IN CONVERSATION WITH DR MARIA VAN DRIEL-KHANYA DIRECOR
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The City of Johannesburg’s Directorate of Arts, Culture and Heritage plans to evict Khanya College from the historic Workers Museum (WM) Cottage to make way for administrative offices. Since March 2025, the Khanya Board has engaged the directorate, but to no avail. This decision threatens the closure of the city’s last remaining public spaces that serve working people and communities in Johannesburg. Khanya College has been supporting working-class communities since 1986.
In 2006, Khanya College, together with civil society organisations, successfully campaigned to save the workers' compound from demolition, and it was transformed into the Workers Museum, a victory for working-class heritage. The Museum is a rare public space that honours the lives and struggles of migrant black workers under apartheid capitalism.
Since then, and given the depth and volume of Khanya’s educational and cultural work with communities at the Museum, in 2021, the COJ gave the college the Museum’s East Cottage for use. This vital space has enhanced Khanya’s much-needed work, building an educational and cultural movement ‘from below’.
The space is a vibrant hub for communities and workers from across the city’s townships, for debates and cultural engagement (poetry, theatre, music, book launches, art exhibitions, seminars and study groups). This is in contrast to much of the Newtown Cultural Precinct. The Workers Museum Cottages were never meant to be office space, and form a living part of Joburg’s social memory, a site for cultural work that challenges inequality, promotes community dialogue and keeps working-class history alive.
Khanya College believes that the proposed eviction reflects a disregard for working-class public spaces and cultural life. While we are sympathetic to the Directorate’s apparent need for offices, this is not a sustainable, rational solution, but an attack on the few public spaces available for working people. More than ever, working people need regular, unhindered access to the Museum and the Cottages; to understand the history of this country and the sources of inequality that have deepened under democracy.
Khanya College calls on the public, civil society, artists, writers, activists, and all supporters of heritage and culture from below to attend a public consultation meeting:
In 2006, Khanya College, together with civil society organisations, successfully campaigned to save the workers' compound from demolition, and it was transformed into the Workers Museum, a victory for working-class heritage. The Museum is a rare public space that honours the lives and struggles of migrant black workers under apartheid capitalism.
Since then, and given the depth and volume of Khanya’s educational and cultural work with communities at the Museum, in 2021, the COJ gave the college the Museum’s East Cottage for use. This vital space has enhanced Khanya’s much-needed work, building an educational and cultural movement ‘from below’.
The space is a vibrant hub for communities and workers from across the city’s townships, for debates and cultural engagement (poetry, theatre, music, book launches, art exhibitions, seminars and study groups). This is in contrast to much of the Newtown Cultural Precinct. The Workers Museum Cottages were never meant to be office space, and form a living part of Joburg’s social memory, a site for cultural work that challenges inequality, promotes community dialogue and keeps working-class history alive.
Khanya College believes that the proposed eviction reflects a disregard for working-class public spaces and cultural life. While we are sympathetic to the Directorate’s apparent need for offices, this is not a sustainable, rational solution, but an attack on the few public spaces available for working people. More than ever, working people need regular, unhindered access to the Museum and the Cottages; to understand the history of this country and the sources of inequality that have deepened under democracy.
Khanya College calls on the public, civil society, artists, writers, activists, and all supporters of heritage and culture from below to attend a public consultation meeting:
