It is sad that giant retailer Educon lacks the spirit to keep our CNA alive and will be putting another clothing shop on our High Street.
It is sad that giant retailer Educon lacks the spirit to keep our CNA alive and will be putting another clothing shop on our High Street.
In 1892 Albert Victor Lindbergh, the son of a Swedish master mariner, came to South Africa with a friend. Finding no work in Cape Town he took a train to Vereeninging and a stage coach to Johannesburg where he arrived in July. He secured a job as a junior office hand at italThe Star/ital. In the following April he was appointed publisher in addition to his other duties. He felt that the circulation of the paper could be increased. With a friend, Michael Davis from Leeds, he started selling newspapers and overseas journals from the wide window sills of the Corner House building in central Johannesburg.
In 1895 they formed a partnership, bought a newsagent's business that bore the sign The Central News Agency (the name had appealed to them) and set out to distribute and sell newspapers and periodicals.
Business prospered and in 1899 The Central News Agency rented a large single-storey corrugated iron shed at the corner of Rissik and Commissioner Street and displayed journals from all over the world on trestles and tables. The corner became one of the best known in town as a meeting place.
Ultimately the business was floated as a company with a capital of 1 250 000 British Pounds [sorry I don't know where the pound sign is]with its headquarters in a skyscraper on the opposite side of Rissik Street and ramifications all over the country and far beyond its borders.
Sad that Educon lacks our Frontiers' will to adapt and has let our CNA die.
(Source: City Built on Gold, L.E, Neame (1959))
