Litnet

The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city by Tania Zack (Jacana Media, 2025)

Title: The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city
Author: Tanya Zack
Publisher: Jacana Media (August 2025)
ISBN: 9781431436033

The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city reaffirms Tania Zack’s talent for telling a compelling real-life story, as she also did in Wake up, this is Joburg in 2022. Excellent photos by photographer Mark Lewis strengthen the message, as does a front-page drawing by William Kentridge of a 2011 political protest in the area¹.

The title refers to a booming makeshift shopping hub in Jeppe Street that developed over the last decade without formal planning, becoming the base of large numbers of small, mostly informal businesses owned by Ethiopian expats. Municipal officials speak informally of the area as the “Chaos Precinct”, but traders there call it by the hallmark road name, Jeppe. For them, it is a place of opportunity and trade in which revenue far exceeds that of Sandton City, Africa’s wealthiest shopping mall, a mere 15 kilometres away.

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Although seen by some municipal officials and South African locals as infringement by illegal foreigners or illegitimate competition to South Africans, the Jeppe area represents a story of persistent, ordinary people overcoming barriers to achieve – using the author’s word – “fortunes”.

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Although seen by some municipal officials and South African locals as infringement by illegal foreigners or illegitimate competition to South Africans, the Jeppe area represents a story of persistent, ordinary people overcoming barriers to achieve – using the author’s word – “fortunes”. It challenges, powerfully and empirically, those who oppose such foreign engagement in Johannesburg.

This is a dynamic, progressive book that identifies the awkward relationships between many South Africans and foreigners. In the final chapter, Tanya Zack writes about hope in the Johannesburg inner city and beyond, including in other cities and towns. She writes, powerfully: “Once the forces of development take over from those of corrupt extraction, anything is possible,” and significantly that “supporting cross-border trade in the inner city is the obvious thing to do” to advance global economic competitiveness while contributing to local development.

I find it difficult to add anything to the core point of this fascinating book. There is much richness to gain from it and plenty to think about in it, while enjoying its colourful, expressive photos and messages. In short, the book asserts that the vitality of Jeppe is not an exotic implant in the city, but “a potential lodestar for navigating the future of the city” and of African cities more generally.

• Chris Heymans is an independent analyst and advisor, specialising in the political economy of cities, urban development and water and sanitation.

Acknowledgements

• Title: The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city
• First published in 2025 by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, 10 Orange Street, Sunnyside, Auckland Park 2092, South Africa, www.jacana.co.za
• Text © Tanya Zack, 2025
• Photographs © Mark Lewis
• Cover image: Downtown © William Kentridge, 2011
• Maps and graphics: Thireshen Govender, Eish Ahlawat and Reitumetse Selepe
• All rights reserved
• ISBN 9781431436033

End note

¹ It was recently renamed by the City of Johannesburg to Rahima Moosa Street.

Also read:

Wake up, this is Joburg by Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis: a book review

The city is mine by Niq Mhlongo: a book review

Joburg noir, edited by Niq Mhlongo: reader impression

Tinnitus: my near north (on The near north by Ivan Vladislavic)