Return to Yeoville

Back when I was a student, Yeoville was one of the best parts of Joburg to live in - Rocky Street was full of cafes, bars and bookshops, and the flats in the streets around, with pressed ceilings and parquet floors, were occupied by artists and students. My first flat, Glenton Court, was just around the corner from Rocky Street, and my 18 months there have to count as one the happiest phases of my life. But already when I was living there in 1995, urban decay had set in. Drug dealers killed someone just around the corner, and I was mugged just outside Glenton Court, and never felt secure there again.

Today I rode through Yeoville again. Glenton Court is boarded up, and the book shops and cafes are long gone, although the legendary House of Tandoor is still there. The library seemed closed. There are a lot of spaza shops (people selling sweets and other small items of groceries from a garage) and fried fast food joints now dominate Rockey Street. There's a combination taxi rank and open-air market which has been built by the city. Congolese hairdressers and money transfer offices ply their trade. In New York, what has happened to Yeoville would be called something like degentrifaction.

Joburg is notorious for changing again and again and again and not preserving the past, but for me the city has lost something precious with Yeoville.