#lucilledavie

ALL WRITINGS

I have a BA HED (Higher Education Diploma), and a Tesol English 2nd Language Diploma. I have over 22 years’ teaching experience, and over 15 years’ writing experience, as a journalist in Johannesburg. For the past 3 years I have conducted tours of Joburg.

And when I’m not teaching or writing or conducting tours, I'll be taking in the Joburg vibes and events - it may be a book launch, an art exhibition opening, a touch of jazz, a talk on intriguing stuff . . . there's always something happening in this town, where I have lived for the past 36 years.

Come along on the journey with me - let's have fun exploring English and the city!

lucilledavie

Mar 27, 2005

The day the bus went into the Westdene dam

One of the survivors of the Westdene Dam disaster that occurred 20 years ago remembers that there were many things different about the day before the bus went into the dam. Eurika du Plessis, saved by her brother when a double-decker Hoerskool Vorentoe school bus plunged into the dam and 42 children drowned, says that usually her fellow classmates were normally loud and noisy on the bus ride home, but for some reason that day there was just quiet conversation upstairs, while

3,584 views

lucilledavie

Jan 10, 2005

Hastings Ndlovu's day too

The doctor interrupted his mid-morning tea break, rushed into the casualty section and was greeted by "a grisly scene". Lying on the stretcher was the body of a young boy dressed in school uniform, his head covered in blood, a gaping bullet wound exposing his brain. The doctor describes what he saw: ". . . a bullet wound to one side of his head, blood and brains spilling out of a large exit wound on the other side, the gurgle of death in his throat. Only later would I learn h

12 views

lucilledavie

Mar 23, 2004

Hollard saves Arcadia and gets the best view around

Lionel Phillips would surely approve of the new developments at his former mansion, Villa Arcadia, in Parktown. The house and property of 16 acres of prime real estate has been bought by Hollard Insurance and is to be developed into their future office complex with a careful balance between heritage and modern use. And in the process, the mansion, designed by Herbert Baker, and believed to be his practice run for the Union Buildings in Pretoria, is to be saved from almost cer

14 views

lucilledavie

Jan 21, 2004

Herman Charles Bosman, Joburg man

Herman Charles Bosman watched as they demolished the old Magistrate's Courts in downtown Joburg. And felt "a kind of silent fury". He wrote in his essay Old Johannesburg is Vanishing that the municipality had "no understanding of Johannesburg, no veneration for this city". He went on: "I don't suppose, for one thing, that they've got too many genuine Joh'burg old-timers on the Council. Otherwise we wouldn't have every Johannesburg building turned over to a demolition-gang the

20 views

lucilledavie

Dec 24, 2003

Ponte: rent the best view in town

It's been described by some as something out of Star Wars with its unusual inner perspectives; by others as the Tower of Babel. It's the tallest residential building in the city with a huge flashing Vodacom advertisement on its roof. It's probably one of the most striking urban landmarks in southern Africa. It's the cylindrical Ponte City, of course, standing tall on the edge of Hillbrow's flatlands, at 54 storeys. Completed in 1975 at a cost of R11-million, it was in its hey

69 views

lucilledavie

Nov 5, 2003

Can Sophiatown mural be restored?

BALANCED on his ladder, the restorer leans into the church wall, delicately picking with his scalpel at the top two layers of white PVA, trying to ascertain the condition of the underlying mural. The mural is in the Christ the King Anglican Church in Sophiatown, made famous in the 40s and 50s when Archbishop Trevor Huddleston preached in the church for most of his 12 years in the country. Today, as Sophiatown's historic significance is recognised, the church elders are eager

69 views

lucilledavie

Apr 7, 2003

The wonder of the Tswaing Crater

If an object the size of half a soccer field hit the earth at 4 000 kilometres per hour hundreds of thousands of years ago, what would you expect to find? The rather special Tswaing Meteorite Crater, some 40 kilometres north of Pretoria. What’s special about it is that firstly, it is one of the best preserved meteorite craters in the world, and secondly, it’s very accessible – you can walk down into the crater, unlike a similar crater in Arizona in the United States, which ge

16 views

lucilledavie

Feb 21, 2003

Joburg's oldest buildings

Human settlement in Johannesburg goes back some 25 000 years, but when were the first brick buildings built, and how many still survive? The first structures to go up on the grassy plains that made up the site of early Johannesburg were a mix of tents and mud and reed huts, followed by iron and wood houses. It is believed that the first one of the first wooden city buildings was the Central Hotel, on the corner of Commissioner and Sauer Streets, according to researcher and ch

17 views

lucilledavie

Oct 15, 2002

Don Mattera: poet of compassion

A few minutes in to my interview with Don Mattera, it became plain that he was going to decide what the questions were to be, and, if I was lucky, I might squeeze in one or two of my own. Larger-than-life Mattera has for decades been one of the most prominent community activists in the working class areas of Bosmont, Westbury and Newclare. "My mission is to remove pain and suffering from people's lives," he says. Variously Catholic schoolboy, gangster, political activist, poe

17 views

lucilledavie

Aug 29, 2002

A flat mountain? We have our Tower

Cape Town has its low, flat, Table Mountain. Johannesburg has the long, thin, Hillbrow Tower, the tallest tower in Africa. The Tower dominates the Johannesburg skyline, visible to visitors long before they reach the city itself. It's a tribute to the tower's symbolic power that it has been incorporated into the city's official logo. The tower, named the JG Strijdom Tower after a former South African prime minister (1954 to 1958), was built over three years between June 1968 a

15 views

lucilledavie

Aug 8, 2002

Sarah Baartman, at rest at last

Sarah Baartman, displayed as a freak because of her unusual physical features, was finally laid to rest 187 years after she left Cape Town for London. Her remains were buried on Women’s Day, 9 August 2002, in the area of her birth, the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape. Baartman was born in 1789. She was working as a slave in Cape Town when she was “discovered” by British ship’s doctor William Dunlop, who persuaded her to travel with him to England. We’ll never know wh

379 views

lucilledavie

Jul 5, 2002

Taffy Long - too young to die

South Africa’s biggest funeral procession – 10 000 people – was held in the 1920s for a man widely believed to be innocent, hanged by the government of General Jan Smuts. The man was 31-year-old Samuel Alfred Long, nicknamed Taffy, who, after two trials, was found guilty of murdering Pieter Marais during an uprising in Johannesburg that saw the city at war with its citizens, in the 1922 Miners’ Strike. The hanging took place in November 1922, and the 10 000 people marched to

12 views

lucilledavie

May 2, 2002

Delta Park proves that exotics can be useful

Ecological purists would argue that all 'exotics', or alien trees or plants, should be removed from Johannesburg's public spaces - but the evidence proves that exotics do have a role to play. Delta Park, some 10 kilometres north-west of the city centre, is a 104-hectare green lung, mostly planted with exotics. "Delta Environmental Centre is living proof that exotics can co-exist happily with indigenous vegetation," says Geoff Lockwood, ornithologist, resident manager and educ

118 views

ALL WRITINGS

The day the bus went into the Westdene dam

Hastings Ndlovu's day too

Hollard saves Arcadia and gets the best view around

Herman Charles Bosman, Joburg man

Ponte: rent the best view in town

Can Sophiatown mural be restored?

The wonder of the Tswaing Crater

Joburg's oldest buildings

Don Mattera: poet of compassion

A flat mountain? We have our Tower

Sarah Baartman, at rest at last

Taffy Long - too young to die

Delta Park proves that exotics can be useful

Get in touch