Block by block, Hillbrow is being turned into a neighbourly place

This part of Johannesburg's inner city has a reputation for crime, drugs and hijacked buildings, but Bafikile Mkhize and the team at eKhaya are working to build a socially cohesive community.

- Bridget Hilton-Barber

“You can't build a sense of community in a neighbourhood where people don't know each other,” says Bafikile Mkhize, community coordinator at eKhaya Neighbourhood, an urban improvement project in the inner city's toughest neighbourhood, Hillbrow.

With some 80,000 people living in high-rise buildings within one square kilometre, Hillbrow is a high-density, low-income area notorious for crime, unemployment, xenophobia, drugs, violence and hijacked buildings. But since eKhaya started working here in 2004, going block by block to uplift the area, pockets of liveable buildings and safe spaces have been on the increase.

Ekhaya means “at home”, and the project is a collaboration between property owners, building managers, tenants and the Johannesburg city council to “make a neighbourhood in Hillbrow”, says Mkhize, who has a degree in commerce, marketing and business management.

We meet in a loving pocket of Hillbrow, a building that is home to eKhaya as well as MES, a project for the homeless, and the Madulammoho Housing Association, which aims to provide social housing in the area for low-income people.