Why Joburgers are moving to the Mother City

The collapse in municipal services and the growing decay of the city’s infrastructure have caused many Joburgers to look elsewhere, though these semigrants to Cape Town stress their decisions are more nuanced, and not only about the negatives.

It all comes down to push and pull factors.

Fatima Shabodien, a strategy consultant in the nonprofit sector, said her main priority for moving to the Mother City was to reunite with family. Steven Sidley, a writer and professor of practice at University of Johannesburg (UJ) and his wife, writer Kate Sidley, said they weren’t desperate to leave Johannesburg but wanted the access to nature and better infrastructure Cape Town offered, and Brett McDougall, a chief information officer for a large retail chain, said Johannesburg’s crumbling infrastructure was a big push factor.

Shabodien was born in Cape Town and went to work on a contract in Johannesburg. “The only reason Capetonians leave Cape Town is for work,” she says. “I was offered a really good job.”

She stayed for 12 years but returned to her home city when she became a consultant and could work remotely. “I own a place in Sea Point and I asked myself, why are you still in Johannesburg? What sealed the deal was that my mother is ageing, and I felt helpless living far from her. Returning to Cape Town would give me the opportunity to spend more time with mom in her sunset years. My entire family is also in Cape Town — my siblings, nephews and nieces — and they are having children, too, now.” 

Kate and Steven Sidley spent the past seven years commuting between Johannesburg, where they had a family home in Parkview for 27 years, and Cape Town, where their two children were at university. They bought a house in Fish Hoek last year. “We were happy in Parkview, we were part of a community and had a close social circle,” says Kate. “But we were trying on the thought of moving to Cape Town.”

They took a gradual approach to relocating. “After about four years of commuting we were certain and began looking for a home. We’re empty-nesters now, even our pets have died, and we had a special idea of what we wanted,” says Steven. 

“We had a reluctance to commit to leaving our community and we have deep connections in Johannesburg.  We had an old-fashioned Johannesburg house with wooden floors, pressed ceilings, a big garden and a pool, and we still miss many aspects of the city — like the Parkview strip [on Tyrone Avenue]. We weren’t fleeing.” 

‘Parkview by the sea’

But any sense of loss was somewhat assuaged when they noticed the high number of Johannesburg people settling in their neighbourhood. “Fish Hoek is called Parkview by the sea,” Steven quips. 

They’re making their move work for them by doing more walking and taking short trips to see the nearby natural beauty, like the Cederberg and Agulhas. “Kate loves swimming in the sea and climbing mountains. And after seven years we have built a social circle in Cape Town too.” 

Their Fish Hoek house is considerably downsized and more modern, with large open-plan spaces and windows with sea and mountain views. “We live near nature now. For example, Elsie’s Peak is right here. We’ve become more physically active, walking and swimming. Kate has this idea to do 25 beaches in 25 days,” says Steven. 

He says they swim at Fish Hoek beach, which is in a bay and therefore “a few degrees warmer”. 

Shabodien says her life in Cape Town is “wonderful because of the closeness to family and my childhood. I live in Sea Point, which is a tremendous privilege. I’m within walking distance of the promenade so I don’t use my car much. Sea Point is very safe, I can even go out alone at night and walk as a woman, which I think is very uncommon in Cape Town and in Johannesburg.

“I love that my life in Cape Town offers me access to nature at almost no cost. I can go find a sunset, I can go sit on the beach without paying. Cape Town is very beautiful.” 

It’s different from the city she remembers from her childhood but some things have not changed much: “Cape Town is very racially polarised and not diverse enough. One of the things I loved about Johannesburg was how cosmopolitan it is, how African it is. I could walk down the road on any given day and hear Igbo or Kiswahili, it just felt like a city that was connected to the rest of the continent. Cape Town remains very divided. In a country that is the most unequal in the world, Cape Town is the most unequal,” she says. 

“When I visit with my family in the Cape Flats I see the other side, which brings me sadness because I see the crime, the poverty and the violence. But the Cape Flats has another kind of richness, which is the vibrancy of the people. The two sides of Cape Town don’t get to celebrate and explore the gifts that each side has to offer.” 

She adds that the coastal city is very expensive, “a characteristic of tourist cities. The City of Cape Town has to intervene to make sure Cape Town remains accessible to Capetonians. There should be a dual-price system for museums, galleries and tours to places like Robben Island to make them more accessible for locals. And something has to be done to protect the property market. I bought a place in Sea Point in the early 2000s. I could not afford it now”. 

