Episode Information

Much of South Africa’s wealth comes from a 100km arc of rock outcrop, the gold-bearing Main Reef. As the gold mines and mining towns developed out of the expanding Johannesburg, they were joined by a road called Main Reef Road. Filmmaker Nic Hofmeyr takes a journey along Main Reef Road, in his battered green VW Beetle. What emerges is a documentary road movie that portrays the relentlessly changing urban environment around the city of Johannesburg, in the context of the broader political change that swept South Africa in the ‘90s. The film portrays some of the chaos of urbanisation, and the forces that drive it, finding its story in a few characters that live or work on the route of the road.