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CONSTRUCTION WORLD
FEBRUARY
2017
12
ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
Not only is Sandton South Africa’s
commercial capital, it is also a world-class
leading city.
“In economic circles, the attractiveness
and economic health of an area is
measured by a simple guideline – the
number of cranes which can be seen on
the skyline. Right now, the Sandton Central
skyline shows an impressive cluster of
cranes,” says Elaine Jack, City Improvement
District manager for Sandton Central
Management District.
So, it may be difficult to imagine that
less than 50 years ago Sandton didn’t exist
in name – where it stands today was largely
a farming and smallholding community.
Sandton was promulgated in July 1969
and “at that time there were about 30 000
whites in the town and 15 000 horses”,
according to former town planner Barry
Bristow. And, while scarcely populated in
the years before that, it has a rich, albeit
largely uneventful, early history.
Greater Sandton’s first residents were
middle stone-age hunters who arrived
around 30 000 years ago, establishing
communities on the granite outcrops of
Witkoppen, Lonehill and Norscot Koppies.
About 10 000 years ago ancestors of the
San people settled. Then, around four
centuries ago, Bantu-speaking communities
of the iron-age inhabited the rocky ridges
of the area becoming Sandton’s first
industrialists, with an economy based
principally on agriculture and metalwork.
First settlers
The first settlers moved to Sandton after
Britain annexed Natal in 1843. Every original
Voortrekker male settler who came to the
South African Republic (later Transvaal,
now Gauteng), was entitled to a farm of his
own. Sandfontein was the farm area around
Sandton. The Esterhuysen’s were a well-
known Voortrekker family who lived on the
farm Sandfontein, close to where Sandown
High School is today, on the corner of
Grayston and Rivonia drives.
A wave of urbanisation in the 1930s
was driven by widespread poverty in South
Africa as the world suffered one of its
worst economic depressions. Many people
abandoned rural lifestyles for opportunities
in the industrial Witwatersrand.
1930s
The ‘Southern Suburbs’ of Sandton were
laid out quite early in the century and by
the thirties they were well established as
‘gentleman estate’ areas with most of the
properties being one morgen or larger.
At this stage they formed the ‘northern’
suburbs of Johannesburg and in some
cases extended beyond the boundaries
of the city. The rural ‘horsey’ lifestyle of
Sandton led to the area being dubbed
the ‘Mink and Manure Belt’ and it was
considered a desirable address.
1940s and 1950s
During the 1940s and 50s Sandton became
increasingly residential and wanted
independence from the government’s
Peri-Urban areas Health Board, which had
control over services such as water. The
local population regarded themselves as
an entity separate from Johannesburg.
The first moves by Sandton to achieve
independence from Johannesburg go back
to the early sixties. When it was eventually
promulgated as a municipality in 1969,
its name formed from a combination of
the names Sandtfontein, Bryanston
and Sandown.
The first few years of Sandton’s
existence were dominated by the question
of whether Sandton should remain a quite
semi-rural dormitory town or be a more
balanced entity with significant business
and higher density residential components.
Bristow reports that it split the town
council apart.
In 1956 the Peri-Urban board had various
large tracts of land for municipal purposes
– one of these being the 11 ha site in
Sandown where the Civic Centre
now stands.
Of this, 3,4 ha was sold to the Transvaal
Provincial Administration for the building
of Sandown Primary School and in 1965
the land directly south of the Civic Centre
area was allocated extensive retail and
flat rights – the land then belonged to
Bob Edmunds, the chairman of Standard
Bank, and was sold to property developers
Rapp and Maister – now Liberty Properties
– in 1968.
The first step in transforming Sandton
from a farming community to a bustling
business district came with Sandton City,
which was developed and constructed by
Rapp and Maister on this site during the
early 1970s, opening for trade in 1974.
Commercial rush
The rush of commercial space began in the
mid to late 1980s when land in Sandton
was cheaper than that in the Johannesburg
CBD and could also offer a lifestyle with
rolling lawns, fountains and low-density,
From green fields to
GREEN BUILDINGS
Sandton Central, without doubt,
has become the most important
business and financial node
in South Africa, and plausibly
sub-Saharan Africa. It is home
to many of South Africa’s largest
corporates, the world’s top
multinational companies, the
JSE and the iconic Sandton City
mega-mall.
FROM LEFT:
Oxen photographed on William Nicol drive in Sandton, Sandton’s 32 hectares of land in Sandhurst, and Sandton City – Office Towers.