by Mfuneko Toyana | Aug 2, 2013 | News
Coffee barons: The Team from HEI cafe with some of their self-made product. A coffee brand, home-made jam are just some the products Photo: Mfuneko Toyana
The students who run the Hillbrow Entrepreneurship Initiative’s (HEI) recently opened coffee shop in Braamfontein, have been getting their aprons dirty proving that entrepreneurship and creativity go together, just as well as coffee and crepes.
Three weeks ago HEI café opened its narrow, wood-panelled doors and beckoned Braamfontein’s creative minds inside.
[pullquote]Beyond those doors is a coffee shop, a conference room, a library, an art gallery and a grandmother of a beige couch that could be auctioned off by next week.[/pullquote]
Good old hard work and determination seems to be the ingredient bringing together these disparate elements.
Early on Tuesday evening, as Braamfontein’s tall buildings emptied themselves out on to the streets and into buses and taxis. Phephisile Mathizerd, tapping on a laptop keyboard and fending off whistles from her cellphone, explained why HEI café was not just another coffee shop.
“It’s a conducive space,” Mathizerd said of the space furnished with odds and ends straight out of a postcard of 19th-century Paris.
“Everything we have here is from (Wits) Hospice, we’re using the space to help them sell their stuff,” she said.
The “library” books are from the Wits Hospice as well, and for R80 a month students can loan out up to four books a week.
The café also serves as a place for the entrepreneurs who work with HEI to display and sell their products, be it paintings or stuffed versions of the big five, to homemade jam and hand-carved furniture.
“Another one garçon”: Howard Hamandishe is one of the barrista’s at HEI cafe trained by fellow Braamfontein coffee shop Post Photo: Mfuneko Toyana
This Sunday they will be hosting their first furniture and art auction.
Barbara Copelovici explained HEI’s entrepreneurship program:
“We offer the entrepreneurs a ‘business-in-a-box’ worth R10 000. A business account, basic start-up equipment and WiFi. If their business runs for more than three months, they can go to the Branson Centre for free,” Copelovici said.
She explained that from a pool of 100 entrepreneurs they had narrowed the number down to five of the best ideas, and worked with this group on a 6 to 12 months basis.
The menu, consisting solely of coffee and crepes, was inspired by French-born Copeloivci, one of the founders of HEI.
Everything at the café has a minimum, not a fixed price, and patrons are encouraged to pay more if they can.
All revenue generated by the cafe goes back into the Initiative’s programmes, and to paying interns and employees who work in the shop.
HEI cafe is entirely student-run, using coffee as the basis for connecting creative minds.
The café is entirely student run.
For entrepreneurs to use the conference room in the quaint café, wedged in the alley between the Nando’s on Jorissen street and the Puma store on De Korte, is buy a coffee and a crepe.
For under R25, they are allowed use of the well-furnished conference room, access to Wifi, in-house computers, as well as help and advice from the staff.
HEI will also host a “speed dating” session this Friday.
Theko Moteane said the session would be on the same principle as match-making, except they would encouraging people to mingle and make business connections, rather than romantic ones, and establish the basis for future collaborations..
“This is where the rich meet the poor, where big corporates meet students,” Theko said.
by Nomatter Ndebele | Jul 29, 2013 | Featured 1, News
by Nomatter Ndebele and Mfuneko Toyana
Members of Wits’ Law School locked themselves in a storeroom and called police after they were threatened with a gun by two men on Friday evening.
Nonkululeko Sunduza, academic officer of the law school council, said two men barged into their meeting; one of them holding what she says was a letter of admission, wanting to “know” about law.
Sunduza said one of the men was tattooed and had a gold tooth, while the other looked as if he were a “ hobo”
[pullquote align=”right”]“Ithii ngikhiphe izibhambu zam ngizonibonisa kahle” [Let me take my guns out so I can show you][/pullquote]
“I noticed that the other guy (The hobo), wasn’t really paying attention, he was just looking around” said Sunduza.
According to Sunduza the tattooed man became increasingly frustrated as he didn’t seem to understand what they were saying to him about the letter.
When they couldn’t answer his questions, he said in IsiZulu:“Ithii ngikhiphe izibhambu zam ngizonibonisa kahle” (Let me take my guns out so I can show you.)’
Sunduza screamed and told her fellow council member Lerato Thini to lock the door.
