartheid to house Black, Coloured, and Indian workers separately from white areas. Though conditions varied, they were systematically under-resourced and denied basic infrastructure. → Wikipedia , it was founded in the
as a way to keep the migrant labour force separate from the whitey's but close enough so that the maids and garden-boys wouldn't continually be late for work when the sub-par public transport inevitably broke down.

.*o.0*.

So, it's within walking distance of jobs, but neatly tucked away behind the industrial warehouses of
Adjacent industrial area Wynberg An industrial suburb bordering Alexandra to the west, providing geographic separation between the township and the wealthier northern suburbs. The warehouses form a visual and psychological barrier that makes Alex easy to overlook. → Wikipedia , and easily circumnavigated by anyone who doesn't want to deal with
Main road London Road, Alexandra Runs east-west along the southern side of the township. A busy commercial artery lined with spaza shops, hair salons, and street vendors — and the location of most photos in this essay. The colonial street names (London, John Brand, etc.) are a striking irony locals have simply lived with. (affectionately dubbed "hijack alley" by people who have never been there). Most of these photos were taken on or just-off London Rd, which runs East-West along the Southern side of the township.

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By the numbers (yay stats), it is almost an exact square mile in terms of area since Phase One of the township was marked out as a
Urban planning note Apartheid Grid Logic The perfect-square layout is visible from satellite. It was designed for administrative control — a legible, monitorable space. The surrounding development has since prevented any outward expansion, meaning population density has grown vertically and informally instead. (Apartheid logic). The surrounding areas have since prevented any large scale expansion of the total area, but not the influx of people, which has led to around 750,000 people calling that little square mile of dust home for much of their lives.

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However, this is not to say that Alex is a
Challenging the stereotype The "township as danger zone" myth Visitors and journalists consistently report that townships are far safer and more community-oriented than popular imagination suggests. People don't beg strangers on the street; neighbours take responsibility for each other. The dangerous reputation is largely built by people who've never been. and the scum of the Earth (those are more readily found across the highway in Sandton). On the contrary, Alexandra, like most of South Africa and Africa at large, is a vibrant, colorful and diverse community, bursting with all kinds of life and hope and grit in the face of a government that doesn't care beyond the ballot box outcome, a society that treats it like a festering wound and a public image that can often be summed up as
.

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Really though, that's just the line of people who have never been there. The truth is, that in Alex, just like everywhere else, most folk are just trying to get by and make things a little better for their kids.

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Now if only we could convince
Political context Alexandra & post-apartheid governance In 2001, President Thabo Mbeki launched the Alexandra Renewal Project with R1.3 billion to upgrade housing and infrastructure. Progress has been widely described as uneven, plagued by mismanagement. As of this writing (2017) and beyond, residents have staged regular protests over housing, water, and sanitation. → Africa Headline to do the same.

.

Although, I'd bet that if you asked a random passerby on the street in Alex, they'd probably reply along the lines of "Who says we need politicians?" And that, is why I love people and hate politics.

Have a brilliant Friday everybody.
Two more short stories coming out this weekend, so feel free to follow me for fiction's sake (but only if I earn it).
Peace, Love and a Little Madness
Nomad
Bonus Fact: Trash gets collected twice a day in Alex — 750,000 people in 1 square mile make a lot of trash.
Deep Dive

# Alex's Story

A century of resistance, resilience, and resource denial — the real history behind the square mile.

A note on the essay's framing:
The author mentions "the bad old days of Apartheid" — but Alexandra's story actually begins decades before apartheid. Founded in 1912, it predates the formal apartheid system (1948) and even the notorious 1913 Land Act. This is what makes Alex genuinely unique.

## Timeline

- 1912 Alexandra proclaimed a "native township" on land owned by H.B. Papenfus. Named after his wife, Alexandra. Because it predated the 1913 Land Act, Black residents could own land under freehold title — one of the only urban areas in the country where this was possible.
- 1916 Population reaches ~30,000. The Alexandra Health Committee is established but given no funds by Johannesburg City Council, which claimed the township fell outside its jurisdiction.
- 1930s Prime Minister J.B. Hertzog moves to abolish freehold rights. Black landowners begin to be dispossessed.
- 1940 Historic bus boycott: residents walk up to 15km each way to work for six months to protest a proposed fare increase of one penny. The boycott succeeds — a template of non-violent resistance repeated several more times in the 1940s.
- 1941 A young Nelson Mandela arrives in Alex, renting a tin-roofed room with a dirt floor and no running water from the Xhoma family. He later wrote: "It was the first place I lived away from home, and it holds a treasured place in my heart."
- 1948 National Party elected. Alexandra brought under direct government control. Apartheid laws formalize what had been informal segregation. Population estimated at 80,000–100,000; authorities aim to reduce it to 30,000.
- 1960s–70s Repeated attempts to demolish Alexandra and relocate residents to Soweto. Residents resist. The township survives through community opposition and the sheer cost of relocation.
- 1980 "Master Plan" introduced to reshape Alex into a "Garden City". Never fully implemented.
- 1986 "Alex Six Days" uprising after security forces attack a funeral. 40 people killed. Street committees and people's courts emerge as council collapses. Alex earns the nickname Dark City — electricity had been deliberately withheld for decades.
- 2001 President Thabo Mbeki launches the Alexandra Renewal Project, with R1.3 billion allocated over seven years for housing and infrastructure upgrades. Results are widely described as incomplete.
- 2008 Alex becomes the starting point of a wave of xenophobic attacks across South Africa targeting Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, and Congolese residents.
- Today Population estimated between 400,000 and 750,000. The township remains one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, with over 20,000 informal dwellings alongside the original housing stock.

