Hillbrow has gained a reputation over the years for its diversity, violence and decay. But although its streets lie in disarray, some residents have created sanctuaries from the dysfunction.
I sit quietly in the passenger seat of the Uber. We pass a cement monolith along the steep hill; its walls charred to coal. The midday sun hesitantly peeks beyond the hollow sockets where windows should be, vaguely outlining scattered rubble in the meek light. A bright pink top drifts across my eyeline as I peer into the darkness. Glancing up, I see a line of clothes dangling over the edge of a third-floor windowsill with an array of blankets draped across the bare building – weary eyelids over an emaciated face.
Reaching the bottom of the hill, we turn into Abel Road, which connects Berea to Hillbrow. The Uber driver breaks the silence that had so far prevailed. “But why are you going to Hillbrow my friend?!” Last month, in that same area, a clip went viral of an e-hailing driver being murdered in an attack that provoked MMC for public safety Mgcini Tshwaku to vow in a media statement that: “High-density operations are coming in Hillbrow that has been a den of drug dealers and thugs.” As I reach my destination the driver warns: “Be careful, here they’ll kill you for fun.”
The Hillbrow of old: cocktails and cafes
Hillbrow was once a buzzing cosmopolitan area, known as a cultural hub during the apartheid era. It was iconic for its vibrant nightlife, array of hotels and restaurants, progressive attitudes and popularity among the youth. With manicured parks, spotless streets and modern high-rise buildings, Hillbrow resembled an African Manhattan. As pass laws and the Group Areas Act were relaxed thanks to growing civil unrest in the 1980s, Hillbrow became one of Johannesburg’s first deracialised zones.
But as more black residents flocked to the suburb, its white residents fled, blaming an increase of crime and the area’s deterioration on the growing black residency. As more buildings emptied, landlords exploited the situation by allowing scores of people to move in at low rates, paving the way for overcrowding and the further decay of infrastructure and resulting in an exodus of the remaining middle-class population. With the prospect of cheap accommodation in the city centre, Hillbrow became a preferred port of entry for foreign nationals and economic migrants from across South Africa. By the late 1990s Hillbrow was in a state of severe decline, noted for a lack of basic service delivery, decaying infrastructure and overcrowded living conditions. Crime and prostitution became lucrative in this densely populated suburb. This set the stage for the Hillbrow of today.
Hillbrow today: violence and decay
The streets of Hillbrow are filled with idle youth. Photo: Kabir Jugram
“If these guys [the municipality] did clean-up operations maybe 20 to 30 years ago this place would be Manhattan… town was a beautiful place!” bemoans Faizel Khan, a shop owner who has been in Hillbrow for 35 years. He leans on the entrance to his clothing store, smoking a cigarette. “The whole infrastructure is rotten!” he yells, stabbing his cigarette towards a puddle of green sludge across the street. “Broken drains, missing manhole covers and stealing of metal… every structure that had metal in the street is gone!” This leads to a rant about theft and drugs plaguing the streets.
Overhearing our conversation, Khan’s mother approaches and cuts him off mid-sentence: “They murdered my son here, right in front of my eyes! The police didn’t even take a statement from me.” A silence grows as Khan finishes his cigarette. He flicks it into the street, takes a deep breath and stares off into the distance. “When I was a youngster here, I could smell the Milky Lane in Esselen Street. That’s how smart this place was.” He lights another cigarette as I leave.
According to the South African Police Service’s first-quarter report for the 2024-25 financial year, Hillbrow ranks 26th nationally and fourth in Gauteng for reported murders as of June 2024. It also has the sixth-highest number of common robberies and the 18th-highest number of armed robberies reported in the country.
“Community members don’t trust the police. They work with syndicates in the area. Even when you give information to them, they arrest you to collect money and later disclose to the criminals who gave them the information…” claims Berea ward counsellor Phineas Madisha. “Those who serve on community policing forums only protect their personal interests.” Attempts to reach the Hillbrow counsellor were unsuccessful.
It is the middle of the day and groups of boys no older than 20 lurk on every other street corner. “They are staring you down to see if they can rob you. If you look away, that’s how they know you’re scared,” says Delron Buthelezi as we walk down Pretoria Street. He works in Hillbrow and has frequented the suburb since the early 2000s. “They have nothing else to do – no job, no school, nothing”.
