[10 Pics] S.Africa: My Photos of empty shops In Johannesburg's shopping malls...

I am slowly catching up on lots of photos I've kept which I've taken over the years and want to show to you folks.

These photos below I took in the last 5 years at various places. They show shops leaving shopping centres or, shops which once were professional being replaced by "cheaper" or "downgraded" shops with more inferior product lines. Most of these shops I might add have remained unoccupied for years.

The first two pictures are from a shopping centre in Northcliff, Johannesburg. Most of the shops in that photo are empty. This particular centre underwent tremendous upgrades round about 1994 when South Africa moved towards black rule. The shopping centre owners no doubt believed a massive boom was about to occur. So the place was heavily upgraded. In fact, in the years afterwards, the new shops were mostly never occupied and many of the shops in the centre actually lost their core businesses.


The shop below was once a nice professional business but was later replaced by this very drab looking set of tables selling mainly second hand books.

This photo below shows an empty shop on the right to let. I often go to this place so I can tell you what happened in the years after I took this photo. The "Foto First" shop in the pic shut its doors and moved out. Eventually both shops were re-occupied by a type of "miracle church" which claims that healing miracles take place. It is a far cry from the professional shopping centre it once was.

Another example of a "cheaper" type of shop replacing something that was really professional once.

The empty shop below used to be a branch of Nedbank.

This is another shopping centre which also underwent a massive loss of business. To hide the empty shops they put this paper over the windows.

If you will look at the upper and lower areas in this photo below, of the same shopping centre, you will see that same paper pattern over the windows of almost all the shops in view. That will give you an idea of the extent to which businesses closed down. I might add that I took these photos some years ago during the President Mbeki "boom years" when the mass media in America were saying how fabulous business was in South Africa!! Yeah right... pardon my skepticism... but this was MY VIEW of how things really looked!!

More of the same. The shop right at the far end of this photo had previously also been occupied by a large branch of Nedbank.

Same here - more paper over the windows of the empty shops. The massive BOOM that everyone predicted was nothing more than a stock market boom on the JSE. On the ground, it never meant much.

Posted By: Jan
AfricanCrisis Webmaster
Author of: Government by Deception

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
(George Orwell)

My all time favourite movie quote is from the Dwarf in Lord of the Rings: "Certainty of death, small chance of success... what are we waiting for?"

Date Posted: Wednesday 12-Nov-2008
arguement can be settled by having several different people take current shots since some commenters are saying these pics are old, but if I remember reading the article correctly the guy even says some of them are several years old.

Take pictures of the malls in the area nowadays and if possible from the same angles the original photos were taken and compare them side by side.

It is that easy to see if what is being said is true.

wondering

Date Posted: Monday 10-Nov-2008
i visited johanisburg in 1987, was taken to a mall, which one i don't remember.

what impressed me then was the quality of the goods. the best from italy and france. i'd never seen anything like it in the malls of the US where they're filled with cheap, affordable stuff.

i thought, wow, the whites are livin on high in this country!

Kim Sky

Date Posted: Monday 10-Nov-2008
I'm sorry this article and pics are totally misleading....the pics i wud say are about very old....every shopping centre that i have been to and have tried to gain occupancy for various clients usually have a waiting list....of tenants that willing to occupy any vacant shop.in some centre's one cannot even get vacant shop.....

peterx

Date Posted: Monday 10-Nov-2008
Jan has made reference to the Randburg mall. This is part of Randburg's central business district and had changed drastically over the last 20 years because of economic and demographic changes. The changes to Randburg'd CBD reflect the changes in many other parts of town. Perhaps Andre of Randburg can bear me out on this one.

Back in the 1960s the area where Sandton and Randburg in Johannesburg are now was very per-urban and country-like. Liberal elements in Johannesburg initiated moves to break away from the Johannesburg city council municipal area which led to the establishment of Sandton (the name derives from a mixing of the two suburbs at its extremities) in the north as a separate municipality in the mid-60s. Following this, the conservative Afrikaner community pushed for a similar thing and this led to the establishment of Randburg in the north west with what was then its more conservative Afrikaans character as opposed to Sandton's liberal character.

In fact the Crossroads centre at on end of the Randburg Mall refers to the days in the 60s when there was nothing there but the crossing of some main roads.

In the course of time the stretch of Hill Street between the Crossroads Centre (at the intersection of Jan Smuts Road, what is now Beyers Naude (The old HF Verwoerd Road) both roads coming from the south, and Main Road which leads to Bryanston to the north)and Knt Avenue was turned into a pedestrian mall - the Ranburg Mall.

I remember the 1980s and into the 90s when I lived in Ferndale close to the Randburg CBD with the mall at its centre. It was a thriving area, with shops, banks, restuarants, cinemas and offices. The mall was always busy. And the many parking areas in the CBD were always full and one often had to wait for parking.