The eight council members then ran and locked themselves in the storeroom where they called Wits Campus Control. From the storeroom, Sunduza said she heard the men say: “We have to do this … we’ve been in cells together”
[pullquote]”Eight policemen arrived armed with rifles.”[/pullquote]
She said she also heard one guy explaining to the other how to use a gun. “Kufanele kuqhume isbhamu” (A gun must go off).
Fearing that Campus Control was taking too long to respond, the hotages called the police.
Senior investigating officer at Campus Control, Michael Mahada, told Wits Vuvuzela that he arrived on the scene and found Sunduza and Thini outside talking to Campus Control officers.
He said a few minutes later, about eight policemen arrived armed with rifles.
Mahada said one of the first things he noticed was a bag laying in the hallway with its contents scattered all around.
“There were some study guides of some sort, some clothing, and other documents”, Mahada said.
The “documents” turned out to be a letter from Wits acknowledging one of the men’s application to study at the University, as well as other personal papers.
Mahada said there was no gun in the bag or amongst the scattered items.
[pullquote align=”right”]She also told Mahada that her son was “not right”.[/pullquote]
“At first I thought the stuff belonged to a student. When I asked the suspect he couldn’t explain himself.”
Mahada said he then called one of the numbers on the documents, and the woman who answered said she was the suspects’ mother.
She also told Mahada that her son was “not right”.
Mahada said Campus Control would be looking at CCTV footage as they continue to investigate.
Constable Mduduzi Zondo of the Hillbrow Police station confirmed that a case of intimidation has been opened against the suspect, after he was apprehended on campus by the police.
The suspect remains in custody and is set to appear in a Hillbrow court tomorrow.
His accomplice ran away and has yet to been found.
Related Stories:
by Dineo Bendile | Jul 26, 2013 | Featured 1, News
The accident hot spot at the intersection of De Korte and Bertha streets has been the site of a second car crash in one week.
At around 7pm last Sunday, a Wits student and three of his friends were driving through Braamfontein when their car was hit by a vehicle that had allegedly run a red robot.
Titus Masike, 3rd year Nuclear Sciences and Engineering, stood blank-faced on an island in the middle of Bertha Street as he looked at the dented silver Mercedes Benz that had been spun across to the side of the road.
The car he was driving belonged to his mother.
Masike and a friend had fetched two female friends from a hair salon in Braamfontein and were making their way back to their apartment in Milpark when the crash happened.
Masike’s friend in the front passenger seat, a Public Relations and Communications student at Rosebank College, said he did not even see the other car approaching.
ACCIDENT ZONE: Firefighters inspect the damage to a Ford Fiesta involved in the crash.
Photo: Dineo Bendile
He vaguely attempted to piece together the events of the crash: “We were just driving normally and we just heard a bang and the car was spinning. It’s weird, it’s hard to … , it’s just weird,” he said, shaking his head.
The students were travelling down De Korte Street when a grey Ford Focus travelling down Bertha Street allegedly ran a red robot and crashed into the driver’s side of their car.
The young nurse who was driving the other car appeared unharmed as she paced around her wrecked car.
On the opposite side of the road, one of Masike’s female passengers sat on the curb, running her hands through her hair and covering her face while being comforted by
her friend.
Nobody in either car was injured.
A metro police officer, who did not want to be identified, said accidents at the intersection were common, particularly on weekends.
“On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights this intersection is dangerous. Female drivers in particular do not stop at the traffic light because they say they don’t feel safe at night,” he said.
In the previous crash, on July 16, a Luthuli House blue-light vehicle crashed into a government vehicle. Onlookers stated that the accident was also caused by one driver’s failure to stop at a red robot.
The Mercedes Benz Masike and his friends were in.
Photo: Dineo Bendile
by Ray Mahlaka | Jul 19, 2013 | Featured 1, News
Wits is set to transform a cluster of five abandoned buildings in Braamfontein into technology hubs.
The project is called Tshimologong, a Sesotho word for “new beginnings”.
It will be a space for software design, innovation and technological development.
Located near East Campus, the tech hubs will be equipped with advanced internet connectivity, offer technology courses and spaces for the collaboration of new business ideas.
Director of the Wits Joburg Centre for Software Engineering, Prof Barry Dwolatzky, is driving the transformation of this Braamfontein precinct into a technology city.
“It’s not our intention to tear down buildings and rebuild them. It would be too easy and very expensive. We are planning to repurpose existing buildings, as it’s much cheaper and we are trying to show what can be done with old buildings,” Dwolatzky told Wits Vuvuzela.