As we walk up the street, cars edge forward from all four directions of an intersection, dipping into crater-like potholes peppering the road. There is not a stop sign or robot in sight. “I used to come watch movies here,” Buthelezi says, pointing at a faded billboard protruding from a block of flats. In chipped paint across a grid of Perspex it reads: ‘Movie World: always better on our big reen’. A sheet of Perspex is missing from the centre. A woman stares at me from the cracked window behind it, her child pressed tightly to her chest.
In the wake of the Usindiso building fire, which claimed 77 lives in August last year, the City of Johannesburg launched a series of inspections into “hijacked” buildings across the city. One of the buildings inspected was Vannin Court, on the corner of Pietersen and Quartz streets. The City declared it a disaster waiting to happen.
The building was initially raided in 2019. A City of Johannesburg media statement issued at the time read: “More than 300 people live in overcrowded conditions in the decaying building, which smells of urine and animal carcasses and has over time turned into a health hazard, unfit for human habitation.” Its residents simply moved back in a few days after their evictions.
“Most hijacked properties are owned by the government and sectional-title schemes which collapsed because a majority of body corporate members have left those properties. The government is also sitting with the problem of providing alternative accommodation in order to evict people,” Madisha claims.
“It’s no longer the Hillbrow of ’96 – now they don’t respect human life!” vents Johr Thouhakali, swatting wildly at a fly nestled on his stack of glistening red tomatoes. The air is a stifling cocktail filled with the sounds of whistling vendors and wailing taxis. The aroma of fresh produce tussles with the stench of raw sewage.
Thouhakali has been living in Hillbrow since 1996. He remembers days gone by, when he played soccer with other youths and walked carefree in the early hours of the morning.
“Maybe in the kasi [there’s community], but not here… when you suffer, you suffer on your own.” He peers at me as he rants, squeezing my shoulder. “In one unit [of a flat] there’s four rooms… In the lounge there’s two families staying there, separated by a curtain.” He speaks about a man in his building who cooks fresh food every day to lure hungry children into his apartment. He then mutters something about a pregnant 13-year-old. “‘I cannot be giving without receiving’… That’s the mentality here.” Thouhakali is staring at the sun now, his grip on my shoulder loosened. A fly squats comfortably on his shiny red tomatoes.
Vice, chaos, business and youth intermingle in the streets of Hillbrow on a daily basis. Photo: Kabir Jugram
No place for kids
Eyes lock on me on every block I pass on Pretoria Street. “Ey Boy! Show me that camera,” shouts a man sitting on a plastic chair. As Buthelezi and I march through the street, he comes across a friend just off the main road. Trolleys holding big pots of rice line the one side of the road; the other is coated in a colourful layer of rubbish. Four teenagers huddle over a rolling paper on the curb.
“My friend wants to ask you about Hillbrow, he’s a journalist” says Buthelezi to a Rastafarian standing over one of the trolleys. “He must put that camera away then,” the Rasta replies. As I do, one of the boys from across the streets heads towards me. “What are you shooting?!” he yells, not even checking for cars. Within seconds he reaches for my neck, pulling the camera. “Go take pictures of the white man, he’s a model!” Buthelezi tries to prize him off me. “I’m not that model!”
I elbow the boy in the stomach and break free. Buthelezi and his friend now stand between us. He glares at me with bloodshot eyes and raw flesh flaring from his lips. As I meet his glare, he quickly averts his eyes. A hand taps my shoulder from behind: “Just go man. You’ll die for nothing.”
John Dube sits under a tent in a plaza, promoting funeral coverage. He has been living in Hillbrow for more than 10 years, but has sent his children to live with their grandparents outside the city. For him, the crime, alienation and trauma of life in Hillbrow is overwhelming. “You will fail them [your kids]. It’s better you take them somewhere else so they can see a life different from this one – it’s not favourable for growing kids,” Dube says.
Raising Champions
But children do live here. As I walk down Ockerse Street, a schoolgirl waddles up the road holding her little sister’s hand, both in uniform. The smaller girl trips and lands on her face. She begins to wail and a lady selling sweets on the sidewalk gives her a packet of chips to calm her tears.
In a research paper on the importance of social cohesion, Gillian Eagle, professor of psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand, speaks about continuous traumatic stress. This refers to environments in which trauma (in the form of physical and structural violence) is part of daily life. In such environments, the source of trauma is unknown, because anyone in the area is a possible threat. As a result, constant paranoia fosters either social withdrawal or aggressive personas as a defence mechanism.
Violence can be repurposed towards positive growth through communal spaces such as sports clubs. Photo: Kabir Jugram
Both Eagle and popular research on urban violence enshrine community spaces as crucial in combating the negative effects of marginal conditions. Communal spaces encourage common goals that deter people from criminality and offer a form of empowerment in conditions that do not allow self-realisation.
