| Workers' Library to open as museum |
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| Written by Lucille Davie | ||
| Friday, 10 October 2008 | ||
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The last workers' compound left in Johannesburg is being restored. Its most recent incarnation was as the Workers' Library, but change is again coming to the Newtown Workers' Electricity Compound. 
The worker statue in orange overall stands in front of the workers' quarters, holding a spade
THE Newtown Workers' Electricity Compound, the last remaining example of a workers' compound in the city, is to be opened next year as a museum commemorating Joburg's municipal workers. Built in 1913 and referred to nowadays as the Workers' Library and Museum, the Newtown compound consists of three semi-detached "shiftmen's" or artisans' cottages, and a stand-alone manager's house. Directly behind them are several corrugated iron shacks, housing domestic workers who worked for the artisans and manager. And behind the shacks lies the U-shaped workmen's quarters, a red-brick, single-storey building with a wraparound veranda and a courtyard, reminiscent of a British-style primary school with a quadrangle. "The Newtown compound is the only intact example of an early municipal compound in Johannesburg," explain architects Henry Paine and Barry Gould, and historian Sue Krige in a report on the complex. The compound was in use until 1976. 
The sleeping quarters, consisting of concrete beds in rows
Men used to sleep in long rows of hard concrete "beds", next to one another, a small concrete lip separating one from the next, with no privacy. A wooden platform above the concrete beds accommodated more men. Each dormitory contained a coal stove, used for heating and cooking, while dishes and probably clothes were washed in a long slanted concrete basin directly outside the dorms. Bathrooms with open showers were at the eastern side of the building. The workmen's quarters housed about 396 men who worked on the city's electricity generating plant right on their doorstep. "The electrical precinct as a whole tells the story of the extraordinary expansion of Johannesburg, a global city, and central to this growth, the role played by the provision of power," say the researchers.
Demolition of cooling towers
Other buildings in the electricity complex include the Turbine Hall, now converted to offices for AngloGold Ashanti; and other assorted buildings and chimneys in that block, long gone except for one solitary chimney. Two blocks of Miriam Makeba Street, on the eastern border of the complex, did not exist originally, the space for the road only having been created since the demolition of the buildings. 
A magnificent row of palm trees, probably over 60 years old
A short avenue of large, mature palm trees runs east of the compound, offsetting the old buildings, a reminder of the age of the site. Electricity was produced from this Newtown plant until 1976, when Eskom put pressure on the City to close it and the Orlando Power Station in Soweto. After that time the council used the building largely as a storage facility, removing the doors and most of the concrete beds. The report indicates that when the electrical compound in Newtown was built, there were already 12 compounds in the city, most of which were for cleansing workers. Others were built for the engineering, gas, and tramways departments. They were built in Vrededorp, Bertrams, Bez Valley, Jeppestown, Troyeville, Wolhuter, Norwood and Natalspruit. Workers were migrants, and the compounds were a model of the gold-mining industry's compounds. "The Johannesburg municipality was the second largest employer of migrant workers, outside the mines," says the report. The mine compound model was first introduced by De Beers in Kimberley in the 1870s, to house diamond workers.
Original library 
The original Newtown Workers’ Electricity Compound, with the U-shaped workmens' quarters just left of centre
The library then moved to Troy Street, where weekly seminars and workshops were held, says Anne-Katrine Bicher, the project manager of the Workers' Museum Re-development Programme at Khanya College, where the library is presently located in the CBD. High rent in Troy Street forced it to look elsewhere, and the old Newtown compound was identified as a possible site. The Workers' Library and Museum opened in Newtown in 1995. "At its new location the library was not only a place for reading and studying, but also a venue for book launches, political discussions and educational and cultural events, highly popular with a large number of people who otherwise wouldn't have had access to books, information and a venue for cultural activities," says Bicher. In the same year a concrete statue of a worker in orange overalls and holding a spade, was placed on a metal pedestal in front of the building. The commission was overseen by artist Andrew Lindsay, using artists from Tembisa. It was commissioned by the Municipal Workers' Union and stands several metres tall. In the late 1990s the library formed a partnership with Khanya College, which also took up residence in the Newtown building. Both organisations moved to Vogas House in Pritchard Street in 2006. The Workers' Library Resource Centre opened in this new location in 2007. 
The shacks, still standing after 95 years
"Khanya College's decision to move from the historic workers' compound to a newer, larger building in the nearby Johannesburg CBD, offered the opportunity to overhaul and reopen the resource centre with renewed enthusiasm," adds Bicher. She says the museum consisted largely of artefacts from the municipal workers, like cooking pots and plates, and wooden boxes in which they stored their belongings. Research is ongoing to find more artefacts, and some 30 interviews have been conducted with former residents of the hostel. Bicher says all municipal hostels in the province are being researched. Historian Lauren Segal is working on the displays for the new museum. The two rooms that remain as they were when the workers lived in them are to be recreated, largely from photographs. Items like sewing machines, suitcases, bicycles and cooking equipment are being collected for the displays. Segal says some of the workers had weekend tailor businesses.
National monument 
The artisans' and managers' houses on Jeppe Street
This year Paine again restored the library - giving the walls a new paint job, placing steel beams to hold up sagging interior trusses, and replacing the neglected gutters. The Johannesburg Development Agency's Celestine Mouton says this is phase one of the restoration, costing R1,6-million. A visitors' centre, directly in front of the courtyard, will be built as part of phase two, when more funding is available. The cottages fronting Mary Fitzgerald Square will also, in time, be restored. The centre will be flat-roofed so as not to interfere with the sightlines from the compound. A fence, encasing the southern, eastern and western edges of the compound, will be erected to protect the building from further degradation, as has happened over the past dozen years. A provisional opening date of February 2009 has been set for the new museum. 
The courtyard of the workers' quarters, now a peaceful, shady place
"Industrial heritage should have cultural value and significance, particularly for a city like Johannesburg," says the report. "It can be argued that there has been a consistent undervaluing of Johannesburg's industrial architecture and heritage, to the point of malicious neglect." The wilful demolition of the Richmond laundries earlier this year is certainly testimony to this. The site, called the Rand Steam Laundries and Cleaning and Dyeing Works, was established in 1902 and consisted of a small village with cottages for workers and managers; a blacksmith; a farrier for making and maintaining its carts, which were used for collecting and delivering laundry; and a soap-making section. Now it stands as an almost empty plot, with weeds growing where once a distinctive collection of buildings told of Joburg's early laundry industry. Related stories: |
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