Braamfontein’s location is favourable to business and the availability of different types of transport make it attractive for hosting the tech hubs.
“Would it make sense to put it [tech hubs] at Sandton or Soweto? Young South Africans are more drawn to Joburg as a place to work, live and play”.
Dwolatzky also said Braamfontein is a city which attracts young, dynamic and smart people.
With a price tag of “R20 to R40 million” the two-phase rollout of tech hubs might sound like a geek’s paradise, or targeted only at Wits students who are techno-savvy, but Dwolatzky said this was not the case.
He said the tech hubs are targeted at “anyone who can get into Braamfontein. From school kids to old people who just want to interact in this space”.
He said the tech hubs in Braamfontein would “create the same energy that Silicon Valley has”.
Dwolatzky raised concerns about Wits being isolated from Braamfontein.
He said people do not acquaint themselves with the city and security concerns have led to the erection of high fences and stricter controls on access cards to campus.
“We are not interacting with our neighbourhood. Part of this project is to get Wits to jump the fence, get Wits to start to operate, not only on our campus but inner city Braamfontein.”
When the tech hubs gain traction and support from the public, Dwolatzky hopes to replicate the model in other provinces and later explore the continent.
by Ray Mahlaka | Jul 19, 2013 | News
College students who were evicted from their residence in Bramley last week landed up in crowded accommodation after waiting all day. Some students could not get transport to campus and as a result missed tests on Friday.
The Central Johannesburg College (CJC) students were evicted last Tuesday morning by the landlord from their Student Village residential Complex. After CJC fell into arrears for their accomodation according to Aengus Investment properties (AIP).
Inga Matsitsela, a former Bramley resident, told Wits Vuvuzela that he had to sleep in a two-bedroom apartment with four other students following the eviction.
[pullquote]”After all of that I had to sleep in a two bedroom with four other guys,” [/pullquote]
“We waited until late on Tuesday night to get a place to stay. We waited outside Aengus from the morning already. After all of that I had to sleep in a two bedroom with four other guys,” Matsitsela said.
AIP management told Wits Vuvuzela that while the students were evicted from Bramley they were not left homeless.
“AIP ensured that all the affected students were relocated to safe, modern, convenient accommodation in the area.”
Management from AIP added that they were sensitive to the fact that many students were writing tests and exams and that they had tried their best to make sure that minimal disruption occurred.
Matsitsela and other former Bramley residents were moved to Langlaagte, near Soweto. Students had to organise their own transport to college until Friday.
Buses were organised for Friday but arrived late in the day. As a result, Henrich Makuwa missed his end of term mathematics test.
According to a notice by Aengus, students were evicted because of non-payment.
The notice by Aengus to CJC students read as follows: “Please be advised that your institution has failed to pay your accommodation in spite of numerous attempts by yourselves to secure payment.”
The students found this notice the morning of their eviction and had received no prior warning.
“We have received no apology or anything from anyone for the mess that has happened,” said Matsitsela.
Some students have managed to return to Bramley, while others such as Makuwa and Matsitsela are still staying in Langlaagte.
Students who moved back to Bramley said improvements were made to some of the broken doors in the residence.
The first CJC eviction article
ray@witsvuvuzelacom
nolwazi@witsvuvuzela.com
by Emelia Motsai | Jul 16, 2013 | Featured 1, News
Police pull out the driver of a “blue light brigade” vehicle after it collided with another car on the corner of De Korte and Bertha streets. Photo: Mfuneko Toyana
A blue light BMW travelling in convoy through Braamfontein was involved in an accident today resulting in 2 casualties.
According to an eyewitness, the blue light vehicle skipped a red robot and crashed into a white Corolla. SAPS officers responded to the scene immediately and cordoned off the area with police tape.
An emergency vehicle arrived some minutes later and struggled to remove the driver of the BMW who was not visibly injured but stretched off nonetheless.
According to an EMS paramedic on the scene, the black BMW is “government owned.” The white Corolla belonged to the Department of Labour. The passenger of this vehicle, a middle-aged woman, was also loaded into the same ambulance.
According to eyewitnesses, the BMW spun out of control, destroyed a set of robots and hit the paper trolley of an informal recycler. The recycler ran off after the incident leaving his belongings behind.
In a related incident, a tow truck driver on his way to the accident scene, crashed into a white Honda Jazz.
