Johannesburg’s residents live with a daily reality that statistics struggle to capture. Crime, poverty, and failing public services have shaped the dominant narrative of South Africa’s largest city for years. For the people who depend on its infrastructure, transport, and public spaces, the question has become urgent: can a city rebuild itself not by ignoring its problems but by refusing to let them be its only story?
That question drives Melusi Mhlungu, a South African creative director who spent years at a leading New York advertising agency before returning to Johannesburg with a conviction that citizens and local innovators could be part of the solution. His initiative, Jozi My Jozi, operates as what he calls a “superconnector,” designed to revitalize the city by amplifying stories that residents aren’t hearing. The premise is straightforward: before a city can be rebuilt physically, people must first rebuild what they believe about it.
The initiative has taken concrete form through projects like Main Street Sundays, which transforms sections of Johannesburg’s central business district into car-free zones where residents can experience the city differently. It is an audacious proposition in a place where daily life is often defined by congestion, safety concerns, and deteriorating public spaces. The events invite ordinary people to reclaim and reimagine their own city.
Mhlungu grew up in the rural hills of Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal before moving to Johannesburg as a child. Colleagues describe him as “a weird oddball of a kid” who went on to study advertising and earn critical recognition. His career took him to Brooklyn, where he worked on award-winning campaigns and earned a salary in dollars. By conventional measures, he had achieved the professional dream that many aspire to.
He chose to return anyway.
“I believe that I was put on this earth to serve through my creativity,” Mhlungu explains. “I thought, maybe it’s time for Africans and South Africans to be part of fixing South African problems.”
The work began with an ode he wrote to Johannesburg, lines that captured a defiant spirit: “Some may look at our city and think we have no way forward. Guess what? We will make one. Because that is who we are, that is what we do, that is what we know.”
His approach is not to deny Johannesburg’s challenges. Mhlungu insists on expanding the conversation rather than shutting it down. “There’s opportunity in the brokenness,” he says. “I think most people don’t see the opportunities and the beauty that lie in all this chaos.” The city already has people doing remarkable work, he notes. Jozi My Jozi exists to connect those individuals and organizations to the platforms and networks they need to continue their efforts.
By contrast, the support coming from established quarters has been less expected. Robbie Brozin, founder of Nando’s, became an early believer in Mhlungu’s vision after the two met during a brunch conversation in New York that stretched into six hours, ranging across South Africa, creativity, and possibility. Brozin’s decision to back the initiative reflects a conviction that unconventional thinkers are essential to solving entrenched urban problems. “It’s time for the crazies to wake the nation,” Brozin says. “We’ve tried with politicians; we’ve tried with business leaders.”
For Brozin, Mhlungu’s insight cuts to the heart of what urban renewal actually requires. “If you lead with human dignity, by making the invisible people feel visible, you can actually fix the city from the inside out. That’s what Melu saw.”
The stakes for Johannesburg’s residents are concrete. Public spaces that feel unsafe discourage people from moving through the city. Narratives of hopelessness can become self-fulfilling, shaping how residents relate to the services and spaces that are meant to serve them. Mhlungu’s work rests on the belief that changing those narratives, and creating spaces where residents can experience their city differently, is not separate from the work of fixing infrastructure and service delivery. It is part of it.
Whether that belief can translate into sustained change for the millions of people who rely on Johannesburg’s public systems remains an open question, but for a city where many residents have grown accustomed to stories of decline, the attempt to tell a different one carries its own kind of urgency.