The Hillbrow Tower is a tall tower located in the suburb of Hillbrow in Johannesburg, South Africa. At 269 m (883 ft), it has been the tallest structure and tower in Africa for 40 years, and it was also the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere until 1978, when surpassed by the 270m Mount Isa Chimney in Queensland, Australia. Construction of the tower began in June 1968 and was completed three years later, in April 1971. Construction cost 2 million Rand (at the time, US$2.8 million). The tower was initially known as the JG Strijdom Tower, after JG Strijdom, South African Prime Minister from 1954 to 1958. On 31 May 2005 it was renamed the Telkom Jo'burg Tower.
The tower was constructed for what became Telkom, South Africa's government run and the country's largest telecommunications company. As the general height of buildings rose in the central business district, it became necessary that the height of the new telephone tower stayed above the height of the buildings surrounding it.
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“Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.”
—Eric Gill (1882–1940)