This special Johannesburg Edition marks the city’s 140th anniversary by celebrating a university that carries its name with purpose. From a tented mining camp on the Witwatersrand in 1886 to Africa’s economic powerhouse, Johannesburg has shaped UJ’s identity, and this issue traces how the University shapes the city in return. It tells the story behind the name University of Johannesburg and showcases a century of mining education, nationally ranked engineering, accounting and business programmes, scientific work restoring hope along the Klip River, partnerships with Jozi My Jozi and the Gauteng Department of Community Safety, and AR and VR projects that bring Sophiatown and a 500-year-old Melville Koppies smelter back to life.

Central to this narrative are the people who keep the city’s story alive: archivists preserving its rare collections and oral histories, academics turning research into civic impact, professionals shaping its industries, and students who learn in its hospitals, clinics and streets. Together, they honour 140 years of the City of Gold while helping write its next chapter, one built not only on the riches beneath the soil, but on the knowledge, ingenuity and people above it.