Rift Valley Reflections: 2011-06-12

Saturday, 18 June 2011

Mice and Rats

I am waiting to pay, standing in the queue at Pick ‘n Pay in the Park Meadows Shopping Centre. Suddenly the cashier - a substantial woman with huge, booted feet - lunges from her seat behind the till to stomp on a mouse running across the shop floor. She kills it!

Shoppers in front and behind giggle at my shocked reaction, apparently unmoved.

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History of Bezuidenhout Valley and surrounding inner city suburbs of Joburg

The first owner of the farm, known as 'Doornfontein' is said to have been a Voortrekker named Barend Christiaan Viljoen. He apparently named the farm 'Doornfontein' because of the thorn trees (doringbome) and springs (fonteine) on the land.

Records indicate that the farm was transferred to Frederick Bezuidenhout on the same day that it was registered in the name of Viljoen by Mrs. Viljoen, who ceded the farm to the Bezuidenhout family.

Bezuidenhout was a young trekboer who came up from the Cape in 1848 and helped the Viljoen family with the farm. He eventually married the Viljoen's daughter, Judith, after whom the suburb of Judith's Paarl was named.

Frederick is believed to have built the homestead that can be seen today.

The farm consisted of approximately 4,000 hectares of ‘bleak, exposed and sparsely vegetated…’ land, extending from what is now End Street in the west to Bedfordview in the east and from Louis Botha in the north to beyond the Natal Spruit in the south. The Bezuidenhout's farm contributed to Jo'burg's transformation into the City of Gold.

The Main Reef Leader running across the south of the farm was proclaimed a public digging; there was an abundant water supply on the farm; and the requirement for land close to the growing town were critical factors in the evolution of Johannesburg.

Over time sections of the farm were auctioned off and the suburbs of Doornfontein, Jeppestown, Belgravia, Troyeville, Fairview, Bertrams, Lorentzville, Judith's Paarl, Bezuidenhout Valley, Observatory, Kensington, Cyrildene, Dewetshof, Bruma and Morninghill were founded.

Why this blog?

I was born in Johannesburg and have lived here most of my life. For 15 years I lived in the inner city suburb of Bez Valley, where I often felt like one of the characters in 'Road', a play by Jim Cartwright, who said, "It's so hard..."

My thespian nephew played the role of Scullery in the play, the narrator who "meanders aimlessly down his road pointing out features of the grim landscape and setting the scene for the glimpses we see of the inhabitants lives..."

But Cartwright does find hope in the lives of his characters and as Gilbert Keith Chesterton points out, "One sees great things from the valley and only small things from the peak."

I recently moved from Bez Valley to another liminal space on the Louis Botha Avenue side of Orchards, around the corner from Satyagraha House and across the road from the Torah Academy. This is an historically very rich part of Johannesburg and I am already planning a few blog posts.

So this blog will continue to explore the changing face of Jo'burg, moving slightly further afield than Bez Valley and the suburbs that immediately surround it, but not abandoning my starting point by any means. There is still so much to say.