Not surprisingly, social cohesion features prominently in South Africa’s policy discourse. The national development plan of 2030 was drafted during the Zuma administration, with the aim of eliminating poverty and inequality by 2030. One of its target areas is the creation of a safe, socially cohesive society in which citizens aspire towards a common goal of upliftment. Thus, it promotes the development of community safety centres to counteract violence and alienation.
George Khosi’s Hillbrow Boxing Club sits at the bottom of Ockerse Street. Across the street lies a freshly trimmed action soccer pitch brimming with children’s laughter. Thanks to the aid of the non-profit organisation Bambisanani Hands of Hope and numerous sponsors in the Hillbrow community, Khosi was able to repurpose an abandoned petrol station into a boxing gym.
George built his gym thanks to the support of non-profit organizations and local sponsors within the Hillbrow community. Photo: Kabir Jugram
As I enter the gym’s courtyard, I am greeted by a line of sniggering children doing jumping jacks. A row of punching bags swings wildly as grown men jab at them. In the boxing ring, a woman shouts instructions at a teenage boy: “Jab, cross, hook!” Khosi is at the entrance sweeping the floor.
George Khosi (pictured on the right) does not just aim to keep kids off the streets. He believes he can breed future champions. Photo: Kabir Jugram
“Welcome home!” he greets me. Khosi was once an aspiring boxer, but his boxing dream died after he was critically injured in a home invasion. He now spends his days coaching local youth in boxing, his goal not just to keep youth off the streets, but also to breed future champions. “In the streets it’s easier to be a gangster… But we give them [the children] a place to be one, to have joy and enjoy boxing,” he says.
For Khosi, sport is the greatest way to resist the dysfunction in the streets. “Sports changes people. If someone can do what I’m doing, it can change people. It’s not about money or [the] government. It’s about ourselves… It’s about love.
George Khosi’s Boxing Gym is a safe space not reserved for boxers alone. Photo: Kabir Jugram
As children giggle and swing at boxing bags, an old man sleeps on a couch. Beside him a schoolboy hunches over his textbook. Two young boys enter the boxing ring and swing wildly at each other until the one knocks the other’s headgear off. He begins to cry, and the other boy embraces him tightly. An older boy arrives and pats him on the shoulders. “You’ll be all right, my boy.”
Discipline, order and respect are a key component of the stability and refuge George’s gym provides. Photos: Kabir Jugram
“Hillbrow’s not only for crime. Champions can come from here”. Photos: Kabir Jugram
A crayon drawing of Khosi’s face is etched into a corner post of the ring. Above it reads: “George is dad.”
“Hillbrow’s not only for crime. Champions can come out of here!” Khosi tells me in his gruff voice. The twinkle in his one good eye shimmers against the sun.
FEATURED IMAGE: Hillbrow has become notorious as a zone of vice, violence and decay. Photo: Kabir Jugram
In a compelling Netflix documentary, sexual assault victims face the heartbreaking reality of police accusing and arresting them for ‘false reporting’.
The Netflix Originals documentary, Victims/Suspect follows the journey of journalist Rae de Leon from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Through her investigation, she uncovers a shocking revelation, exposing how sexual assault victims were subjected to intimidation by police during lengthy depositions, ultimately pressuring them into recanting their statements.
The documentary directed and produced by Nancy Schwartzman, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, and was released on Netflix on May 23.
Schwartzman’s previous work includes, Roll Red Roll, which dealt with the permissive “bro culture” around the rape cases which took place in 2012 in Steubenville, Ohio.
In Victim/Suspect she was able to craft an enthralling and provocative investigative documentary by tracking De Leon’s investigation and exposing how policing across the US can allow law enforcement to transform sexual assault survivors into criminal suspects.
De Leon utilised police interrogation footage, victim testimonies and interviews with legal experts to gain insight into where the potential flaws within the police system lie.
Beginning with piecing together the victims’ stories of assault, De Leon then compared them with the police’s handling of their cases before they subsequently closed the cases by arresting the victims.
By scrutinising the work of the police De Leon uncovered a recurring pattern, noting that when law enforcement officers had a form of scepticism towards possible sexual assault victims, they would resort to employing suspect interrogation tactics against them. These interrogation tactics included subjecting the accuser to hours of prolonged interrogation and repeatedly asking them questions until they reached the point of just wanting to exit the room. Additionally, police officers would lie to the victims claiming to possess surveillance footage of the location where the incident allegedly occurred.
