Flashback — 1 June 1984

What was all the fuss about back in the hey days of Roodepoort, you might ask? Well, in 1984, Helderkruin residents were absolutely frustrated by the development of the Westgate Shopping Centre, as expressed on the front page of the edition of 1 June.

Winter 1984 started with a lot of fine red dust thanks to the unannounced start of the development of the Westgate Shopping Centre, that was then but a construction site. Homeowners complained that thanks to the dust their expenses in terms of cleaning their properties have more than doubled. Their Hoovers and Kreepy Krawlies were busy 24/7 and some Kreepy Krawlies didn’t make it, with one resident making the snide remark that “one can’t even escape the dust underwater”. One man was furious that his newly-built swimming pool was already stained by the red dust from the development that they referred to as ‘the dust bowl’. Their biggest frustration was the fact that they were not allowed to hose down their properties as water for garden use was limited at the time. Some resorted to taking their laundry to local laundromats, not daring to hand it out in the open to dry.

On Sundays BMXers (Bicycle Motorcross cyclists) took to the construction site and had a ball of a time kicking up more dust clouds. Eventually the Westgate project manager at the time, a Mr W McClatchey, agreed to put up ‘no trespassing’ signs to disperse illegal traffic over the weekend. He agreed to hold meetings to discuss the problems that residents have been experiencing. The project was due to complete in October 1985.

These days, Westgate Shopping Centre is everything but the dust bowl that people used to speak of.

It opened its doors to the public on 25 September 1985 with only five anchor stores: Checkers, Dion, Edgars, Woolworths and Ster Kinekor. The centre started out as a small regional shopping centre, just 45 000 square metres in size.

Now it is the largest shopping centre in South Africa west of Sandton City and north of Canal Walk in Cape Town. According to its website, one can walk once through Westgate from entrance 2 (near Game) to entrance 6 (near Pick ‘n Pay) and eat a Kit Kat or have a mouthful of Coke without putting on any weight as the distance covered is just over half a kilometre. It is one of the longest malls in South Africa.