Winter has properly settled in: gold grass on the koppies, woodsmoke in the evening air, and everyone scuttling from the car to the front door. Worry not, the Art Mile is back and promises to make our hood the warmest suburb in Jozi! Welcome to Melville Untold.

In this week’s newsletter:

— Aubrey Moloto,

There was a time, the historians we interview keep telling us, when people drove to Melville just to watch. Not to eat or drink, but to spot a face. Through the 80s and 90s, this was where the actors, presenters and musicians washed up, and half the fun of a night on the strip was clocking who was three tables over. Melville has always been a creative sanctuary, a place where creatives find their own kind. The reason we wanted to sit down with Sabz Gumede is that he is living proof the sanctuary still stands.

Advert Hero

Sabz is 31, an actor, voiceover artist and comedian, and one of the busiest faces in the history of South African advertising. Chicken Licken. Lunch Bar. A Flying Fish shoot with a camel. A commercial where he cradled a python that weighed about as much as he did. His work has run through more Loerie-winning campaigns than he can comfortably list, though, as he notes with a grin, the trophies tend to go to the agencies rather than the man holding the snake.

Ask him the secret, and there is no mystique to it. "It's just consistency," he says. "Being at every audition, big or small. Eventually, they know that if it's a big ad, Sabz is going to be there, and he's actually the guy we want to use." He learned that in a 30-second spot, you say more with your face than your lines, and that the job is to be, in his words, "as accessible as possible" to the directors.

His short films surfaced at festivals as far away as Peru and an island off Mauritius just this month. He came up under world-renowned dialect coach Fiona Ramsay, the woman who has shaped accents for the likes of Trevor Noah and Idris Elba

"What now?"

In mid-2025, a sore tooth refused to settle. After an extraction, a swelling in his neck grew and refused to go away. A specialist said the word nobody wants to hear, and after roughly R100,000 spent simply reaching a diagnosis, Sabz learned he had stage 3 choriocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive germ-cell cancer that had already begun to spread.

The first chemotherapy was the most aggressive, going in at 9 am, out at 5, five days a week, three weeks on and one off, for three months. "Imagine drinking something that's going to kill all the poison in your blood," he says, "but it also kills a little bit of your veins, a little bit of your white blood cells. So your body has to be strong enough to receive the treatment and survive it at the same time." His veins collapsed. He lost his sense of taste and his vision blurred. It worked, then it stopped, and a second six-month round of weekly infusions carried him to late May this year.

This is Sabz: He kept working, shooting series for Amazon and Showmax in treatment, and when the tumour left a visible swelling on his neck, the production simply wrote it into his character. This was his new reality, and life had to go on. "What now?" Yesterday, Wednesday the 3rd of June, Sabelo "Sabz" Gumede, "rang the bell", signalling that he's officially 90 per cent clear of cancer.

The Silver Linings

Most people rest, fatigued from grappling with the harsh mental load of it all, but Sabz started a company. Sabz Organics sells South African wellness staples, hibiscus, moringa, wormwood, sea moss and soursop, the immune-boosting herbs his circle pressed him on while he researched his situation. He is careful, almost stern, about what they are. "Hibiscus is going to heal cancer? That's crazy to think like that," he says flatly. What good herbs do, he argues, is keep a body resilient enough to fight. He is so particular that he grows much of it himself on a family farm, after a batch of imported hibiscus once arrived, laced with traces of nuts. "When you're putting things in people's bodies, it's deep. It needs to not kill you, and it needs to be exactly what it says it is."

The business is the ending he did not see coming. He spent three months building a site called the Anti-Cancer Health Store and made not one sale. He rebranded it Sabz Organics. "First day, I made nine grand. First day." Now he wants to package the whole thing up and hand it to other young people who want to build something of their own.

What he wants to leave behind

Sabz grew up in a rural village with no tarred roads. The five-year plan runs through blockbusters and into something more humble: a chain of drama schools in places that have never had one. "I want to show the ordinary person that you can do unordinary things," he says. "It's possible, black child."

I Love Melville

On why he chose Melville. "I just like the vibe. It's quiet enough, but busy when you want it to be. You control the pace at which you move." It struck him, early on, as a genuinely safe and welcoming place, and it still does. Sabz is a true Melvilliain we met on the strip in our early days. HE is genuinely one of the most down-to-earth humans you'll meet and definitely deserves the community's support. We still have icons. We still have artists living among us. Celebrating and supporting them is how the sanctuary stays one.

Enjoyed this week’s digest? Consider buying us a coffee – It keeps the newsletter going.

