What started in 1956 as a mother's act of love became a Johannesburg institution — surviving apartheid, fire, and time itself.
Khadija Akhalwaya opens a tiny takeaway on the corner of Avenue Road and Lover's Walk in Fordsburg. First called Zulfikas, then Sie's Corner — it was never about business. It was about feeding her eleven children, and anyone else who came hungry.
When the Oriental Plaza was built and the Group Areas Act forced racial segregation, the family lost their original premises. They quietly bought the current shop from a man named Solici — and Solly's Corner was born, a name chosen to slip past apartheid restrictions.
Before social media, before WhatsApp, Solly's was where Fordsburg gathered. Activists, workers, students, taxi drivers — and Winnie Mandela herself — passed through its doors. News travelled faster over a parcel and a Coke than it did on the radio.
On a public holiday, an electrical fire tore through the flagship. Decades of photographs, recipes pinned to walls, scribbled memories — gone. For a moment, it looked like the end of a 65-year run.
Joburg refused to let it die. A community-led resurgence — boosted by radio personality Nick Hamman's #WhereLegendsSeat movement — brought Solly's back, modernised but uncompromised. The Nick Hamman sandwich joined the menu as a thank-you.
"If these walls could talk, they'd tell you about a city that refused to forget how to gather."
Fordsburg, then & now
Solly's is now helmed by Khadija's son, Uncle Yunus. Five corners across Johannesburg — Fordsburg, Atlas, Robertsham, Lenasia and Norwood — each serving the same Cape Malay, Indian and South African street food the family has been perfecting for seven decades.
The Parcel — chips, polony and masala steak drowned in sauce — still moves by the hundred. The Nick Hamman is the new icon. The recipes haven't changed. They never will.