With Covid-19 having dealt a devastating blow to the tourism industry worldwide, it was reassuring to discover a small tourist operation in Joburg’s CBD that had been able to survive the crisis by running inner-city walking tours. On 20 and 21 November 2020, we went on a walking tour through the gritty streets of Joburg’s CBD. Our guide was Charlie Moyo from JoburgPlaces & Thunder Walker, a tour company founded in 2011 by Gerald Garner, the author of many books on Joburg, including
Spaces & Places – Johannesburg.
We began our day with a briefing by Charlie in the restaurant of JoburgPlaces building on 110 Fox Street, an elegant Edwardian structure that was built in 1904 as the head office of the then United Building Society. The building, which is situated on the recently renovated Gandhi Square, is where the court building once was and where Mahatma Gandhi practised law. This 120-year-old building is one of the few “survivors” of Joburg’s tumultuous history of archite