Maboneng Precinct

By Cathy Gatland in Johannesburg, South Africa

The Maboneng Precinct is an area on the East side of the city that was once a scary no-go but which has been partly reclaimed from crime and urban decay by private developers. Galleries, studios, shops and restaurants are mostly enclosed inside renovated industrial buildings, but some entrepeneurs do business out in the streets and provided our small group with lots to sketch. 

It was a nightmare getting there and back as Johannesburg was experiencing one of our frequent “load-shedding”(power cutting) exercises, so all the robots (traffic lights to the rest of the world) were out, the traffic was grid-locked, the highway was closed for a movie shoot and the side streets were confusing!

 Uncle Merv’s serves coffee and smoothies and hires out bicycles if you’re brave enough to take on the taxis, jaywalking pedestrians and other surprises.

 An old Chevvie with a container on the back serves food to customers at tables on the pavement. I had two little boys who lived in nearby flats accompanying me for this one, first gleefully setting off firecrackers all around me till I complained, then sharing the tyre I was sitting on, one very helpfully holding my palette for me.

While I waited for my two sketcher friends to finish, I did a last few squiggly sketches of some passersby and a beautiful old building in a bit of a dilapidated state that I want to go back to try and sketch properly. The squiggly guy on the left was a recycling collector surfing expertly past on his home-made trolley, with his huge sack of plastic behind him – SO fast downhill on his tiny wheels – one of the surprises you wouldn’t want to collide with on a bicycle!