It seems that the officers’ modus operandi had very little to do with justice and more focused on bringing the victims to a point of submission and having power over them. The reasons could range from police officers trying to protect a prominent local figure to them undermining the women’s recounting of their attacks to shorten the investigative time.
Although this aggressive approach was used on the victims, the alleged attackers were barely interviewed, if at all.
While the documentary is compelling and showcases excellent journalism, it is regrettably presented in a manner that is distracting and challenging to follow. The film is loosely centred around the journalist who had been working on exposing the flaws in the way sexual assault victims and cases were handled by the police for years, but the inclusion of documented evidence at random points in the timeline can cause some confusion.
The voiceover switches between past and present tense regarding the creation of the journalist’s article, yet there are no visual cues to assist viewers in navigating this continuous shifting. Not only did this create an unnecessarily complicated viewing experience, but the jumbled flow of events also took away from the impact some of the footage could have had on the viewer.
At times, the documentary also seems too much like a profile of a fired-up go-getter journalist. Although De Leon’s actions were admirable, placing so much focus on her could arguably have taken the spotlight from some of the victims’ interviews and the footage used as evidence throughout the documentary.
Overall, the documentary is a good and necessary watch. As a student journalist, the documentary taught me the significance of setting aside personal fears to advocate for those who cannot speak up for themselves. One aspect that resonated with me deeply was when De Leon mentioned her own apprehension when confronting individuals by knocking on their doors. However, she recognises that she serves as the voice for those who may be voiceless, and this realisation empowers her to overcome her fears and pursue her mission.
The biggest flaw in the documentary may be the lack of access to the police officers in question as they declined to participate in the film. This leaves the viewer feeling a lack of closure and somewhat enraged knowing that none of the officers were held accountable.
Vuvu rating: 7/10
FEATURED IMAGE: Victim/Suspect, a Netflix Originals documentary. Photo: IMBD
The Forge facilitated a conversation on African film by a Sembene screening, a story about the “Father of African Film” Ousmane Sembene.
Multicultural community centre, The Forge commemorated novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene through a screening of Sembene!, a documentary film which looks at his life and times as an African cinema pioneer.
Dubbed as the ‘father of African cinema’, Ousmane Sembene was born January 1, 1923, in Senegal. The writer and filmmaker was known for his political and historical themes. La Noire de… (Black girl), his 1966 feature film was considered the first major film produced by an African filmmaker.
Sembene! Is a 2015 documentary film directed by Samba Gadijo and Jason Sliverman that looks at the life of Ousman Sembene in the form of interviews with Gadijo and archives of his films. Gadijo who also narrated the documentary was one of Sebene’s closest confidants and the documentary follows their friendship.
La Noire de… (Black girl) scooped a major prize at the 1967 Cannes International Film Festival. The film depicts the virtual enslavement of an illiterate girl from Dakar working as a servant for a French family.
Co-director of public programs at The Forge and Commune, Mwelela Cele said that the film screening was inspired by Africa Day, Ousmane Sembene and filmmaker and writer Tsogo Kupa’s Sikelela Tapes and articles on Africa as a Country.
The space has been holding screenings since 2021 every last Thursday of the month, but they were disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic. This was the first screening since the covid-19 restrictions were lifted.
The screening was held at The Forge’s theatre on May 25, 2023. After the screening Tsogo Kupa, an internationally award-winning filmmaker, writer and Wits Film & Television graduate, engaged the audience in a discussion about the documentary and the issues surrounding the African film industry.
Kupa says that “even to this day as Africans we don’t feel like we own the medium of cinema, we feel like it is an art form that was picked up by Europeans and Americans”.
“Part of why we remember Sembene is to fight for the fact that we need to make his name well-known, and I think part of the reason why Africans feel like they don’t own cinema is because we don’t know of African masters of the medium”.
Sazi Bongwe, a literature student at Harvard University who attended the screening says that there is a lot to take away from cinema, the screening and the film itself as someone who is invested in art.
Cele told Wits Vuvuzela that The Forge will host another film screening linked to youth month at their theatre again in June 29, 2023.
FEATURED IMAGE:Sembene! plays at The Forge’s theatre. Photo: Mbalenhle Dlamini
Africa’s Gold Mafia made up of self-proclaimed prophets, diplomats and gangsters caught in 4K smuggling gold and ‘washing money’.