Onlookers speaking to Wits Vuvuzela expressed their anger at the blue light vehicles which disregard the traffic rules.
A driver of a Blue Light vehicle is stretchered off after an accident in the CBD. Photo: Dinesh Balliah
View Larger Map
by Ray Mahlaka | Jul 9, 2013 | Featured 1, News
Students queue outside Aengus offices in Braamfontein for accomodation. Photo:Ray Mahlaka
by Ray Mahlaka and Nolwazi Mjwara
SOME Central Johannesburg College (CJC) students with their scant belongings flooded Aengus Investment Properties offices in the hope of finding accommodation this afternoon.
CJC students seeking accommodation were met by a notice which read: “Please be advised that your institution has failed to pay your accommodation in spite of numerous attempts by ourselves to secure payment.”
“The landlord kicked us out and we were moved to Braamfontein where we were told Aengus [Investment Properties] will find us alternative accommodation,” said a student who asked to remain anonymous.
Other students were fortunate to arrange alternative accommodation, and arranged to have a vehicle usher them to their new homes.
Students cram their belongings into a van. Photo: Ray Mahlaka
Wits Vuvuzela was asked to leave the premises when photographing students who queued outside Aengus offices and employees declined to comment on accommodation issues.
Students said they had been waiting outside the offices since 8am for updates about their accommodation.
Inga Matsitsela, who was evicted said he was not sure where he was going to sleep tonight. He added that CJC has failed them.
Students with their belongings on the street. Photo:Ray Mahlaka
Earlier this year Wits Vuvuzela reported on protests by CJC students, as they accused Aengus Property Holdings of favouring Wits students who allegedly paid more for rent.
CJC students said they lived at Bramley building before their eviction.
“Our landlord said they don’t want to see us there, then transport came and brought us to Aengus offices. We had to queue this morning and only allocated accommodation if we appeared on the Aengus list”, said another student.
The Aengus list refers to students who have covered by CJC in terms of acommodation list for according to some of the students queuing outside Aengus offices.
The names of students are allocated accomodation are read out in the “Aengus list”. Photo: Ray Mahlaka
“I still have exams at school, now I have to worry about accommodation problems,” expressed an angry student who declined to be named.
Related article:
Wits Vuvuzela: Wits students butt heads with Aengus
by Thembela Khamango | Jul 9, 2013 | News
There has been a general increase in crime in Braamfontein according to Head of Wits Campus Control, Robert Kemp.
“Recently we have had an increase in crime in the Braamfontein area which includes muggings, theft of motor vehicles and theft out of motor vehicles,” said Kemp on Monday.
Kemp said 27 crime incidents were reported in the past two months compared to only 9 cases reported in March and April. Of the 27 crime activities reported to the police in May and June, 12 of those were also reported to Campus Control.
”We have had incidents of muggings reported in the Jorissen, de Korte Streets and along Enoch Sontonga Avenue.”
Kemp said Wits Campus Control was working with Community Policing Forums to address the “crime problem” in the area.[pullquote align=”right”]Kemp advised students not to walk around in the area after hours. [/pullquote]
Hillbrow police station’s Warrant Officer Richard Munyai said policemen were patrolling the area regularly. ”We also do what we call ‘stop and search’ with the emphasis on ‘hot spots’,” he said.
Wits student Mothupi Boipelo said she did not feel safe in the streets around campus. “I don’t go out with my cellphone anymore. When I was doing my first year I was mugged and they took a phone I had then,” said the BSc-Honours student.
Biopelo said she and a friend were accosted by a young man who took their mobile phones, while they were walking along Nelson Mandela Bridge on their way home in 2010.
Another Witsie Mbongeni Mtimkulu said although the area was “generally safe” he had heard of students being threatened with knives and their phones taken away.
Kemp urged students to make use of the “safe walk programme”. “Students can contact the Central Control Room CB1, (011-717-4444/ 011-717-6666) and request a security guard to escort them after hours.”
He said the service was offered to all students on campus, including the ones in residences and those residing in the university’s off campus residences not serviced by the institution’s busses. Kemp advised students not to walk around in the area after hours.
by Staff Reporter | Jun 18, 2013 | News
[Information taken from Wits News: email wits.news@wits.ac.za for more information.]
[hr]
The Wits Arts Museum, WAM, presents the following events on the exhibitions: Meaning Motion by Nathaniel Stern and Tegan Bristow; and Taxi Hand Signs: Symbolic Landscapes of Public Culture by Susan Woolf.
