Introduction: Facts About Alexandra Township

Alexandra Township
Picture Credit: Art and Design website (pria.org). Visit the website for more of their fantastic pictures.

Alexandra Township in Johannesburg is a sprawling ghetto township, some twelve kilometers, north-east of the city centre.  It is surrounded by wealthy suburbs like Sandton, Kelvin, and Wendywood.

Driving through Alexandra leaves one with the overall impression of squalor and desperate poverty witnessed in the polluted streets, the overcrowded shacks, and the many unemployed people milling about the streets.

The story of Alexandra goes back to 1904 when it was very much part of Johannesburg's farmland.

In 1912, Alexandra was proclaimed a native township, and by 1916, the Alexandra Health Committee was established to manage Alexandra.  This settlement accommodated around thirty thousand people then.  The Committee received no funds from the city council for managing the township.  The roads were untarred, no rainwater drainage system, no streetlights, no sewerage system, and haphazard shack settlement took the appearance of a ghetto.

In 1948, Alexandra was administered by the Peri-Urban Areas Health Board, and through the issuing of permits and passes, further settlement of people in the township was controlled. Police raided homes, checking on passes, and residents not in possession of relevant documents were systematically moved out of Alexandra.

Alexandra Township has been under threat of demolition many times in its ninety-year-old history.
A friendship between a church Pastor and a cabinet minister is what finally saved the township from demolition in 1979.  The church minister was the Reverend Sam Buti, who initiated and drove the Save Alex campaign in the late 1970s, and Dr Piet Koornhof, minister of cooperation and development during the apartheid government.

In the early 1990s, the township was racked by violence in the run-up to the first democratic elections in 1994.  Violence broke out between residents in the men's hostels and residents at the south of the hostels, an area that became known as Beirut.

In 1998, a development plan was drawn up, planned to reduce Alexandra's population and divide the township into development zones.
Superblocks, three-storeyblocks, were to be built to house 3,000 people.  Total cost to be R3 billion. An athletes' village was constructed in 1999 for the All African Games on the Far East Bank area. It was called Tsutsumani and consisted of 1,700 free-standing, semi-detached, and simplex units.  These are now occupied by Alexandrans who have been on the housing waiting list and qualified.

In February 2001, President Thabo Mbeki announced the Alexandra Renewal Project and that an amount of R1.3 billion has been made available, and that over the period of seven years, the township is  to be upgraded.

In the last decade, there have been flickers of hopeful private/public sector investment in Alexandra, in the quest to uplift Alexandra’s quality of life.  In year 2000, the Bombani Shelter for Abused Women was opened, run by three volunteers from the community. Later Alexandra People’s Centre opened, providing an information centre, a help and complaints desk, as well as a centre for the payment for local rates, electricity, and water.

After the World Summit on Sustainable Development, a resource centre used at the summit was donated to Alexandra Township. It consists of sixteen computers, a call centre for five operators, an audiovisual centre with two televisions, two video machines and a screen and cameras, and a conference or education room.

In an effort to bring tourists and their money into the township, tours in Alexandra are now conducted. The township now boasts several restaurants and bed-and-breakfast establishments.

Source: City of Johannesburg website

Order the book right now or download the E-book from these websites: https://www.amazon.com/Memories-Life-Alexandra-Township-Know/dp/1483693805 (Amazon)  or http://www.takealot.com/the-memories-of-my-life-in-alexandra-township-i-know/PLID36786983 (Takealot)