A four-part investigative documentary produced and aired on news channel, Al Jazeera, has blown the lid on a syndicate that facilitates well-orchestrated money laundering services for criminals. The first episode, The Laundry Service, aired on March 23, 2023 and new episodes have come out every week since.
The documentary took two years of investigation and much of it hinged on the undercover work of three reporters, who relied on hidden cameras and microphones to catch those implicated red-handed.
Leading the investigative unit (iUnit) is ‘Mr Stanley’, a Chinese gangster in search of money laundering services. Then there’s ‘Jonny’ (or the Hawala Man) a black-market trader who moves money across borders without using banks. And lastly, ‘Ms. Sin’, Mr Stanley’s financial advisor.
The first episode profiles Kamlesh Pattni, a pastor who classifies himself as Brother Paul, and the founder of Hope International. Using his pious cover, Pattni manages to get close to several African presidents and ‘work with them’ on a number of shady deals.
Pattni’s greed is bolstered by his political connections, which enable him to get exceptional licenses to export gold from country to country. Just when it seemed the authorities might be onto him and prosecute him for his crimes, particularly stealing taxpayers’ money, he relocated to Zimbabwe from Kenya.
Pattni does not work alone, his accomplices include Ewan Macmillan and Alistair Mathias. Macmillan has been in and out of prison countless times from the age of 21. He stands accused of smuggling gold worth R436 million through an untraceable bank account in Dubai.
The more unassuming of the two, Mathias, earned his gold smuggling stripes in Ghana and as the group’s ‘financial architect’, builds money laundering schemes for corrupt politicians and criminals.
What stays with the viewer beyond the shocking revelations, is the lengths the iUnit journalists went to, to expose all of the things done behind closed doors. It successfully tracks the illicit and seemingly commonplace way corruption robs resource rich nations of their riches.
The documentary comes to show how even people who claim to be prophets cannot be trusted, as seen through Pattni and Prophet Uebert Angel, a Zimbabwean diplomat who uses his government post to facilitate gold smuggling.
Investigative journalism of this kind clearly still has a place and purpose in exposing wrongdoing and holding people to account. All the episodes are free to stream on Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel.
Vuvu rating: 7/10
FEATURED IMAGE: Al Jazeera Gold Mafia Cover. Photo: Screenshot/AlJazeera YouTube
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FNB Wits have been left a mountain to climb after falling to bottom place with a 63-24 loss to FNB University of Johannesburg after squaring off in their first Varsity Cup match.
“The match obviously didn’t pan out the way we would have wanted but we have to take the positives out of it. We started the game too slow and after UJ got a few early tries we were playing catch up, which is never an easy thing to do,” said Wits Captain Devin Montgomery.
UJ ran in an overwhelming 9 tries to Wits’ three. Wits also fell short of a needed bonus point by a single try in their last two games. The points would have narrowed the broadening gap between Ikeys and Shimlas who are now four and six points ahead of Wits.
Luckily, Wits’ position in the Varsity Cup is secured for the 2013 season. Montgomery explained that there was no relegation zone this year guaranteeing that Wits will have two years in the competition.
“This is to ensure that we are given a fair chance to learn and adapt to this high level of rugby,” he said, “We know that every game in this competition is going to be tough and each week it’s never going to get any easier.”
“We have defended a lot this season and there has been a big gap between the number of tackles we have had to make compared to our opponents in every game.”
Wits are gaining a reputation of a never-say-die attitude on the field. During their match against UJ, Wits showed brief moments of brilliance when going forward. One of the key members to watch is Number 8 Carel Greeff who has proven to be an influential player in the squad having added another two tries to his five for the season in four matches.
“Carel is a great player and is playing great rugby at the moment. We have a couple of go-to ball carriers in the team, one of which is Carel,” said the captain.
The No. 8 has become well known for his crashing runs through opposing lines and he is a tenacious tackler that has made him an important element in the squad.
Montgomery said the “this Varsity Cup campaign is about learning and gaining experience playing at this top level of rugby for us.”
The team’s goals were to work hard in training and aim to perform for the full 80 minutes with making as little mistakes as possible.
“Wits will earn the reputation of being a difficult fixture I have no doubt about that. The team has a special bond and because we spend so much time together there is a family sense amongst the team,” he said.
The influence of Witsies Demi du Toit and Jaime Martin proved too much for Crusaders B as the pair played a hand in every goal of a 6-4 win on Monday evening at the Fourways Indoor Stadium.