## Famous Sons & Daughters

Mandela arrived in Alex in 1941, aged 23, fleeing an arranged marriage in the Eastern Cape. He rented a room in the Xhoma family home on Seventh Avenue. The conditions were deeply humble — no electricity, no running water — but he described the community's spirit as transformative. It was in Alex that he began his legal studies and first encountered the organized resistance politics that would define his life. The Xhoma house is now a heritage site. Mandela returned in 2009, decades after his release from prison, to revisit the room where his political awakening began.

Hugh Masekela, one of Africa's greatest jazz musicians and anti-apartheid activists, was born in Alexandra in 1939. The township's vibrant musical culture — Marabi jazz, Kofifi — was a direct product of its diverse, crowded community, where people from across Southern Africa mixed in close quarters. Masekela carried Alex's musical energy around the world during his decades in exile, and his work became a soundtrack of the liberation struggle.

Long before Soweto's 1976 uprising became the defining image of township resistance, Alexandra led the way. In 1940, when the municipality proposed raising the bus fare by a single penny, residents voted with their feet. For six months they walked up to 15km each way — up to four hours of walking per day — to get to work in Johannesburg rather than pay the increase. The boycott worked. It was repeated three more times in the mid-1940s. These acts of collective, disciplined, non-violent resistance were a direct precursor to the ANC's later organising strategies.

Alexandra was called "Dark City" not as a metaphor but as a literal fact: the apartheid government deliberately denied the township electricity for decades. When the rest of Johannesburg's suburbs were being lit up and modernised through the mid-20th century, Alex remained without street lighting or household electricity. This was not neglect — it was policy. Darkness served the state's goals of control: it limited economic activity, restricted the hours residents could move safely, and reinforced the message that Alex's residents were not considered full citizens of the city.

Context & Stakes

# The Divide

Less than one kilometre separates the richest square mile in Africa from one of its poorest urban areas. How did we get here — and where are we now?

## Sandton vs Alexandra

The juxtaposition the author describes is one of the most photographed inequality stories in the world. Sandton is home to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the headquarters of major banks, and luxury shopping centres selling Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Nelson Mandela Square — named, with some irony, after the man who once rented a dirt-floor room in Alex — sits at its centre.

The M1 highway is all that separates them. From a satellite image, the contrast is stark: Sandton's grid of leafy boulevards and glass towers; Alex's dense, almost perfectly square block of rooftops packed together with no visible green space. The township is, as one aerial photographer put it, "almost treeless."

By the numbers:
Alexandra: ~750,000 residents · ~2.6 km² · one of the poorest urban areas in South Africa
Sandton: ~300,000 residents · 133 km² · highest average household income in Johannesburg
Distance between them: less than 1 kilometre across the M1 highway

## The Gini Question

South Africa consistently ranks as one of the most unequal societies on Earth by the Gini coefficient — a standard measure of income distribution. The roots are structural: apartheid didn't just segregate people physically, it created decades of wealth gaps that were almost impossible to close through policy alone. White families accumulated property, business capital, and educational advantages over generations, while Black families were actively dispossessed. Land, the primary vehicle of wealth transfer, was denied to the majority population through legislation from 1913 onwards.

Post-1994, the ANC government pursued policies like Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) to redistribute opportunity. Critics argue these mostly benefited a small Black elite without fundamentally altering the structural gap. Alex and Sandton, sitting side by side, remain the most visible shorthand for this unfinished transition.

Apartheid's planners understood that geography is power. By placing townships far from city centres, separated by industrial zones or highways, they created a city structure that forced dependence. Workers had to travel long distances, spending wages on transport. Communities were isolated from economic opportunity and civic infrastructure.

Three decades after apartheid ended, South Africa's cities remain largely spatially unchanged. Property markets, infrastructure investment patterns, and school quality still follow the old lines. Moving Alex's 750,000 residents closer to economic opportunity — or bringing that opportunity to them — would require a scale of political will and public investment that governments have consistently failed to commit to.

In February 2001, President Thabo Mbeki stood in Alexandra and announced a "presidential project": R1.3 billion over seven years to upgrade housing, infrastructure, sanitation, and economic opportunity. The announcement was significant — it was an acknowledgment at the highest level that what had been done to Alex was a national problem requiring a national response.

The results were partial. Some new housing was built. Roads were upgraded in parts. But residents and journalists covering the township in subsequent years consistently described a process plagued by mismanagement, contractor failures, and a population continuing to grow faster than any upgrade could keep pace with. As of this essay (2017) and into the 2020s, Alex has seen regular protests over housing backlogs, water, and sanitation — the same issues the Renewal Project was meant to resolve.

