MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Urgent e-Toll decision required

Dear Johannesburg

News that SANRAL has issued a tender for the management of the controversial e-toll system in July, makes a decision on the future of e-tolls by cabinet an urgent one.

The tender was adertised (and closes today) because cabinet has not yet informed SANRAL about which way it is going with e-tolls.

The people of Gauteng have spoken and signalled to government in no uncertain terms that e-tolls must go.

To waste time and energy in considering a tender that may never be awarded is counter productive. Even worse, if the tender is awarded and e-tolls is scrapped, it will leave a contractual burden for SANRAL.

Government needs to make its decision on e-tolls known as a matter of urgency before the tender proceeds any further.

Regards

Fred Nel MPL
DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Roads and Transport

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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.