CAMPAIGN! DEFEND PUBLIC SPACES!
WORKERS MUSEUM AND COTTAGES
City of Joburg plans Eviction of Khanya College from Workers Museum West Cottage
City of Joburg plans Eviction of Khanya College from Workers Museum West Cottage
About the Campaign
About Campaign for PUBLIC SPACES
The City of Joburg Directorate of Arts, Culture and Heritage plans to evict Khanya College from the Workers Museum West Cottage (WMC) after a partnership of 30 years. The City of Joburg plans to house its administrative staff in the Cottages.
The Khanya Board of Trustees received the letter (February 2025) to vacate the WMC by end of March 2025 and resolved to defend this important public space.
The Cottages form part of the WM heritage site, and the CoJ is already in contravention using it as administrative offices. This planned eviction will limit youth and communities’ access and use of the Workers Museum, the Newtown Cultural Precinct and the City of Johannesburg. This is a hostile anti-working class act by an uncaring city, which manages the disintegration of the country’s economic heartland without any accountability. Both, President Ramaphosa and Premier Lesufi officially acknowledge the city’s decay, but nothing has been done. The defence of public spaces depends on each one of us, acting collectively.
Defend public spaces: WM & C
On Saturday, 19 July 2025, 18 civil society organisations, decided that the City of Joburg and the Directorate of Heritage, Arts and Culture has no commitment to the city’s working class history and its cultural development; and in particular, the right of working people to access art, culture, heritage and public spaces.
Our Demands to the City of Johannesburg
- The Workers Museum and both, East and West Cottages are used as a public space and heritage site for the working class and the public;
- That Khanya College be the guardian of this space for the working class;
- That the CoJ retains its responsibility for overall structural and related maintenance;
- The CoJ enters into an agreement with Khanya College to give effect to these demands.
In addition, the organisations resolved:
- To set up a Working Group to mobilise fraternal organisations and civil society to support the petition and the campaign. A joint Women’s Day Celebration on 9 August at the Cottages will form part of this mobilisation.
- That organisations and civil society together with Khanya College, hand over constituencies’ responses, as per agreement with the CoJ, in September 2025.
Why the planned eviction?
The CoJ’s reason for the planned eviction of Khanya College and the working class from this public space is the fire that took place in the Civic Centre in September 2023 which displaced thousands of employees, is still not repaired nearly two years later!
As early as 2019 the CoJ was notified that the electrical transformers in the civic needed maintenance. The CoJ’s neglect resulted in the fire. Instead of taking responsibility and accountability for its actions, the CoJ is choosing to make historically disadvantaged youth, communities and the public pay for their mismanagement.
CoJ Mismanagement
- Reports indicate at least one hundred (100) dilapidated city-owned buildings require repairs.
- The Commission of Inquiry into the fire that resulted in 76 people’s deaths in 80 Albert Street in August 2023, the apartheid Pass Record Office, found the CoJ negligent and responsible for the fire. The city’s response was to blame NGOs and foreign nationals. This building was vacant since 2017, amidst calls for it to be a heritage site.
- The City Library was closed for 4 years before public protests contributed to its reopening.
- Lilian Ngoyi Street has been closed for two years due to the city failing to repair the site, amidst rumours of corruption and mismanagement.
- This is besides the ongoing potholes and lack of services in the decaying inner city where the poor live and work.
Yet when the city has the chance to protect public spaces used by its citizens it chooses to punish them further. This uncaring and unaccountable approach can no longer be tolerated.
Remember/Struggle for WMC
In early 2000s a bitter public struggle for the Workers Museum and Cottages (WMC) took place when the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), amongst others, planned to demolish the WM and build a hotel, shopping centre and coffee shops.
Then, Khanya College together with South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), the Anti-Privatisation Forum and civil society engaged in a protracted struggle that included petitions to the National Heritage Council and a public march to the Joburg Property Company. Eventually the Council ruled that the hotel be built elsewhere.
This was a victory for working class heritage in South Africa. Khanya College voluntarily relocated from the Cottages, prioritising it for culture and heritage; and the Workers Library merged with Khanya College. Ever since, the WMC have been integral to the college’s education, art and cultural work in the City.
Why defend public spaces?
Public spaces are important to ensure inclusivity and social cohesion in all societies and communities. Public spaces assist children, youth and communities to grow and develop. Apartheid developed public spaces for the wellbeing of the white minority. In contrast, public spaces for people of colour were restricted, and oriented to work spaces or supporting the white minority.
In post apartheid South Africa, public spaces are few and far between – few libraries, parks, recreational and art and cultural spaces. Under neoliberalism, austerity budget cuts have limited public spaces, especially for working class people. The WM & C is one of the few public spaces available in Johannesburg for the working class and the public.
Guardian of the WM&C
The resolution from the Defend Public Spaces civil society meeting on 19July 2025 that Khanya College be the guardian of the WMC is based on concrete experience over 30 years. Khanya has worked with diverse working class organisations, movements and communities to improve the lives of working people and the public through education, art and culture. The CoJ’s three-year user agreement with Khanya College, signed in February 2021, was in recognition of the College’s consistent educational and cultural work in the city since the 1990s.
The Cottages in close proximity to the Museum have helped deepen Khanya College’s outreach and ongoing work with communities and youth. The main offices of Khanya College are based in the Fashion District, close to the Gauteng High Court, a derelict, crime ridden area with no other cultural spaces for tenants, school youth and citizens. The WM&C is more easily accessible to all working people without any bureaucratic control, power and user fees.
When the user agreement expired in February 2024; Khanya College had a reasonable expectation, and by conduct, that the COJ would extend the agreement. Khanya College has more than fulfilled its responsibilities of the user agreement, bringing communities, youth, children, women and the public to enjoy education, art, culture, the Workers Museum’s history, the Newtown Cultural Precinct and the City. Khanya College has maintained and continues to provide 24-hour security to the Cottages and the WMC complex, thus subsidizing the COJ, at the expense of ourselves and our solidarity partners.
Evidently, the City does not value Joburg’s working class history and culture; and developing its youth and communities. Neither is the CoJ mindful of support for self-organised and consistent community-based programmes like Khanya College’s which make a difference in people’s lives.
We call on all fraternal organisations and the public to support the struggle of working people to the right to public spaces. Sign this petition to immediately halt the eviction of Khanya College from the WM Cottages now, and in the future; and for both the Cottages to be retained for culture and heritage.
Partnership with CoJ
After the formation of the WM, Khanya provided its infrastructure (telephone, fax, security and other facilities to the CoJ (staff at the WM), cleaning, maintenance, heating and even toilet paper – effectively subsidising the CoJ.
The WMC has acted as a progressive space for artists and cultural workers:
- In 2003, the anti-War Coalition opposed the US war on Iraq, often met at the WM.
- Khanya College held seminars on Demilitarisation and War, with Rosa Luxembourg Foundation in 2003.
- Khanya College continued to provide regular access and education and cultural programmes to working class communities…
The CoJ and Khanya College have also collaborated in other cultural areas, including the Jozi Book Fair Festival (JBF) founded in 2009…
Despite this long-standing relationship, the CoJ has now decided to evict Khanya College from a heritage space used by poor communities so that they can have administrative space as they have not maintained their own buildings! Already, the Newtown Precinct is a shadow of its former self after the gentrification of the space displaced many, closed restaurants, coffee shops and book shops.