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Launched in 2017, the idea behind Jozi Walks is a chance to explore the city's streets on foot and learn about different neighbourhoods in Johannesburg, from the people who know them best. It's completely free to attend and citizen-led. The first few editions were spearheaded by Douglas Cohen and the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA). Now, after a four-year hiatus, Jozi Walks returns as JoziMyJoziWalks in 2025. Led by Jozi My Jozi and supported by Johannesburg In Your Pocket, we couldn't be more excited. Applications for this year's edition of Jozi Walks are open. If you'd like to host a walking tour in your favourite Joburg neighbourhood, apply here.
Nothing quite captures the JoziMyJoziWalks experience like attending a tour for yourself. To let you in on a little of the magic, we're sharing Q&As with a few of the key past participants – reflecting on walks held between 2017 and 2020. As Gerard Bester says, "Jozi Walks has always brought a freshness to how we move through this city. It draws out an intimacy between strangers, between past and present, between pavement and sky."
Mark Straw: Photojournalist and guide for Joburg Photowalkers
Photo: Supplied.
What was your initial response to the Jozi Walks concept?
Jozi Walks was one of the most incredible and memorable initiatives I've been a part of. I coordinated photographers to document the activations over a four-year period, from 2017 to 2020. I love how the walks are a public call for hosts of locally run tours and community-led initiatives that are helping to empower locals.
"Getting warmly welcomed in areas which you perceived as dangerous is eye-opening and humbling." – Mark Straw
Tell us about the inaugural weekend in 2017. What stood out for you?
I joined for a morning walk in Diepsloot. We interacted with many along the way as we walked by people going about their day-to-day lives – doing washing, selling oranges, braiding hair – getting insights and exchanging stories with various people along the way.
That afternoon, I joined a fun artistic intervention in Newtown coordinated by Anthea Moys. We warmed up with exercises and running across Mary Fitzgerald Square, and then spray-painted graffiti with imaginary spray cans before heading into a disco dance and a song. I have experienced Newtown many times before and since, but never in this way.
On the Sunday morning, we joined William and Banele of Joe's Lifestyle & Butchery in Alexandra for a guided Jozi Walk through Alexandra township. We started by seeing the butchery getting ready for the day – getting the pap on the stove and starting fires. We then took a walk through the township, seeing many on their way to church. We spent some time watching kids playing a soccer match and then had a chance to reflect on the walk over a braai.
As someone who spends a lot of time on the ground, why does this city need a movement like Jozi Walks?
Many have never had these sorts of experiences. Getting warmly welcomed in areas that you perceived as dangerous is eye-opening and humbling.
Why are you an advocate for navigating the city on foot?
One gets a chance to observe and see things when walking in a public space. I walk to document and take photographs. There is always a chance that someone may snatch something or pickpocket you or someone in the group, so while you are on the lookout for beauty, you also have to look out for danger.
Is there a neighbourhood that crept into your heart as a result of Jozi Walks, that you have continued to revisit ever since?
Both Orange Farm and Hillbrow, as they hold annual public parades and performances on the streets.
What excites you about the return of JoziMyJoziWalks in 2025?
There are always surprising tours which I would not have otherwise known of.
Ayanda Mnyandu: Founder of City Skate Tours and Maboneng aficionado
What made you want to be part of Jozi Walks?
The first one we did was in 2018, and we were just excited to be able to engage with locals as, when we started, we mainly got a lot of international interest. Plus, I think Joburg was pretty prime for tourism then. I think Maboneng had just been announced as one of the World's Top 50 Coolest Neighbourhoods. We wanted to contribute to the cultural mix, and get people looking at or experiencing Joburg differently.
Tell us about the inner city tour you led in 2018. What made you want to centre the walk around skateboarding culture?
It's not news that people are skeptical about the inner city, so we wanted to highlight that as a cool part of the city. Both from a historical perspective, learning about the beautiful buildings, and then with regards to skateboarding culture – it's always fun meeting other skaters while you're on a tour and engaging with like-minded individuals.
How has your offering evolved since then?
We've grown from being a skateboarding tour company to now being a bit more of a comprehensive tour operator, and our footprint has grown much larger. I would also say over time and through our own experiences, we've realised that our favourite part of Joburg is the diverse street culture, so now that's what we focus on. On all of the public tours we do, we highlight the importance of the cultural diversity of Joburg and why that makes Joburg such an amazing city.
Growing up, did you ever think you’d be a tour guide? And that this was something you could build a living around?
Straight answer, no. I studied economics at university! I had absolutely no ambitions of ever being a tour guide. I think I ended up in it because I've always followed stuff that I love. At the time, I was working at a nonprofit where we did youth development through skateboarding, and I realised that I wanted to work for myself and be engaged with the city. It's cool, and a bit crazy, to be able to make a living off what you want to do. Also, I feel that a lot of Joburg people have what I would refer to as latent knowledge about the city. You hang out where you hang out, but because it's so normal and every day for you, you don't realise how somebody from the outside might find that information valuable. I think a lot of people in Joburg, because we're always constantly up and down, can be a de facto tour guide. So for me, that transition was not hard. The information was already there. It's just about how we share this with others.
"You know, the more I learn about Joburg, the more I realise I know absolutely nothing about it." – Ayanda Mnyandu
Why do you think the concept of Jozi Walks is so powerful, and so important for the city right now?
Well, because Joburg people are the worst people when it comes to criticising Joburg, especially the inner city. Social media just shows all this crime and everything that's going wrong. My view has always been that two things can be true at the same time. The city can be a horrible place to be, with everything breaking down and a lot of opportunistic crime. However, that's not enough for you to say, "I'll never go there." That's why we are here as tour operators, to give people a much more contextualised experience across the city, where we take you around to places that maybe you've always wanted to go to or always been interested in. So it's cool that Jozi Walks is back this year, because we need more Joburg people promoting Joburg.
