Our story

Moved, and rebuilt

The traders who opened Oriental Plaza did not choose Fordsburg. Under apartheid-era removals they were pushed out of Pageview — the area everyone knew as Fietas — where 14th Street had been a working shopping street for generations. The Plaza was where they were permitted to trade instead.

The centre opened in the mid-1970s, about a kilometre west of the inner city. The first decade was hard. Customers who had walked to 14th Street now had to be persuaded to drive somewhere unfamiliar, and a significant share of the original businesses did not survive it — they closed, merged, or sold up and left.

Owned by the people behind the counters

What kept it alive is the thing that still makes it unusual: the shops are largely owned by the traders themselves rather than leased from a landlord chasing a national tenant mix. Decisions about the centre are made by people whose own livelihood is inside it.

That ownership is why you can still buy a single button here, and why the shop three doors down sells the same thing at a different price.

Fifty years on

Today the complex runs to roughly 350 stores across 17 hectares: a north and a south section of open-air, single-storey shopfronts, linked by a three-storey circular building in the middle. Customers come from across Gauteng and, increasingly, from elsewhere on the continent — buyers who fill a suitcase with fabric and trim and fly it home.

The trades have shifted at the edges. Cellular kiosks appeared, some of the old general dealers went. Fabric, tailoring, bridal and footwear did not move.

Giving back

Charitable giving here is decentralised and largely unannounced — individual owners contribute in their own capacity rather than through a central fund. Blanket and clothing distribution ahead of winter is an annual fixture.