A Jozi Revival

I’m in Johannesburg this week looking at the South African trade and investment climate. Having first visited Johannesburg in 1995, I had a particular image of what I thought I was going to return to. Then, all the businesses and government offices had abandoned their offices for commercial parks in the northern suburbs. The city skeleton that was left functioned more like an elaborate car park for taxis. Business offices were quickly repurposed to suit the new resident’s needs. Crime and squatting skyrocketed as immigrants, slum dwellers and drug dealers took refuge.

Things have changed. The city is undergoing an urban renewal, particularly because of a new generation of South Africans wanting to be with their aging parents and seeing their staying as a part of South Africa’s national development. Books like Ways of Staying, by Kevin Bloom, explore how young and skilled South Africans and settled foreigners have resisted the urge to leave South Africa for greener pastures.

National institutions, like the Johannesburg Development Agency, are working to validate their decisions. So far the JDA, which manages the City of Johannesburg’s regeneration programs, has spent R306 million providing critical governmental reassurance to property investors like Propertuity, which recently opened a cultural and arts center that houses many studios for some of the country’s most popular artists. Other districts like Newtown – as its name suggests – have organically evolved into cultural centers with ritzy glass-walled lofts catering to young professionals whose work is inspired by post-Apartheid South African society. These professionals see their living situation as both a personal expression of the national process of development and as a vital source of inspiration for their cultural and socially based work.

Still uneasy about returning to the city center but feeling the economic (and political) pull to come back, businesses have started renting cheap short term spaces in the downtown to test out the market. The central business district’s problems persist but are now comparable to those of the northern suburbs, like skyrocketing rental and land prices and miserable traffic.

The urban renewal is likely to continue, too. The bus rapid transit (BRT) system proposed to be in place for next year’s World Cup will funnel Johannesburg’s substantial middle class and youth into the city quicker, and from more places, like Soweto – where a renewal of its own is well underway.  Even as old problems persist, like copper wire theft from traffic lights and communication towers, and the maintenance of the status quo in random violent acts, many hope that Johannesburg’s small but significant changes are indicative of a country-wide revival. Green shoots, like the Eurasia Group’s claim that South Africa will emerge in better shape than most countries after the recession will continue to interest moderate-risk investors. Longer term assessments, like Goldman Sachs’ yearly review of BRICs economies, will put South Africa in favorable investment attractiveness company (GS predicted that South Africa’s per capita GDP will surpass that of the rest of the BRICs countries by 2030).  Buoying other investors is the claim that South Africa has already passed its real acid test: the near-completion of all World Cup venues, including a rapid transit system and a redesigned airport, in which were embedded the pre-requisites of all healthy economies.