Fordsburg

Fordsburg is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is located in Region 8. Fordsburg is a residential suburb, although housing numerous shops and factories.

Fordsburg
Fordsburg
Fordsburg
Coordinates: 26°12′24″S 28°1′24″E
CountrySouth Africa
ProvinceGauteng
MunicipalityCity of Johannesburg
Main PlaceJohannesburg
Area
 • Total0.55 km2 (0.21 sq mi)
Population
 (2011)[1]
 • Total2,350
 • Density4,300/km2 (11,000/sq mi)
Racial makeup (2011)
 • Black African46.2%
 • Coloured2.1%
 • Indian/Asian50.0%
 • White0.3%
 • Other1.4%
First languages (2011)
 • English43.6%
 • Zulu15.1%
 • Tswana5.0%
 • Xhosa4.5%
 • Other31.8%
Time zoneUTC+2 (SAST)
Postal code (street)
2092
PO box
2033

Today, Fordsburg is a major centre of Indian and Pakistani culture, with large number of halal restaurants. The Oriental Plaza, located in Fordsburg, was created by the Apartheid government as a large shopping centre for Indian-owned shops, and is a major attraction in Fordsburg. The suburb was portrayed in the 2012 film Material, which highlighted some of the cultural, racial and religious issues still facing South Africa's post-apartheid society

From the earliest days of Johannesburg, the suburb housed a large Jewish community - with the Fordsburg/Mayfair Hebrew Congregation established in 1893 - as well as associated institutions such as a Kosher butchery, chevra kadisha, welfare organisations and Bet midrash.[2]

1922 Miner's strike
Old 1922 plaque in Fordsburg Square.

Fordsburg was the site of a miners strike by Afrikaner nationalists and many Communists. Mine bosses insisted on using African labour in the mines. White workers opposed this policy, and Smuts called in the troops and airforce. [3] This strike is also known as the Rand Rebellion. A plaque in Fordsburg Square records the people who were killed there in the last battle of the rebellion.

Writer Herman Charles Bosman and playwright Athol Fugard, as well as anti-apartheid activists such as Yusuf Dadoo, GM Naiker and Nelson Mandela spent time in Fordsburg.[4]

gollark: ```An esoteric programming language (ess-oh-terr-ick), or esolang, is a computer programming language designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or as a joke, rather than for practical use. ```
gollark: My favourite esolang is probably Haskell.
gollark: I agree.
gollark: I prefer the set dictionaries.
gollark: ``` A language based on the idea of communism. There would be only one great editor (a wiki or similar) and all programmers would write only one big program that does everything. There would be only one datatype that fits everything, so everything belongs to one single class. Functional programming is clearly based on the idea of communism. It elevates functions (things that do the work) to first class citizens, and it is a utopian endeavor aimed at abolishing all states. It is seen as inefficient and unpopular, but always has die-hard defenders, mostly in academia. Besides, ML stands for Marxism-Leninism. Coincidence? I think not. It should be called Soviet Script and the one big program can be called the Universal Soviet Script Repository or USSR for short. And they put all the packages together in one place (Hackage). It already exists and is called 'Web'. It already exists and is called 'Emacs'. Emacs is the one great editor, and the one big program (Emacs can do almost anything). The language is Emacs Lisp, which is functional, and almost everything is a list (the one great datatype/class). Unfortunately```

References
  1. "Sub Place Fordsburg". Census 2011.
  2. CHAPTER FOUR JEWS – REFORMERS, REBELS, OR JUST UITLANDERS?, accessed 23 June 2013
  3. Marikana: A lesson in late liberal democracy Archived 2012-08-24 at the Wayback Machine
  4. http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-fordsburg
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