The Sub City: What Lies Beneath

What secrets does a city hold within its bosom? In Johannesburg, one of them is an intriguinglabyrinth of tunnels that once served as a postal delivery system. Could such relics of the past be the subterranean realms of the future? Urban planning points to what is now called ‘hypogeal cities’.

- Ancillar Mangena

Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) holds a secret within its deep, dark belly.

On the surface are the citadels of power housing some of Africa’s oldest and biggest corporate institutions. Beneath this morass of steel and concrete, is a labyrinth of tunnels few know of.

We search for them, walking miles in the sun, scouring the grimy innards and alleys of a business district that was once seen and filmed by Hollywood producers as a Manhattan ‘lookalike’.

These streets have been witness to searing political upheaval and mass unrest, and bear the scars of a brutal apartheid past.

But every city needs daily witnesses in its account of the here and now, and you find them on the streets – the shopkeepers, traders, commuters and the security guards who watch the CBD change color and character from morning to night.

And sometimes, the best leads come from these purveyors of change, the ordinary people who witness the city up close every day.

And luckily, we find ours – the security guard who will indirectly lead us to the tunnels.

“Yes, I have been inside these underground tunnels,” he says, reluctant to reveal his name or tell us more. He relents, however, and gives us a number we can call, that of the site manager of what he calls “the Post Office tunnels”.

With his help, on a sultry October morning, we arrive at the Old Johannesburg Post Office on Jeppe Street, a street lined with shops and informal traders selling everything from cell phones to socks.

Business here has a life and rhythm of its own, oblivious to what lies beneath.

“I have been living and working here for 30 years and I have never heard of what you are talking about,” shrugs Givemore Sithole, a worker in the area, when we ask if he knows about the tunnels.

But history and fact co-exist.