Melusi Mhlungu walked away from a life most people would call complete. He had built a career as creative director at one of New York’s leading advertising agencies, lived in Brooklyn, earned in dollars, and worked on campaigns that earned critical acclaim. Yet somewhere between the accolades and the paychecks, he decided to return to Johannesburg, the sprawling South African city where he had moved as a child after growing up in the rural hills of Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal.
The decision to leave New York for a city more often associated with potholes than possibility seemed improbable to many. Mhlungu’s reasoning was clear: “I believe that I was put on this earth to serve through my creativity. I thought, maybe it’s time for Africans and South Africans to be part of fixing South African problems.”
That conviction led him to launch Jozi My Jozi, an initiative designed to reshape how people see and experience Johannesburg. The organization operates on a deceptively simple premise: before a city can be rebuilt, people must first believe in its future. It is not about denying the challenges that plague the inner city, the crime, the poverty, the gaps in service delivery. Rather, it is about refusing to let those struggles become the only narrative.
Mhlungu describes Jozi My Jozi as a “superconnector” focused on telling stories that residents are not hearing. “There are already people in the inner city doing amazing things. We’re here to connect them to the right channels to be able to carry on doing the work that they’re doing.” The organization has launched projects like Main Street Sundays, which transforms part of the central business district into a car-free zone where residents can experience the city differently, reclaiming public space and reimagining urban life.
The initiative grew from an ode Mhlungu wrote to Johannesburg, lines that captured both defiance and determination: “Some may look at our city and think we have no way forward. Guess what? We will make one. Because that is who we are, that is what we do, that is what we know.”
Robbie Brozin, founder of Nando’s, became an early believer in Mhlungu’s vision. The two met during a brunch in New York that stretched into a six-hour conversation about South Africa, creativity, and what might be possible. Brozin’s conviction that creative thinkers could catalyze change grew from that encounter. “It’s time for the crazies to wake the nation,” he said. “We’ve tried with politicians; we’ve tried with business leaders.”
Brozin saw something fundamental in Mhlungu’s approach: “If you lead with human dignity, by making the invisible people feel visible, you can actually fix the city from the inside out. That’s what Melu saw.”
Colleagues have described Mhlungu as “a weird oddball of a kid,” someone who thinks differently, sees differently. His phone died mid-interview because he was so absorbed in conversation that he never noticed the battery draining. That kind of intensity, that refusal to be constrained by conventional thinking, may be exactly what Johannesburg needs right now.
Mhlungu does not shy away from acknowledging the city’s fractures. “There’s opportunity in the brokenness,” he says. “I think most people don’t see the opportunities and the beauty that lie in all this chaos.” The question Johannesburg is left with is whether enough people are willing to look.