Better Bryanston celebrates progress as one-year anniversary approaches

Better Bryanston hosted an information and networking session at Bryanston Country Club on May 14, ahead of its first anniversary celebration, bringing together residents, supporters, and stakeholders to reflect on the non-profit organisation’s journey over the past year.

The community-driven initiative, was established in May 2025 to reverse urban decay in Bryanston through cleaning, greening, and restoring public spaces.

Supported by volunteers and donors, the organisation focuses on problem areas, including the intersection of Main Road and Winnie Mandela Drive, tackling illegal dumping, litter, and overgrown verges.

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Speaking during the session, Leonore Kruger, fundraising at Better Bryanston, highlighted some of the challenges facing Bryanston, and the impact these issues have on the community.

“Bryanston is facing challenges that impact out community’s well-being, growth, and future. We have many squatters living along Winnie Mandela Drive, and that’s mainly because of overgrowth. We do feel for them, but I don’t think we can allow that in our neighbourhood.

“There’s also the issue about hijacked houses, and I personally would like to thank JMPD and the council for what they’ve done to rectify the issue with the hijacked houses in Bryanston. Bryanston also suffers from densification.

Every single property, the large properties, are all turned into complexes, and, in many cases, high-density complexes. That just adds to the pressure on everything that we are dealing with.”

She added that their mission is to restore the sense of community. “We want to live in a beautiful suburb that we can all proudly call home and enjoy for our own wellbeing. We refuse to live in an area that’s not clean and tidy, and we would like to provide hope to our community, so that Bryanston maintains its market value.”

Chairperson Joyce Tshabalala said they were chuffed of the turnout at the session as the organisation prepares to celebrate a year since its establishment.

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“We invited our community and there were about 50 or 60 people in attendance, which we were so chuffed about. Better Bryanston has been going on for a year now and we are pleased that, in this birth month of ours, we will be celebrating a full year.”

Tshabalala commended the organisation’s leadership team for the progress made in improving key arterial routes in the suburb, given that they started the initiative without a funding plan.

“Our team of six directors has done marvellous work in the arterial routes in Bryanston. We started Better Bryanston without a plan. We did not have a funding strategy.

“Our main income has been coming from households and individuals. We have also received some corporate sponsors and through Byron Thomas, they have put us in touch with various attorneys, who obviously do all the conveyances of properties.”

Tshabalala added that they are doing clean-ups every Friday, but, looking forward, they want to increase clean-ups to twice a week.

“Weekly we spend about R5 000 on labour, so that would be R10 000 per week if we were to increase the clean-ups to twice a week.

We would appreciate your help in making this possible, and we appreciate all that you have done for us. Your generosity and support do not go unnoticed.”

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