Tanya Zack | The Chaos Precinct

We’re stepping away from art this month to talk a bit about Joburg. To do this, we are going to look at Tanya Zack’s wonderful book The Chaos Precinct.

The Chaos Precinct is a history of Johannesburg, but looking at the City of Gold through the migrant Ethiopians that have made the place their homes. In particular, the book focus on the area of Joburg that is made up of Plein, Troye, Pritchard and von Brandis Streets, in other words, Jeppe, dubbed “Little Ethipopia”, “Little Addis” or “the Ethiopian Quarter”, depeneding on who you ask. Though, if you ask anyone in the municiple offices, the area is known as “the Chaos Precint”.

This area of Joburg is the home of fast fashion and entrepreneurship. But it is also a place of character. When writing about it, Zack says:

“‘Jeppe has moods. It is oppressivly sullen on days when the roller shutters are clamped down and the boom boxes are silent. But at month’s end, when the sun dazzles the windows of the mothballed Johannesburg Sun and Towers hotel, when no police raid is expected, and the youts are out in their flamboyant drag, with false breasts, dresses and wigs, dancing on the doorsteps of the new malls – then Jeppe is South Africa’s shopping mecca.

The bright-coloured cloths that spill out of cupboard-sized shops are destined for all parts of South Africa. Both local hawkers and cross-boarder traders from Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia have liitle time to linger as they shop with single-minded determination for designer-label jeans, colourful dresses, jackets and shirts, handbags, blankets or small household goods ranging from locks, nail clippers or rat poison to facecloths and clothes pegs. The calls of street traders selling underpants and belts beat against the air: ‘ Sorry ten-rand, ten-rand. Sorry. Sorry’, they call as if apologising for interrupting you. But interruption is the order of the day in Jeppe. Walking is interrupted. Language is interrupted. Views are interuppted.” (Zack 2025: 1)

While the book is largley devoted to Zack’s text, it does also feature photographs of the bustling district, taken by the Johannesburg-based photographer Mark Lewis. This is, in fact, the second time the pair have collaborated with eachother on a book about Jozi. In 2022, they produced the fast-selling Wake Up, This is Joburg, a layer-by-layer exploration of the city through the stories of it’s inhabitants.