Plaza

I do not know where to begin when it comes to the Plaza.

Shall I speak to you as a “Joburger” and tell you that it is a place in which everything can be found, including community?

Allow me to tell you that shopping is a whole other experience in the Plaza which bursts with colour and colourful people who make your heart happy. It is a hidden gem, a momentary escape from the city, where buying samosas and a cooldrink to enjoy while you sit under the clocktower in the hot Johannesburg sun is a balm for your soul.

Do I speak to you as a geographer and tell you that the Plaza has an oppressive history?

Comb through the records and learn there once existed a neighbourhood where it now stands, that once the “Red Square” was known for its political activity where people organised against Apartheid. Understand that a few kilometres away, in 14th Street in a neighbourhood called Fietas, there was a thriving economy that threatened the Apartheid government, so much so that its residents were forcibly removed. The neighbourhood was bulldozed to the ground. Just like they bulldozed all of the homes in Fordsburg to build the Plaza.

Rubble remembers.

Think of how the businesses and families who had lost their vibrant, multicultural homes moved their shops into a cold and enclosed structure to trade under new rules, regulations, and surveillance. Of how the dynamism of a lively community, with all of its diversity and opportunity, was stripped from its people.

Or do I speak to you as me?

The first generation of my family to grow up in post-Apartheid Plaza and not in Fietas. As a witness to resilient people who mourn Fietas everyday as a place that now only exists in their memories, but who extended its spirit into this space by taking something oppressive and making it warm, welcoming, and beautiful — who stand outside their shops making jokes and talking to all passersby.

This site, where its residents made an opportunity out of the pain, taking up space, reclaiming it, making it their own. An entry point into the economic and socio-cultural fabric of this city. A place that was never meant to thrive but flourished anyway. A place meant to wipe away smiles, but the laughter rings through its corridors anyway. A space meant to erase an entire history but its stories and pictures are still told and shared. Through its structure, through its culture, through its idiosyncrasies, and through those who still carry the scars of the past and smile gently anyway.