What have you learnt through attending other guided tours in the city?
One that stands out the most is the Maboneng Township Arts Experience tour in Alexandra. We'd always go party in Alex, but I didn't have a sense of what a day-to-day life in the neighbourhood looked like. It was fascinating attending the Alex experience, because again, we live in such a diverse country where so many different people have different lived experiences. But even these days, I enjoy going on other people's tours. You know, the more I learn about Joburg, the more I realise I know absolutely nothing about it.
What excites you about the return of JoziMyJoziWalks in 2025?
The walks will give people an opportunity to learn a bit more about the city. It will be official and good to be able to talk about Joburg's inner city in a very positive light, while also acknowledging the challenges. It's a gift getting an opportunity to deep dive into the story of Joburg, its evolution, and what's happening now. The more you can contextualise what happens in Joburg, the easier it will be for people to understand it.
Gerard Bester: Head of Windybrow Arts Centre
What made you want to be part of Jozi Walks?
At the time, I was working with the Hillbrow Theatre Project, a space filled with the raw energy, dreams, and stories of young people living in the inner city. Jozi Walks felt like the perfect spark: a chance to ignite their curiosity, to inspire them to unearth the many-layered histories beneath their feet, and to tell their own stories of the streets they move through daily. Hillbrow, with its cracked pavements and towering buildings, its vibrant community, sudden bursts of music and laughter, its deep history as a multicultural space, deserved to be walked with intention, with wonder, with a hunger for its past and its possible futures.
Through Jozi Walks, we began a rich collaboration with the legendary Flo Bird and the indomitable Kathy Munro of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF), who guided us into the underlayers of the city, teaching the youth to read facades like archives, to see how concrete holds memory, to trace the ghosts of jazz clubs and political safehouses, to feel the push and pull between gentrification and survival. Their passion lit a fire in our young walkers, turning them from spectators into storytellers, and helping them reclaim Hillbrow not as a place to escape from, but as a place to dream inside.
"Jozi Walks offers something rare, a space to walk beyond the borders of fear, to listen, to look, to speak, to remember." – Gerard Bester
Tell us about the experience of hosting Jozi Walks?
We hosted Jozi Walks in both 2018 and 2019, and each year felt like opening a door into a different way of seeing Hillbrow, not from above, not from afar, but from the ground, from within. For the young artists of the Hillbrow Theatre Project, it offered a fusion of performance and homecoming. The city became their stage, the balconies and alleyways, the corridors of old buildings, all part of the script. Their stories were the stories: fragments of childhood, flashes of fear and joy, memories born between high-rises and hope scrawled on walls.
It shifted the gaze. It allowed the public to walk Hillbrow not through a lens of fear or decay, but through the voices of its youth, alive, inventive, unafraid. In 2019, Lesley Mosweu, one of the young performers, led the walk he had helped shape. That moment, him guiding others through his own Hillbrow, was both art and activism. He’s continued doing walking tours since then, creating not only work for himself but a model for others to follow.
Jozi Walks didn’t end with the walks. It inspired us to honour the lives and resistance of those who came before. On Edith Cavell Street, we created a wall that remembers the heroes of Hillbrow, not the distant kind cast in bronze, but the ones who live next door, who hold the neighbourhood together with grit, style, survival, and song.
Why do you think the concept of Jozi Walks is so powerful, and so important for the city right now?
It’s a gift to see Jozi Walks return. Johannesburg, right now, feels frayed: divided by electric fences and economic desperation, heavy with the weight of political neglect. But Jozi Walks offers something rare, a space to walk beyond the borders of fear, to listen, to look, to speak, to remember.
Through creativity and storytelling, we begin to rebuild the city. Not with grand narratives or glossy visions, but with the small, intimate truths of people who live in Hillbrow, Bertrams, Troyeville, Brixton, the so-called forgotten places that, in truth, are bursting with memory, stories, rhythm, resilience.
Jozi Walks has always brought a freshness to how we move through this city. It draws out an intimacy between strangers, between past and present, between pavement and sky. It reminds us that history lives not only in books or monuments but in voices, walls, smells, gestures. It reminds us that Joburg is not just a city of crime and crisis but a city of stories, of syncopation, of survival. And those stories, when shared, become the beginning of something new.
What excites you about the return of JoziMyJoziWalks in 2025?
To be honest – eish! – it’s causing me stress. There’s so much I want to do, and not enough time to gather the young artists from the Windybrow Arts Centre. The city doesn’t wait, and neither does Jozi Walks. But maybe that’s part of the thrill, the urgency, the pulse, the chaos of it all. That last-minute scramble is very Hillbrow.
What excites me is the possibility: the return of Jozi Walks opens up space to dream again with the city. To hear the city not as noise but as polyphony. To once again walk alongside the youth, collecting memories, visions. To shape something out of the rush and rubble. That’s what excites me. That it’s happening. That we’re still walking. That the city, against all odds, is still speaking.
Photo: Gerard Bester.
Be part of JoziMyJoziWalks 2025
If you're a tour guide or a lover of the city, and this makes you want to be a part of the 2025 edition of JoziMyJoziWalks, read this for everything you need to know – or hop directly to the application form here. Proposals must be submitted by Mon, Aug 18, 2025.For those keen to join us on the walking tours, JoziMyJoziWalks 2025 will be taking place on the weekend of Sat, Sep 27 and Sun, Sep 28, 2025. There are really few better ways to explore this incredible city. To stay in the loop, follow @johannesburginyourpocket and @jozi_my_jozi on Instagram.
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