In the mid 90s a change started coming over the CBD and in particular the mall. Whites who frequented the area stopped doing so and suddnly one started seeing more and more vacant shops. Even the parking area were suddenly vacant lots. Then slowly shops started opening up which catered for a black market. No more shops with fancy fittings and attractive shop fronts. Just shops with utilitarian shop fittings, cheaper goods and very unattractive shop fronts.

Suddenly the Randburg Mall looked like parts of the inner city of Johannesburg or stretches of Louis Botha Avenue along the minibus taxi route from Hillbrow to Alexandra.

The places like the banks, post office, Shoprite, Telkom etc concentrated and moved into one particular building. The other buildings have become a bit run down with tenants paying much lower rentals. And the many parking areas remain mainly vacant.

Even the presence of some major office buildings of listed companies in the area has failed to revive the Ranbdburg mall and the CBD.

The money in Randburg sits in many other shopping centres and malls elsewhere in Randburg, for example, the highly successful conglomeration of retail and trade stores on Malibongwe Drive (formerly Hans Strydom Drive) next to the N1 concrete highway. Perhaps that is the fate of some of the other malls Jan is talking about.

Robert van Tonder and his fellow Hersigte Nasionale Party members must be turning in their graves given Randburg CBD's black character and the nearby enormous minibus taxi rank.

Their dream of creating an Afrikaans commercial business centre to rival Sandton's CBD is long forgotten.

Peter
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Monday 10-Nov-2008
HI there

I am in Cape Town so cannot comment on the situation up in Jhb. Down here we also have a few badly positioned shopping centres that are struggling as well. The majority of shopping centres are doing very well. I do not think you can read anything in to the odd few shopping centre that is not performing, and that goes for anywhere in the world. I think the articles is a bit misleading in that it makes a few isolated cases in to the norm.

RJ Louw

Date Posted: Monday 10-Nov-2008
Hi,

This mall that is displayed is the Heathway centre in Northcliff . .

This is not how the mall currently looks.

There are stacks of new stores that have opened and they have completed a lot of renovations. There was a period where it was totally dead but they have reworked it very well.

I agree the economy is on the blink but this particular mall is a bad example as it at the moment is prospering again.

Cheers
Steve

savn

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
A few thoughts:

1. To be fair, a lot of malls all over are dying. Call it a combination of commercial oversaturation and bad economic times - the tail end of corporate welfare and a consumer driven economy that exports manufacturing jobs and imports poverty.

2. Some malls - in my neck of the woods the South Coast Plaza in Irvine and Fashion Island in Newport Beach - "seem" to be doing well. As for the rest, well, the consumer is overextended, the malls themselves didn't really offer that much variety, and internet shopping is easier and cheaper.

3. Of the malls that are dying -Del Amo in Torrance and South Bay Galleria in Redondo - the causes in part can be traced back to an influx of too many inner city ethnic types and the resulting flight of paying customers, mainly women, who feel threatened or uneasy by the people around them. (It also doesn't help that there have been muggings and at least one murder at the Galleria). It's a classic textbook case of psychographic "people like us" in action - they drive the 25 miles or so on the freeway down to South Coast Plaza - though people are reluctant to say as much due to an aversion to being perceived as "politically incorrect" or "racist." (Racism has nothing to do with it; it's cultural bias and worldview. I was told by one woman - a rather lovely hispanic for the record - that the above malls were nothing but "barrio and baggy pants").

4. I suspect that in the case of the above South African mall, a similar set of dynamics are in play.

5. Likewise, I suspect that South Africa's economy has suffered from any number of "politically correct" policy decisions and cronyism that has adversely affected what ought to be quite a rich country. In turn, that has impacted the mall in question, and the local/national economy as a whole.

6. And that - all the above - ultimately leads us to what South Africa's (and Rhodesia's and most of Africa's) real core problem is: left wing racism in action and the fraud of diversity and non-assimilation to the mean. Kind of what we're going through here in California.

Just a thought.

VICB3
PALOS VERDES ESTATES
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
In the light of those who wish to question what I've put up here, I will go and find all my photos of Randburg city centre... because the ENTIRE CITY CENTRE and all its shops have changed considerably, and there you cannot blame "competition" for what happened in Randburg. And Randburg is not all that far from these areas.

Jan Lamprecht
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
re: Deliberately misleading.
And you know this for a fact? I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Well, among the many other photos I will still be putting up are photos of the Randburg mall which experienced the same thing.

Jan Lamprecht
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
Hi Mick,
Yes, it really is Johannesburg. I took these myself.

Make no mistake, Johannesburg has class. A South African who lived in Canada for many years mey me one day in the Rosebank mall in Johannesburg - which is very nice indeed. He told me that you'd struggle to find a mall that nice in Canada.

Yes... and this is South Africa on the downhill.

South Africa, in its day, totally ROCKED!!! It was first world.

