No one we know goes into Durban’s rundown CBD by choice anymore. Except, that is, for my 85-year-old mother who still takes a combi taxi into town from her home in Musgrave Road once a month to have her hair done. (Cue horrified gasps.) She’s made of sterner stuff than I.

The featured image above is of the Playhouse theatre in Smith Street.

Back in the seventies and eighties, a favourite Friday night outing for the family would be “window-shopping” down West and Smith Streets – especially in the weeks before Christmas, but not only then. The shops closed at 5pm, but you could buy an ice-cream cone and stroll past the brightly lit window displays of department stores like Greenacres and Stuttafords (later Garlicks), Durban Wholesale Jewellers and other flourishing retailers.

The numerous arcades that run between Smith and West used to be lined with interesting little shops, boutiques and restaurants. Nothing like them exists anymore.

It took something exceptional to lure Roy into the CBD – luggage! A luggage store at Gateway had recommended an Indian man called Dennis at Leather Works in Broad Walk to mend the frayed handle of Roy’s Samsonite travel briefcase. He’d dropped it off two weeks earlier, and we were returning on the appointed day to pick it up.

Informal parking attendants preside over each block. They ask you to wait for a space to become free, then help you to operate the parking ticket machine; some clever manipulation of tickets plus your tips is how they earn their living.

I can’t remember what Broad Walk used to look like, but it wasn’t like this. Our destination on the first floor was an incredible and insanitary jumble of all sorts of hides and plastics piled high to the ceiling.

Had the handle been fixed? Of course not. And Dennis wasn’t there. He wasn’t answering his phone either (said the Indian woman – his mother?). So we left with the un-repaired bag, amazed that the staff had even managed to find it in such a shit-hole.

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Scenes within Broad Walk – the young man, who had to be high on something with eyes like that – insisted on being photographed

Street vendors

Street vending, along with the hundreds of seedy little casinos that popped up in 1994 simultaneously with the promise of democracy, became a political hot potato. In those days I was still working in the Mayor’s Parlour, first in City Hall and then at the Embassy Building.

The new ANC government finally made up its mind about the casinos and closed them down; but Durban Metro Council never summoned sufficient political will to clean up and restore safety to the streets. Whatever they did do was too little and too late; the CBD’s formal sector had been slowly and sadly strangled to death.

There’s still plenty of high-end shopping available to the people of Durban, but you’ll find it elsewhere – in suburban shopping centres like La Lucia Mall and the massive Gateway in Umhlanga Ridge.

What about the other services generally associated with a CBD? Though the law courts are still in Masonic Grove, previously city-based professionals, accountants and lawyers like our friend Jeff moved out years ago, mainly northwards to the glossy new commercial developments that now cover the salubrious coastal hills of Umhlanga and Ballito.

 

Durban Beachfront

The city did a pretty good job of cleaning up the beachfront – fondly known as the Golden Mile – for the 2010 Football World Cup in Durban, and we’re still reaping the benefits of that.

Almost every beachfront building holds memories, and every hotel had its distinctive bars, nightclubs and restaurants – here are just a handful of them:

*Oops! Like many Durban streets, Marine Parade has been renamed, largely due to the unevenly appreciated efforts of white ANC local government politician Michael Sutcliffe. It is now Oliver Tambo Parade.

Garfunkel’s restaurant with its entrance on the side of the Parade Hotel was a great place for a drink after or between my waitressing shifts at Stax Steakhouse; it was also home to Why Not Magoo’s Bar, infamous for being bombed on Saturday, 14 June 1986.  Three people died and 69 were injured in the attack. (I was usually there at the bar on a Saturday night, but on that particular night we had opted to go to a “house party” on the Berea.)

 

I loved Durban when I was young and every part of the city was beautiful, clean and safe. I still do.