Britannia Radio

[10 Pics] S.Africa: My Photos of empty shops 

In Johannesburg's shopping malls...
Date Posted: Saturday 08-Nov-2008

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 i

n 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