THE TOWER

Sprawling Johannesburg took a city planning decision in 1946 to remove height limitations on the construction of new buildings in this replica of Phrygia, under the rule of Midas in his mythical castle atop a hill overlooking the Witwatersrand’s abundance of gold. A symbol of boundless avarice, buildings began to extend upwards, licking the azure sky in a cheeky extension of a finger reminiscent of Babel of Shinar in the biblical Genesis.

Towards the mid-1960s vital telecommunications, between the business hub of South Africa and the rest of a rapidly growing national economy, were in jeopardy. Tall skyscrapers began to pose a threat to the functioning of the technology of the day, as they impeded the recently embraced microwave line-of-sight wireless beams that the Department of Posts and Telecommunications was eagerly attempting to roll out. The physical impediment presented by rising brick and mortar had to be addressed urgently as a hindrance to economic growth. 

It was against this background that a tower was envisaged which would be constructed at breathtaking speed, and would become an iconic partner to the broadcast tower in Brixton (originally and ironically named the Albert Hertzog Tower after the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications who zealously delayed television’s introduction in South Africa, and is today known as the Sentech Tower). Its rapid rise began in June 1968 and by April 1971 stood in splendour overlooking the great City of Gold. On a clear day the view from the public deck (closed in 1981 due to security concerns) could extend in a radius of fifty miles (eighty kilometers in today’s parlance).

The construction of the tower in the late 1960s caused consternation in the neighbourhood at the time. The rapidity at which it would rise to its final height was astounding and the attendant noise of round-the-clock construction ruffled more than a few middle class Hillbrow feathers amongst the flat dwellers. By the nature of its urgency, the building project entailed twenty-four hour shift work seven days a week and an incessant flow of concrete trucks pouring a rising engineering marvel that shifted upwards at a rate of about eighteen to twenty centimeters an hour – non stop – NON STOP! Twitchy residents were known to pelt the construction workers with rotten tomatoes and eggs from sunset to dawn as their weary souls were kept from a decent night’s rest. Abuse was hurled in a constant display of indignation at the disturbance to peace and quiet. The constant din proved to be an irritation rivalling the periodic screech of Hells Angels belting along the Hillbrow streets on their motorcycles. 

The tower was an engineering marvel envisaged as both functional and as the symbolic raising of a middle digit by a pariah state to a disenchanted world – a political statement of note. Hillbrow had been designated as a White Middle Class suburb according to the Group Areas Act of the 1950s. It was in an up-market area surrounded by young, socially and economically aspirational folk that this symbol of financial and engineering prowess would rise to cock a snook at an international community aghast at the social engineering project which was South Africa at the time.

Upon completion, a classy Heinrich’s Restaurant would revolve in an anti-clockwise motion (appropriately given the propensity of Hillbrow residents to challenge societal norms and South Africa to doggedly persist in veering upstream in an international political and moral climate that it abjured) to provide the select well-heeled patrons a panoramic view of the City, its apartment blocks, its business premises, houses with swimming pools and tennis courts, mine dumps, squalor of shanty-towns and all manner of vice and avarice in the melting pot of mid twentieth century urban life. The six public floors  about 200 meters up boasted a viewing deck and a second restaurant not quite as opulent as Heinrich’s, yet more than adequate for the select patronage of Johannesburgers and tourists qualified to visit by virtue of their pigment (or lack thereof). Thick walls of almost a meter at the base (the foundations being about 40 to 50 meters deep) and tapering to about a third of a meter near the top, kept the tower within safe parameters of sway to prevent the microwave communications from being disrupted. All of this technical information was ably shared as the three elevators swiftly whisked visitors to the public decks in seconds. It was with some trepidation that viewers would contemplate the vista when strong winds heaved this mighty structure to and fro to the extent of about 40 or 50 centimeters in any direction.

At ground level, Hillbrow was something of an oddity in a very conservative, Calvinist, state that was at once insular, but adept at circumventing opposition to stake a claim to the economic prosperity that enabled it to persist in its treatment of the bulk of its citizens in a manner noxious to mankind at large.