And these places are nice... these ones are in the Western/Northern suburbs where I live which are nice areas.

And yes, you'll mostly only see whites there.

But blacks and whites live in different proportions in different parts of Johannesburg.

Jan Lamprecht
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
... and has anyone noticed how many insurance companies divested themselves out of shopping malls over the last decade or so?

It always amazed me how any landlords thought 10 to 15 percent rental escalations (annually compounded) could be sustained year after year. Something had to give and it did.

Gairk
In the EU

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
Grant,
Its half baked story, yip the mall in question is facing a bleak future as the competition on a 16km stretch of road is tight... as with other less trendy malls, its on life support and only a matter of time before it is either shutdown or revived, then again its like putting lipstick on a pig.

Jan, I think you should post a few pictures of the competition.
Andre

Andre
randburg
rsa

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
Jan: blame advancing socialism/communism/feminism

Read my appeal to Frosty Wooldridge:

#######
#######

November 9, 2008

Hi, Frosty:

Re: socialist/communist Obama as president-elect

So, are you now going to begin using
the ONLY means to reversing this
course towards socialism's/commu-
nism's RACIAL MONGRELIZATION schemes
for America (the West) ?:

DEFEND
against the GENOCIDE and CULTUR-
ICIDE of white Western civiliza-
tion by CHARGING LEFTISTS WITH
genocide and culturicide of
whites and their Western culture?

As I've been saying/writing for
over 20 years:

"The Diversity
Movement is
anti-white
racism...is
GENOCIDAL for
whites."

Not one conservative writer/col-
umnist had had the mental where-
withal to see that that was the
truth, and warn his/her readers;
and I had contacted nearly all
of them over the years through
my newsletter and by personal
letters of appeal!

Now, Obama is going to put the
final nail in the coffin of what
was the shinning light/beacon of
hope in the world: the Founders'
America.

Again, ONLY a RACIAL DEFENSE can
begin any recovery of what's being
lost.

Insert the idea into your essays
this way, by ALWAYS putting it in
the form of a question:

Is it racist to defend one's race
against an on-going genocide; i.e.,
are white men and women racist for
protecting their race from this
on-going genocide against whites
throughout the Western world, via
open-borders immigration of ANTI-
WHITE TRIBES within every white
Western nation-state?

-or some variation of that idea.

Once again, I've studied Marxism/
socialism/communism/feminism for
over 30 years (reading and writing
on the isms of Leftism). A CRITICAL
TENET of Marxism is RACIAL MONGREL-
IZATION, as there can be no races
but one: a MONGRELIZED, ETHNICALLY
INDISTINCT "race" of slaves to
Global Economic Socialism, under
UNIVERSAL socialism/communism/
feminism (( feminism is communism on
the march )):

http://no-maam.blogspot.com/

Please pass along my thoughts to
your close political correspon-
dents. Ask them what they think.


#######
#######

Deacon

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
This article is deliberately misleading. This shopping centre has been struggling for many years - it's in the wrong place and has been hit by competition from many other shopping centres built locally in the last few years.

Globetrotter

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
Are you sure this picture is of a mall in Johannesburg? I swear the empty stores make it look like a former shopping mall in my hometown.

Mick
USA

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
By the way, all my photos are merely of malls in my area. There are hundreds of shopping malls across Johannesburg and I've not gone to visit them all to see what they're all like.

But again, these ones I took photos of, were ones I had visited regularly over the years, so I watched as businesses died out, shops closed, banks closed, etc.

It was not something the mass media ever mentioned.

Jan Lamprecht
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Sunday 09-Nov-2008
These photos come from 2 shopping malls near my home in the Western part of Johannesburg.

No, not all malls are like this. But my point was that both these shopping malls, had undergone a tremendous drop in occupancy at a time when people were claiming that South Africa was booming.

The photos of the mall where you see the whites, and the upper and lower parts of the mall with paper everywhere, had had shops which were all occupied in prior years.

I have other photos from a much larger shopping mall in Randburg, which I will post where you will see stacks of empty shops.

So yes, this is not true for every place, but I wanted to show that at a time when people overseas believed everything was in the grip of a massive economic boom, it really did not seem that way.

PS: I was here during the boom of 1981, and I saw what real wealth was then. It is very different to the "boom" that people claimed existed after the ANC came to power.

Jan Lamprecht
Johannesburg
South Africa

Date Posted: Saturday 08-Nov-2008
Dare I say Horizon View Shopping Centre in Roodepoort, West of Johannesburg is going the same way, if it hasn't done so already.

R8RCrazy
New Zealand

Date Posted: Saturday 08-Nov-2008
Looks like all these photos were taken in the same shopping centre ?

The heading implies that JNB shopping malls in general are in a similar situation. Can anyone lend credibility to the heading.... by confirming that this is indeed the case ?

Grant
Perth
Australia