Crusaders made the first move of the game forcing Wits goalkeeper Zimisile Shanghe to make a save over the side line from a difficult angle. Crusaders continued to look dangerous going forward until Wits’ Urselar Lesar successfully snuffed out the threat.
In the 13th minute, du Toit was able to snatch the ball from a Crusader centre link to feed Wits’ Gabriela Garcia, who was left unmarked at top D. The striker calmly slotted the ball in the right of the net to put Wits 1-0 up.
Shanghe was forced into action a final time in the half when Crusaders took a quick free hit towards the goal. She was up for the challenge, ensuring Wits remained in the lead at halftime and kept Wits 1-0 up at the halftime break.
The game exploded in the second half when Martin stole a ball from the Crusaders defence within the first minute. She hit the right hand corner of the board, seconds after making a poor decision that could have won her a penalty corner. Her celebration was well deserved having made the goal from nothing and giving Wits a two goal cushion.
Martin, who was playing a high attacking role, was proving to be a handful for the Crusaders defenders. In the 26th minute, Martin added another to her tally after she deflected a wrong-side penalty corner drag- flick by du Toit.
In the 30th minute, Crusaders’ Yolanda Kruger converted to draw the score line back to 3-1.
Martin then neatly pocketed her hat trick by wrong siding the keeper with a delicately placed shot, rather than her usual powerful efforts from top D, that went into the keepers near side post.
Crusaders’ Kruger took advantage of an off-the-line clearance by du Toit which deflected, with force, off her stick to rebound over Shanghe and into the net. Kruger managed to find the back of the net again, scoring her own hat trick and putting the score at 4-3 to Wits.
Wits went with a decision to exploit the wrong side corner again when du Toit rammed home a drag flick into the top right hand corner.
With five minutes left on the clock Crusaders’ Deslie Lester managed to squeeze in a deflection from top D from a well crossed ball.
Wits kept possession of the ball in the last few minutes, frustrating the Crusaders bench. Martin’s dribbles found space once again at the top of the D and this time she opted to win a penalty corner with some neat stick skills. The wrong-side corner was once again utilised and du Toit obliged with her second goal of the match to put Wits 6-4 ahead and end the game.
Wits Men Hockey still intend to push for a first place finish regardless of narrowly losing their first game of the season 4-7 against Wanderers A.
The students “never say die” attitude was just not enough to scrape an upset against a Wanderers side that could field a full bench of former and current South African national hockey players.
Wits started the game well with a number of positive manoeuvres through the field. They seemed likely to open the scoring but could not find a gap to the back of the net through Wanderers keeper Michael Smith.
Shots were exchanged in both halves but with little effect until Wanderers won a penalty corner in the 8th minute. Wits keeper Cole Zondagh rushed the top of the Wanderers castle but was not quick enough to intercept a slip which was then slammed home courtesy of a Wanderers drag flick.
The shot was contested by the Wits side after it looked like it was illegally hit but the goal was not overturned.
Wits were able to shake off the goal and came back with a response in the 12th minute when Wits’ Jared Povall executed a slip drag of his own during a penalty corner that finally beat Smith.
Wanderers’ adopted an unconventional press system which gave Wits a number of problems. As a result Wits’ conceded a number of turnovers in their own half. A succession of dubious tackles resulted in Wits giving away a field goal in the 13th minute and then another in a penalty corner in the 15th to put Wanderers two goals ahead.
The cushion was broken in the final minute before half-time when Wits’ Stuart Philip managed to scramble a shot on target during an overtime penalty corner. It was Wanderers’ turn to contend the goal after the ball had “left the playing circle twice” rendering the corner over. Their query was ignored by the referees.
Wanderers dominated the opening period of the second half and Wits, uncharacteristically, did not seem to have an answer. Wits conceded two more field goals and another goal from a penalty corner to put the score at 2-6 in the 34th minute, with six minutes of play.
But the game was not quite set and buried. Wanderers’ Lance Louw was sent marching off with a five minute penalty for complaining to the referee, and gave Wits a chance of coming back.
Povall slotted a penalty corner and then three minutes later in the 40th minute made a brilliant deflection to beat Smith and score a hat trick. But it was too late for the Witsies who conceded another goal in the dying seconds to end the game 4-7 against the students.
Societal expectations and experiences can often place pressure on people’s relationships. With Valentine’s Day coming up we have asked individuals questions about their views on certain relationship dynamics especially when it comes to the most anticipated day of the year for some lovers, Valentines Day. Viewers shared their beliefs and Siyanda and Katlego talk about […]