The precinct was a cosmopolitan melting pot of European and Middle Eastern extraction by the mid 1960s – Greek, Italian, English, Jewish, Lebanese, German to name a few. Living cheek by jowl in the flats which ranged from post-bellum veteran accommodation, now run-down and a tad shabby, to well appointed modern blocks at exorbitant rentals, this was a vibrant community. Apart from the restrictions imposed by the Group Areas Act, it was a tolerant and liberal mix of arty types who shared this quirky space with stodgy pensioner-types who tended to occupy rent-controlled units along the fringes and towards the Johannesburg General Hospital on the slopes of Hospital Hill. Between the blocks of flats, both modern and old, dingy service lanes crisscrossed the area. These represented the smelly underbelly along which dump trucks and waste removal would make their noisy way. In these lanes, potholed and filled with stagnant water, Johannesburg’s tramps would periodically emerge to harass passers-by for a Bob or two for the next bottle of spirits as fortification against the chilly Highveld winter. Even prior to the middle-class exodus of the 1980s and 90s and the attendant influx of migrants from the north, these were alleys best avoided as they were the precursor of what would become a crime infested zone spilling onto the dodgy sidewalks. 

Hillbrow was the first of South Africa’s areas to extend tolerance to the gay community, as early as 1987 electing a Member of  Parliament an activist for that cause – as representative of the Nationalist Party that had governed for decades on a platform of socially and politically conservative values. The Party that had stood foursquare behind its policy of apartheid and counted the three Calvinist Afrikaans Churches as the religious and moral underpinning of its governance, actually fielded a candidate of that persuasion in Hillbrow – and he won the seat (albeit with some tinkering in the counting, as he was later incarcerated for electoral fraud). 

The Hillbrow Tower brooded over night-life that included buzzing and popular “watering” holes and clubs pounding out music at full bore. To the beat danced patrons – and many a burlesque performer and strippers of all descriptions. The well known Glenda and her python were regulars at the more seedy joints. Businessmen in suits and ties frequented these shows unbeknownst to wives and girlfriends, one assumes.

Highpoint Centre Hillbrow was completed at about the same time as the Tower. It was a high-rise block of flats above a shopping complex that became a central hub of activity both night and day. Amongst the most popular was Fontana Bakery that moved in as one of the early lessees, although the original Fontana maintained its presence at the lower end of the precinct near Joubert Park. Fontana was a 24 hour 7 days a week operation selling all manner of delicious eats. A full roast chicken done to perfection was on sale for 85c for a good few years – before inflation took its inevitable toll. Close by was a “Sausage Shop” run by a delightful couple of Central European extraction, where one could sit around a horseshoe shaped central island bar counter and watch as the tasty comfort food was prepared. In the central (open) foyer flanked by lifts and escalators, impromptu preachers would proselytise, deft magicians would perform their acts or one or other fanatically New Age guru would engage in some persuasive posturing. Highpoint, though, had another side to it at times in those days. After midnight on New Year, Hillbrow’s Kotze and Pretoria Streets mutated into mayhem. Whether from Highpoint itself or the other blocks of flats, objects were hurled from the balconies and apartment windows onto the streets below. Objects? Indeed, OBJECTS – sometimes projectiles the size of refrigerators and stoves. Many a poor sod enjoying some foolhardy revelry in the streets of Hillbrow was felled by these missiles tossed from above. Joining the festivities in the streets below was not for the feint of heart. It required a constitution resilient against liquor induced projectiles from both mouths and windows. Normally sane residents would, at the approach of the bewitching hour at the turn of the year, become possessed of a spirit in a bottle and take leave of their senses. Street fights would ensue and the police must surely have been driven to the end of their wits. Arrests made and the arrival of dawn would witness a descending calm. The cleansing department would sweep the area and Hillbrow would be almost respectable a few hours into the new year.

Above all this rises an icon of the city. Lit at night it stood as an almost indestructible beacon transcending the folly and foibles of Hillbrow’s indomitable residents. 

References used to refresh memories of life in 1960s and 70s Hillbrow flatland:

• sahistory.org.za/place/hillbrow-tower
• the heritageportal.co.za/article/we-need-to-reclaim-our-hillbrow-tower
• bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s 12889-017-4345-1
• sapeople.com/2015/06/20/the-journey-man-extrcts-we-remember-hillbrow-south-africa
• Foundations of the Nation: The Hillbrow and Brixton Towers as Figurations of National Identity in SA. Lizè Groenewald (UJ) and Francis Legge (UJ) 15 August 2008; Sixth International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering; Missouri University of Science and Technology from https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge

©Paul M Haupt