MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Flash and NRCS Conduct Compliance Inspections

Members of the Rustenburg SAPS Firearm, Liquor and Second-Hand Goods (FLASH) Unit, Sergeant Beukes and Sergeant Moyo, joined forces with various stakeholders, including the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS), to conduct compliance inspections in the Rustenburg CBD and taxi rank on Thursday, 10 September 2026.

Butcheries were among the businesses inspected, resulting in the confiscation of meat products that did not comply with the required standards. The NRCS issued notices to comply and receipts for the confiscated goods, while fines were also issued.

The Acting District Commissioner of Bojanala Platinum Sub-District 2, Brigadier Mamotsamai Ntoagae, commended the members and stakeholders involved in the operation for their continued efforts to ensure compliance with the law and protect consumers. She urged business owners to comply with all relevant regulations and warned that non-compliant businesses will be dealt with accordingly.

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The Randlord Mansions: History

The history of these mansions is also a story of urban warfare and preservation. In the 1960s and 70s, as Johannesburg expanded, many of the original Parktown estates were ruthlessly demolished to make way for the M1 Highway and the massive concrete campus of the Wits University Medical School. The “Parktown War” saw heritage activists fighting the bulldozers to save what remained of the city’s architectural soul. Today, several of the surviving mansions serve as corporate headquarters, schools, or museums, stripped of their private domesticity but preserved as monuments to a gilded age.

Interestingly, these mansions also played a secret role in the city’s political evolution. It was in the drawing rooms of Parktown that the “progressive” mining elite would meet to discuss the future of the country, often finding themselves at odds with the more conservative Boer government. Lady Florence Phillips, in particular, used her influence to found the Johannesburg Art Gallery, insisting that a world-class city needed world-class culture, not just gold bars. Today, walking the “Heritage Trail” through Parktown offers a haunting contrast; you stand in the quiet, manicured gardens of the victors, looking down at the pulsing, crowded city that their gold mines created. It is the ultimate “view from the top,” a reminder that the extreme wealth of Sandton today has its DNA rooted in the stone-and-timber palaces of the 1900s.