MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

8 Months of lockdown and thousands of Gauteng athletes and artists still awaiting relief funding

Dear Johannesburg

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng is disappointed to learn that none of the Gauteng athletes and artists who applied for financial assistance from the Gauteng Department of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation (SACR) as part of the relief fund have received these funds.

The DA is in possession of an SMS sent to all Gauteng Relief Fund applicants by the department. The department apologises to the applicants for the delays in processing their applications and states that the outcome of the Gauteng Relief Fund is currently in the audit phase.

The SMS also states that the outcomes were supposed to be released on 30 September 2020 and will now be released by no later than 30 October 2020.

The applications for relief funding were opened on 14 June 2020 and was closed on 26 June 2020 and the payment process was supposed to have begun in July 2020.

The fact that none of the applicants has received relief funding due to unnecessary delays is a clear indication that this department cares little about the challenges faced by our artists and athletes during this national lockdown period as a result of the deadly Coronavirus pandemic.

It is worrying that in eight months of the national lockdown the department has not yet provided any financial relief to our artists and athletes who are struggling financially and unable to make ends meet.

The DA calls on the Gauteng MEC for Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation (SACR), Mbali Hlophe to take full responsibility for her department’s poor showing. We will continue to monitor the process of providing financial assistance to our artists and athletes and will continue putting pressure on MEC Hlophe to speed up the process.

Regards

Kingsol Chabalala MPL
DA Gauteng Spokesperson for Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation (SACR)

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Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.