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Stuff from Johannesburg

Major joint effort needed to meet host community challenge facing mining – Menar

Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa in the news:

  1. Major joint effort needed to meet host community challenge facing mining – Menar: A major joint effort is needed by big and small mining companies, government, labour, communities and traditional leaders and municipalities to meet the host community challenge facing South Africa’s … – “Johannesburg” – BingNews
  2. PSL, GladAfrica court battle set for kick-off: The court battle involving several GladAfrica Championship clubs and the Premier Soccer League is set to be heard in Johannesburg this week. – “Johannesburg” – BingNews
  3. What’s next for Zozibini Tunzi? SA beauty returns to SA: Zozibini Tunzi has returned to South Africa after staying in the US since her inception as the longest-reigning Miss Universe. And music and television are just some of the many things in the … – “Johannesburg” – BingNews
  4. South Africa: The Global Aids Strategy 2021-2026 Must Still Dream Ambitiously Against All Odds: We operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington DC. – “Johannesburg” – BingNews
  5. Nigeria: 17 Passengers Feared Killed in Zaria-Kano Expressway Accident: No fewer than 17 travellers were feared killed in an auto accident at Kauran Wali axis along Zaria-Kano Expressway on Saturday. – “Johannesburg” – BingNews

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Have you tried: Whale and Dolphin Watching in Algoa Bay?

Did you know this about Johannesburg? Johannesburg City Hall was constructed in 1914 by the Hawkey and McKinley construction company. The plan for the building was drawn in 1910 and construction was started in 1913 and finished in 1914. The style is described as Edwardian Baroque with a portico of Ionic columns and tower with a half dome entrance described as neo-Renaissance. Florence Phillips, an art collector and the wife of mining magnate Lionel Phillips, established the first collection for the Johannesburg Art Gallery using funds donated by her husband. The architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, came to South Africa in 1910 to examine the site and begin the designs, after Lady Florence Phillips had secured funding from the city for a purpose-built museum. The gallery was possibly Luytens’s first public building in the Beaux Arts style. It was built with a south-facing entrance, but was not completed according to the architect’s designs. It was opened to the public, without ceremony, in 1915, just after the start of the First World War.

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Top Star Drive-In: Destroyed by What Created it

However, the very thing that created the Top Star eventually destroyed it. Because the early miners had used crude methods, the Ferreira Dump—and dozens of others like it—still contained significant traces of gold. As the price of gold rose and new chemical extraction technologies (like the carbon-in-pulp process) made it profitable to “mine the waste,” the ground beneath the Top Star became more valuable than the cinema itself. In 2006, despite fierce opposition from heritage groups who argued that the dump and the drive-in were culturally significant landmarks, the projectors were turned off for the last time.

The reclamation of the dump was a staggering industrial feat. Starting in 2008, mining giant DRDGold used high-pressure water cannons to “monitor” the dump, turning 5 million tons of solid earth back into a liquid slurry. This slurry was then piped 40 kilometers across the province to a processing plant in Brakpan. By 2011, the “mountain” had completely vanished. The 50-meter-high plateau that had dominated the southern skyline for a century was reduced to a flat, dusty crater.

The disappearance of the Top Star is a poignant symbol of Johannesburg’s “extractive” nature. It is a city that consumes itself to stay alive; even its historical landmarks are subject to the fluctuating price of minerals on the London and New York stock exchanges. Today, if you drive along the M2, there is an empty space in the sky where the Top Star used to be. While the reclamation removed a source of toxic dust and “acid mine drainage,” it also erased a piece of the city’s collective memory. The land where the gold-flecked mountain once stood is now being rehabilitated for light industrial use, proving that in eGoli, even the horizon is for sale if there’s enough gold hidden inside it.