Everywhere in Johannesburg small projects and artistic developments pop up to thrill and entertain everyone - you can find hilarious comedy acts, large-scale operas, art exhibitions, intimate theater performance and poetry readings in a number of venues. Listings can be found by paging through the
Tonight supplement to the city’s main daily newspaper,
The Star (website:
www.tonight.co.za).As well as the lively theater scene, Johannesburg’s annual festivals, which cover nearly every artistic field, are
an engrossing way to sample different aspects of the city’s cultural life. See also
www.702.co.za for searchable daily listings of Johannesburg happenings and events. There is also a good online guide that lists art exhibitions in the city (website:
www.artthrob.co.za).
Tickets to cultural events are available from
Computicket (tel: 011 340 8000
or 083 915 8000; website:
www.computicket.com), the national reservations system, which also has kiosks in the larger shopping malls.
Music: The lusty lyrics and irresistible dance beats of
kwaito can be heard blasting out of taxis, clubs, shebeens and street parties throughout Johannesburg. The genre uses local languages and street slang in lyrics that reflect life in South Africa and employs a distinct South African style of dancing and dressing.You can listen to
kwaito at the
Horror Cafe, 15 Miriam Makeba Street (tel: 011 838 6735), and
Carfax,
39 Pim Street (tel: 011 834 9187; website:
www.carfax.co.za), both in Newtown, or
The Rock, 1987 Vundla Street (tel: 011 986 8182), in Soweto, among many other places. Jazz is also popular, the best venues being Newtown’s
Kippies Jazz Club, at the Market Theater, 121 Bree Street (tel: 011 836 1805; website:
www.kippies.co.za) and
The Bassline, 10 Henry Nxumalo Street (tel: 011 838 9145; website:
www.bassline.co.za), and Sandton’s
Blues Room, Village Walk (tel: 011 838 9145; website:
www.bluesroom.co.za).
Theater: Since 1976 and the days of protest theater, the
Market Theater Company, 121 Bree Street, Newtown (tel: 011 832 1641; website:
www.markettheater.co.za), has gained a reputation for putting on productions that are socially relevant. The
Civic Theater Complex, Loveday Street, Braamfontein (tel: 011 877 6800; website:
www.showbusiness.co.za), comprises the
Nelson Mandela Theater (formerly Civic Main),
Tesson,
Thabong and
Pieter Roos theaters and an art gallery. Shows are mainly local productions, musicals, ballet, comedy and pantomime (when in season). The incredibly powerful 26-strong
Soweto Gospel Choir (website:
www.sowetogospelchoir.com) regularly plays there.
Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theater, Shop 65, Montecasino Boulevard, on the corner of William Nicol Drive and Witkoppen Road, Fourways (tel: 011 511 1818; website:
www.montecasinotheater.co.za), owned by the great impresario who gave it his name, gives both new and established artistes opportunities for new directions and growth.
A new 1,900-seater theater has recently been added to the complex, built especially to stage South Africa’s version of
The Lion King (website:
www.lionkingsa.co.za)
. Another well known theater and cabaret figure, Richard Loring, runs a supper theater,
The Sound Stage, Old Pretoria Road, Midrand (tel: 011 315 5084; website:
www.soundstage.co.za).
Dance: Dance Factory, President Street, Newtown Cultural Precinct (tel: 011 833 1347), hosts a huge range of international and local performers, often mixing classical and ethnic styles.
Film: Every major shopping center has a cinema complex showing mainstream movies, either run by
Ster-Kinekor (website:
www.sterkinekor.com) or
Nu-Metro (website:
www.numetro.co.za), with advance booking through
Computicket (tel: 011 340 8000
or 083 915 8000; website:
www.computicket.com). Increasingly, the cinemas are installing swipe machines for credit cards to receive pre-booked tickets. On one day of the week, usually Tuesdays, tickets are half price.
Cinema Nouveau, located at The Mall of Rosebank, 50 Bath Avenue, Rosebank (tel: 011 880 2866), shows art-house films and regularly hosts film festivals.
Some notable films set in Johannesburg include
Mapantsula (1988), which tells of a petty hoodlum caught up in the events of the student riots in Soweto,
The Foreigner (1994), which deals with the growing xenophobia aimed mostly at immigrant Africans in Johannesburg, and
The Line (1996), which portrays ordinary South Africans caught up in the violent times of a fast changing society.To date the most famous South African-made movie is
Tsotsi, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the 2005 Academy Awards. Entirely filmed in Soweto, and in the Tsotsi Taal language, it tells the moving story of a violent and murderous gangster who finds himself unwittingly looking after a baby he found on the back seat of a car he hijacked. Tsotsi Taal is mixture of Afrikaans, English and African words, which was developed to communicate across different languages in the townships and is commonly used in
kwaito music - a sort of gangster rap.
Literary Notes: Johannesburg’s tumultuous past (and present) has provided fertile grounds for the growth of a rich literary tradition. An excellent source of books is the
African Books Collective (website:
www.africanbookscollective.com).Nadine Gordimer, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born close to the city in 1923 and has lived in Parktown, Johannesburg since 1948. In
The House Gun (1998), set in Johannesburg, she explores, through a murder trial, the problems of a violence-ridden post-apartheid society. In his writings about Johannesburg, Herman Charles Bosman (1910-1951) presents the soul of the city as reflecting the soul of Africa. To understand the background as to why Johannesburg has fascinated so many writers,
Gandhi’s Johannesburg: Birthplace of Satyagraha (2000), by Eric Itzkin, and
Johannesburg, One City, Colliding Worlds (2004), by Lindsey Bremner, are both a good initial read.
Although Nelson Mandela was not born in Johannesburg, he did have a law practice here in the 1950s and was arrested in the suburb of Rivonia, before being tried and convicted for treason in 1963. Mandela’s autobiography
Long Walk to Freedom (1995) provides a remarkable insight into what Johannesburg in the 1940s and 50s was like for this extraordinary man.
Zakes Mda’s novel about Sophiatown,
Heart of Redness (2001), explores the area during ’The golden 50s, the flowering of South African culture and the Sophiatown renaissance’. One of Johannesburg’s most famous theatrical sons is Pieter-Dirk Uys, possibly better known as his alter-ego Evita Bezuidenhout. Pieter-Dirk Uys started irritating South African politicians and censors with his plays from 1973 onwards. His better known or more notorious works include
Adapt or Dye (1981), which parodied the white regime’s preoccupation with skin color and, more recently,
Truth Omissions (1996/1997), a somewhat acerbic comment on South Africa’s Truth Commission, a post-apartheid platform to facilitate reconciliation and reparation.
One of South Africa’s greatest living poets, Don Mattera, was born in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown in 1935. His grandparents sent him to a private Catholic boarding school, which he hated. Here he acquired little other than skills in English, boxing and codes of masculinity, which he turned to great advantage on his return to Sophiatown, where he became leader of one of the most notorious gangs, the Vultures. Then, slowly, along with the campaign against the apartheid removals (from Sophiatown), began the process of politicization (membership of the ANC Youth League) and his transformation from gangland boss to political activist.
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