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"DON'T ask me dates," says Flo Bird, amateur historian and fiery five
foot tall (156cm) campaigner for preserving old Johannesburg.
Flo Bird, amateur historian and campaigner for preserving old Johannesburg
Bird, 59, lives in the house she was born in, in Parktown,
jam-packed with interesting items, hundreds of books and wonderful
artworks. She is "descended from Johannesburg pioneers", and finds it
"very exciting" to live in the city. For 30 years she has been actively
involved in researching the history of the city and promoting the
preservation of its heritage.
Her love of Johannesburg and its history came from visiting the central
library with her father as a child, and wandering around the Africana
Museum (now the MuseuMAfricA) which was on the top floor of the
library, in the city centre. "We used to pay our respects to David
Livingstone's door at the end of the gallery. We never looked at the
silver, it was too boring."
Her leisure time is taken up with her full-time passion - the city -
and like many Johannesburgers, she would never consider living anywhere
else.
The city and its residents have got a lot to be grateful for
having Bird as a passionate Jo'burger. In 1970 the city bosses proposed
a freeway plan in which the city was to be crisscrossed by roads even
wider than the present M1, cutting through many historic homes, like
The View in Parktown, built in 1897, and its neighbour, Hazeldene Hall,
built in 1902, as well as through the playing fields of St John's
College, designed by Herbert Baker.
The public battle to shelve the freeway plans continued
throughout most of the 1970s and 80s. There were more sinister
implications, says Bird. The council froze development along the route,
in an effort to drive down property prices so that they could buy the
properties needed for the freeway, cheaply. Residents on the proposed
route were frightened by possible expropriations, and shelved plans for
alterations and renovations to their homes.
But the persistent Bird and her colleagues won this battle.
"The new road was to go through old middle-class areas, and that was a
mistake. For these homeowners their home is their biggest investment;
it becomes part of their persona."
Bird mobilised those middle-class homeowners. "We got people on
to the streets, with banners, petitions, badges, and we threatened to
sit in front of the bulldozers. Eventually the politicians became so
damn scared."
Sufficiently scared to back down. Bird sees this as one of her
greatest triumphs in securing the heritage of the city. It also started
her on her path of challenging the planning department of the city when
they were hoping to slip through by-laws or approve plans, that she
thought were not in the city's best interests.
Now, years later, she is still very active and vociferous in
pushing for retaining the heritage of old buildings and places around
the city and suburbs, and for restricting property developers who chase
money at the expense of preserving Johannesburg's beautiful suburbs.
She was instrumental in forming the Parktown Residents'
Association, which, she proudly says, "has never been parochial - we
have fought issues in Newtown, or the proposal for a waterfront
development at Zoo Lake, or the loss of open public spaces in the inner
city".
She says they usually lost the inner city battles, "but we had the integrity to fight the issues".
Although she is no longer on the Parktown Residents' Association
committee - she resigned two years ago - developers still approach the
Joint Plans Committee of the Association, with plans and proposals for
the area, which includes Parktown, Westcliff and Parkview.
She qualified as a teacher but only taught for three years
before taking up another job - raising her three sons. She's a proud
grandmother these days, but still enjoys researching any issues to do
with preserving the heritage of Johannesburg. "The central library is
still my favourite place."
She has strong views on new buildings in Johannesburg. Take the
Johannesburg General Hospital, opened in 1978, and dominating one of
Johannesburg's attractive ridges. Bird believes that the then National
Party city council made a conscious effort to "smash the heart of
British liberalism in the city".
"The hospital squats there over Harry Oppenheimer's home, like
PW Botha. It's a horror and a disgrace," she says, gesticulating with
arms outstretched and a scowl on her face. It's also difficult for
ambulance drivers to get into the hospital quickly, she adds.
A further example of this National Party imperialism in the
city is the equally intrusive Johannesburg College of Education (now an
extension of Wits University), for which several dozen Victorian homes
had to be demolished. It was originally intended to be Goudstad, the
Afrikaans education college, which was eventually built in the suburb
of Auckland Park.
When Parktown converted to office space in the late 1970s there
was a proposal for four skyscrapers, including a 14-storey building
next to the Sunnyside Hotel in Carse O'Gowrie Road, Parktown. "We
opposed it for three years and they held off the decision until the
economic climate changed, so that by 1976 the developers weren't
interested in the cost of taller buildings. Now the tallest buildings
are only 4-5 storeys high." Bird concedes that they didn't always get
it right - "we are not town planners" - but they have certainly made
officials aware of the issues.
Bird is the chairman of the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage
Trust, which she established in the mid-1980s. The Trust has an
impressive library and offers weekly tours on a wide range of places of
interest - from Nelson Mandela's hideout in a flat in Hillbrow in the
1960s and Herman Charles Bosman's perspective on Johannesburg, to the
early beginnings of the city.
"We created the tour programme to make things accessible, so
that people could get to know about the city and its history," she
explains. The Trust has an extensive tour programme for school
children, getting them thinking about history and its different
sources.
Bird has mixed feelings about the new administration of the
unicity. "The mayor and his office are too patient. They don't like
confrontation - they try hard to resolve problems through discussion
which is great except when the other side fails to respond. This is
foreign to us who have been fighting politicians for years."
But, at least, says Bird, the city insists on public
participation, which is "now taken for granted", and guaranteed by the
country's new constitution.
"We have learnt to put in controls, especially with sub-divisions and rezoning, of property," says Bird.
In fact, says Bird, city officials have set an example now
followed by property developers, who submit proposals to residents'
associations before starting to build.
I don't mind if Flo Bird doesn't always remember the dates - she's got many more important things on her mind.
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