Adult Talkabout with Nathaniel Stern and Tegan Bristow on Meaning Motion
Date: 22 June 2012
Time: 11:00
Venue: Wits Art Museum, Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
Adult Talkabout with Susan Woolf on Taxi Hand Signs: Symbolic
Date: 22 June 2012
Time: 12:00
Venue: Wits Art Museum, Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
Enquiries: Leigh.blackenberg@wits.ac.za or 011-717-1378
Adult Talkabout with Nathaniel Stern and Tegan Bristow on Meaning Motion
Date: 22 June 2012
Time: 11:00
Venue: Wits Art Museum, Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
Adult Talkabout with Susan Woolf on Taxi Hand Signs: Symbolic
Date: 22 June 2012
Time: 12:00
Venue: Wits Art Museum, Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
Enquiries: Leigh.blackenberg@wits.ac.za or 011-717-1378
by Mfuneko Toyana | May 17, 2013 | News
Dull-yellow fluorescent lights and the smell of industrial-strength antiseptic meet you when you enter the mortuary at the very edge of Braamfontein in Johannesburg.
THE DEAD DON’T BITE: 5th year MBBCh students at the Johannesburg Mortuary Photo: Mfuneko Toyana
A sense of dread, of being in a mortuary, accompanies you when you enter the grey building wedged between Constitutional Hill and the Wits Esselen Residence.
What these experiences don’t prepare you for is the warmth and passion of the Wits medical students you find inside – there to fulfill the requirement that they learn to work with “fresh corpses”.
“A lot of these students see an autopsy for the first time and get turned off,” said Lawrence Hill, research student and entomologist at the Johannesburg Forensic Pathology Service (FPS) medico-legal mortuary in Braamfontein.
Hill explained how the small number of medical students who specialise in forensics end up working as pathologists. Most choose lucrative jobs as anatomical pathologists for private labs.
This leaves state pathologists working in one of the two main mortuaries in the province Germiston and Johannesburg doing nothing less than 20 autopsies a week, almost double the weekly average.
Hill was frank about the difficulties of dealing with corpses on a daily basis and the kind of effect it can have on you.
“We see everything from [people who were] stabbed to death, jumped off of buildings, car accidents and burns victims who mostly came from informal settlements,” said Hill.
He said counselling was provided to students at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and they were encouraged to talk in groups about their experiences.
Scary reality
Fifth year MBBCh students, gathered at the mortuary on Wednesday morning for practical classes in dissecting corpses, had varying opinions of the experience:
A student called Trudie said the “scary reality didn’t really hit you” until you were faced with a recently deceased body.
“On Monday we saw a child who’d been hit by a car. It was terrible.” [pullquote align=”right”]”I had never seen a dead body”[/pullquote]
Asked how she coped with seeing death close up, she said: “As students we are not offered any debriefing. All you can do is go home and talk to your friends and family.”
Kirsten Morley-Jepherson said she was “really lucky to have a good support system at home”.
“Once you vent you really feel a lot better”.
Morley-Jepherson said although she had been fascinated by biology and the human body since her school days, she would not consider specialising in forensic pathology:
“I need something where I can have a life.”
Masello Phasha recalled how she was “literally shaking” when she faced a corpse for the first time.
“It was in our 2nd year andI had never seen a dead body. The toes of the cadaver were sticking out and I kept as far away as I could.”
Phasha said Monday was “very different”.
“The child was still fully dressed and still had shoes on,” Phasha said.
Despite this, Phasha said she’d “surprisingly” had no nightmares and she hoped to go into trauma surgery but feared the always-on-call lifestyle would be “too demanding”.
Abigail Keane is a student whose entire family is in the medical field. She said, despite realising “how quickly things can go wrong and how many lives we lose”, it was the daily opportunity of helping people in a tangible way that made it all worth it.
The mortuary serves as the “academic seat” of the Wits division of forensic medicine and pathology. It provides forensic pathology services to the SA Police Service and the Department of Justice and families of the deceased. This is over and above its teaching and research responsibilities at the university’s Faculty of Health Sciences.
by Pheladi Sethusa | May 10, 2013 | News
#Teamvuvu went out to some of the weekend hotspots in Braam, to see where all the fun is. The team of photographers consisted of: Pheladi Sethusa, Nokuthula Manyathi, Shandukani Mulaudzi, Sibusisiwe Nyanda and Nolwazi Majwara.