The essay's core argument — that Alex is a community of dignity, not a hellhole, and that its bad reputation is built by people who've never been there — is well-supported. Every serious account of life in Alex, from academic histories to travel writing to journalism, confirms this. The human texture the photos capture is real.

One small historical note: the author frames Alex as a product of apartheid specifically. This is partially true, but Alex actually predates the formal apartheid system by 36 years. It was founded in 1912, under pre-apartheid segregation policy. What makes it unique is that its founding before the 1913 Land Act meant Black residents could own land freehold — a right apartheid then systematically stripped away. The township survived multiple attempts at demolition precisely because of this deep community rootedness. The "bad old days" started earlier and ran deeper than apartheid alone.

Alexandra sits on the banks of the Jukskei River, which runs through the township. Decades of inadequate sanitation infrastructure, industrial pollution upstream, and waste disposal pressures from extreme population density have made the Jukskei one of Johannesburg's most polluted waterways. Flooding is a recurring crisis: when the river bursts its banks, informal settlements near its banks are the first to be destroyed. The river is both a geographic anchor to the township's identity and a live indicator of what under-investment in infrastructure actually means for real people's lives.

Go Deeper

# Further Reading

Selected resources for going beyond the surface. The story of Alex is also the story of South Africa.

### 📖 History & Background

Alexandra Township — South African History Online The definitive free archive. Timeline, key figures, and the political history of the township's founding and survival through apartheid. sahistory.org.za Why Alexandra Survived Apartheid — Heritage Portal Detailed account of the repeated attempts to demolish or relocate the township, and how community resistance kept it alive. theheritageportal.co.za The History of Alexandra Township — ShowMe SA Readable narrative history from the 1912 founding to the Renewal Project and beyond. showmesa.co.za

### 📸 Inequality & Photography

Unequal Scenes — Johannesburg Aerial photography project showing the Sandton/Alexandra divide from above. Some of the most striking visual evidence of spatial apartheid's legacy. unequalscenes.com An Incomplete Transition — World Bank Blog Analysis of why South Africa's post-apartheid inequality gap has proved so resistant to policy intervention. worldbank.org

### 🎵 Culture & Voices

Waiting to Exhale: The Story of Alexandra — Sowetan Street-level journalism from inside the township. Covers music, the Jukskei river, the jazz heritage, and daily life. sowetan.co.za Alexandra: Strength and Struggle — Africa Headline Recent (2025) overview covering Mandela's connection, the Renewal Project, and the township's role in the liberation struggle. africaheadline.com

### 🗺️ Visit & Guided Tours

Alexandra Heritage Precinct — South Africa Tourism Information on visiting the heritage sites including the Mandela house, St Hubert's Church, and the pedestrian bridge over 7th Avenue. southafrica.net Township Life: Meet Alexandra — Adventurous Kate A thoughtful account of visiting Alex with a guided tour — addresses the safety myth directly and captures the community texture the author's photos show. adventurouskate.com
Founded before apartheid

### 1912 — not 1948

The essay refers to apartheid as the reason for Alexandra's founding, but the real story is older and stranger. Alexandra was established in 1912, when H.B. Papenfus subdivided his farm and began selling plots — initially to white buyers, but with little success due to the farm's distance from Johannesburg. In that same year, it was proclaimed a "native township."

### A loophole in history

Because Alexandra was established before the 1913 Native Land Act — the legislation that stripped most of South Africa's Black population of the right to own land — it existed in a legal grey zone. Black residents could own freehold property there. For decades, Alex was one of the only urban places in South Africa where this was possible. This created deep roots: families who owned their homes resisted relocation more fiercely than renters elsewhere.

### Apartheid then took it back

When the National Party came to power in 1948, it moved systematically to close that loophole. Freehold rights were stripped, police raided homes checking pass documents, and thousands were forcibly relocated. The township that had begun as a peculiar exception to segregation became just another controlled space within it.

→ Full Wikipedia entry on Alexandra

"Pity the poor savages"

### The media narrative around townships

Alexandra's public image has been shaped almost entirely by outsiders: journalists covering violence or protest, NGOs photographing poverty for fundraising, and tourists on guided "slum tours." Each of these frames produces a particular kind of story — one where residents are passive objects of pity or fear, not agents of their own lives.

### What this essay does differently

The author is a local — a Johannesburg resident who wanders Alex regularly. The photos are street photography, not documentary poverty tourism. People are shown going about their day: working, eating, walking to school, sitting with friends. The essay names the pity-narrative explicitly in order to reject it.

### The "township tour" problem

Since the early 2000s, guided township tours have become a feature of Johannesburg tourism — sold as "authentic" experiences. Critics have noted the tension between economic benefit to communities (guides, vendors, restaurants) and the voyeuristic framing these tours can reproduce. The best guides — like those working out of the Alexandra Heritage Precinct — lean into local history and community voice rather than scenic poverty.