MyJHB
Stuff from Johannesburg
The Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Councillor Dada Morero, together with the Gauteng MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Jacob Mamabolo, will brief the media this afternoon on the agreement signed between the City and the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) to resolve the long-standing PFA impasse.
The briefing will outline the agreement’s terms, what it means for the City and SAMWU, and the next steps for implementation.
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.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Digest: October 2026 Headlines & Reports