People on Cape Town also complain about an increase in traffic on the roads, with its attendant pollution and noise problems.

McDougall says they finally made the move to Cape Town after finding it difficult to live in Johannesburg. A keen participant in community affairs, he was chairperson of the Norwood Oaklands Residents’ Association and served on a committee that was responsible for looking after three local parks. An amateur historian with a special interest in architecture, he also ran tours for the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation. An unfortunate casualty of a city with deep problems, he now runs tours for Muizenberg Heritage. 

He and his partner, musician, composer and music producer André Scheepers, began coming to Cape Town regularly for a break during the Covid period.  “We came every six weeks and stayed in nearby St James.”

Joburg exhaustion

He says the pressure at home was mounting because there were fewer volunteers to serve in the residents’ association and he was experiencing a loss of community. “I was battling with exhaustion. The actions of the City of Joburg were so destructive and ineffective. For example, the Joburg Property Company bought houses for redevelopment in nearby Orange Grove, but then let them be hijacked, leaving residents to deal with the aftermath.” 

He adds: “I felt burnt out and depressed. All the joy of living in Johannesburg had gone. We gave ourselves three years to move and began looking for a property in Cape Town.” 

They settled on an old mansion in a quiet Muizenberg street. “It ticked all the boxes. It’s big enough — we needed enough space for a music studio and for me to work from home. And we needed space for my mother to come and live with us,” says McDougall.

“In addition, the house has architectural heritage, a garden and three garages.” Off-street parking is scarce in the city’s older suburbs. 

The gradual approach worked for them and they commuted between the Norwood and Muizenberg houses for a few years before making the move to Muizenberg, a vibrant suburb with a lively surfing community and many architectural treasures.

McDougall says that after doing their homework, they decided there were no areas in the City of Gold they could safely invest in. “To stay in Johannesburg we would need to buy in an estate, something we did not want to do.”

The middle class provide an ‘invisible infrastructure’, often taking over functions that the city is no longer able to perform. If the city is no longer attractive to them and they move, the rates base declines.

—  Brett McDougall

There has been an erosion of the rates base in the city, he says. “The middle class provide an ‘invisible infrastructure’, often taking over functions that the city is no longer able to perform. If the city is no longer attractive to them and they move, the rates base declines. And this is happening in a city that is investing less in infrastructure and maintenance; it is a city facing massive challenges, with a huge number of migrants and more pressure on the infrastructure.”

The middle-class base looks after its areas in terms of parks and issues like dumping. “To lose them is to lose a mechanism to manage the city. The City of Joburg is fighting a war.” 

An aggravating factor is that planning policy (the recently adopted nodal review) is a blunt tool, insensitive of context. “Residents are faced with an increase in planning applications, often resulting in developments that destroy the essential character of suburbs. The city’s approach is to be developer-friendly, often to the detriment of existing residents. As a result, middle-class residents are selling up.” 

Steven Sidley says from a ratepayer’s perspective, the Cape Town infrastructure feels more solid. “You can feel that the governance is better. We still experience power outages but the faults are fixed quickly. We had a problem with water and there was good communication with the municipality. When we reported a pothole on Boyes Drive it was repaired within two to three hours. Similarly, we had a billing issue and we called. The phone rang three times and was picked up. You feel you can call and the city will be responsive.”

On the entertainment side, they say there is no shortage of cultural and literary events. “We go to more bookie things, like Salon Hecate [which features talks and readings with poets and writers], and there are lots of bookshops.” 

But moving wasn’t a walk in the park. “You have to find new people for everything, your doctor and dentist, your blueberry supplier and plumber,” says Kate.

After an initial relaxing period to settle in, McDougall joined the Friends of Muizenberg Park and set about revitalising the Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society, which had been dormant for some time. “I am now one of three directors helping to resuscitate the organisation, leading a number of interesting initiatives.” 

It’s clear that Johannesburg’s loss is Cape Town’s gain. “I’m now very engaged. Doing the heritage tours is part of it and I’ve done extensive research on Muizenberg. The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation [based at the Randlords mansion Northwards] has a fine heritage research centre. There isn’t one in Muizenberg, but the city provides good resources in terms of historic maps and prospectuses, books and archives.” 

Muizenberg was also once facing a decline, so there are lessons to be learnt in how this enclave revitalised itself. One of the tactics, McDougall noted, was that residents living in areas plagued by gangs and druglords marched from house to house, banging on doors and demanding that the gangsters shut up shop.

A similar united effort by Johannesburg’s concerned middle-class residents may be what is needed to clean up their city.