Johannesburg Portraits

Mike Alfred grew up and was educated in Johannesburg. He worked for large corporations before starting his own human resources consultancy. During the eighties and nineties he wrote and published the Manpower Brief, a human resources, industrial relations and socio-political newsletter, purchased by many leading South African companies. He is the author of four business books. Mike Alfred's poetry has been featured in many South African literary magazines and anthologies. His book of poems, Life in the Suburbs (Snail Press), was published in 1994. Mike has written features on Johannesburg for The Sunday Independent, The Star and most recently, Sunday Times Lifestyle and leads walking tours through the city. He and his wife reside in a house on Langermann's Kop in Kensington. They have a son and daughter who also live in Johannesburg and are proud grandparents to three young boys.

Prologue; Johannesburg - a history in four pages; why write this book? Johannesburg aristocrats - Lionel and Florrie Phillips; Indian Mutiny - Hermann Kallenbach and Mohandas Gandhi; Travail - Percy Fisher; South African revolution - Walter and Albertina Sisulu; Archaeological Johannesburg - Phillip Vallentine Tobias; Afrikaans Idealist - Bram Fischer; History in pictures - Peter Magubane; City of birds - Geoff Lockwood; Literary urbanscape - Lionel Abrahams; Egoli's music - Sibongile Khumalo and Khabi Mngoma; bibliography.