Go on, tell your other half the cuddles can wait, because the warmth is out on the mile tonight, not on the couch.

For more updates as the week goes on, visit our Instagram page @snapson7th or our Melville Pulse event calendar

Melville Art Mile: 16 Stops, One Cosy Night

The Mile runs tonight, Thursday 4 June, from 16:00 to 21:00, turning the precinct into one long open-air gallery. Sixteen stops this month, your ticket unlocks a map on arrival. Walking it is free, the route is genuinely strollable this month, and there is incredible warmth at every door.

What's On?

A few we would circle on the map:

Want your hands dirty? Avalon Art runs printmaking demos and wooden-gnome painting (with a glass of gluhwein for the cold), Studio 79 hosts a collage and handmade-paper sip-and-paint in printmaker-turned-painter Martin Wenkidu's studio, and Six Cocktail Bar hides Shante's blind henna pop-up, where pairs secretly pick micro-tattoos for each other and only see the result when it is done. Those three carry a small workshop fee. Every other stop is free to wander, and there is live music too, from Joanne Cooper at Nuno's at the Melville Artisanal's night market to Xolisa Ntshikilana's guitar. Anna Stroud brings the students of Assembly Improv for an epic performance from 6 on just after a Hip-Hop Break Dance battle at the 27 Boxes Amphitheatre.

Tickets, A Why The Tour Is The Move

We will be honest with you: You can absolutely do the Mile for nothing, but the R450 guided tour is the one we strongly recommend, and not just because it pays the bills.

For R450 you get a complimentary drink at almost every stop, plus snacks, souvenirs, water and shuttle rides all evening. More than that, you get access. Three years of building Snaps On Seventh have taught me that our unique strength is that our tours unlock nearly every social circle in Melville at once. If you are new here, recently single, working too hard to keep a friend group alive, or simply want a low-pressure date night, this is the best-value networking in the suburb. You walk in a stranger and leave knowing waiters, makers, owners and half the people you will keep bumping into for years!

Tickets and the live map

Getting Around

This Mile is very walkable, but the stretch out to ERF350 is a long and dark one, so the shuttle on that leg is free for absolutely EVERY ticket holder, free or paid ticket. The R150 ticket holders ride free everywhere else on the route, too. The free ticket holders pay R20 a ride. The new winter-friendly, mini-bus shuttles are warm, use them!

A Word To Our Neighbours

Melville is a residential suburb first, and we never forget that. If you live nearby and you see or hear anything that is not okay with you tonight, please tell us. Email us, or reach our safety and security officer Danny on any of the community and street WhatsApp channels, and we will address it as fast as we can and flag it for future events. The whole point of the Melville Art Mile is to make the neighbourhood feel like yours again: a safe, secure, well-run way for anyone, of any age, to enjoy the business node's new restaurants and galleries once a month. We especially want our older residents to feel they can come out, slowly, comfortably, have a bit of stretch and be in good company.

It is four hours, once a month. In a year this fast, that is a small, warm thing to give yourself. See you out there.

Get Your Tickets Here.

If your taps have been temperamental and your bill quietly outrageous, you are not imagining it. Through late May into mid-June, Johannesburg Water has been running heavy maintenance on the bulk system, including the Zuikerbosch and Palmiet pump stations, which pulls down supply across our side of the city. Higher-lying streets feel it first and longest.

It lands on a utility in real trouble. The City's own 2026 figures show it owes creditors around R25.2 billion while holding only about R3.9 billion in cash, which is a big part of why reservoir upgrades and leak repairs keep stalling.

What to do: store water now while it flows. We should all be back by now, but there's free borehole water available at The Satellite Station on First, Six Cocktail Bar, 90 3rd Avenue on the corner of 7th Street, and the local mosques. Take your own container. Make sure you log every outage and dodgy bill on the City's channels or the MySmartCity app. A reference number is far harder to ignore than a WhatsApp moan.

If you've ever, just like Cobi of Ziggy's Pet Pamporium, nearly come home with rabbits, you may have wandered down this lovely rabbit hole: cats and bunnies are both crepuscular, most alive at dawn and dusk, and share more habits than you would think. With the Highveld winter biting, the good people at Ziggy's have pulled together a guide to the best outdoor bunny enclosures and shelters to keep small pets warm.

Following our Pet Winter Wear tradition, the blanket drive edition is on! This Year's twist: there is an entry fee. A dog blanket.

Dig out any warm pet blankets you are not using, and send us your best photos of your pets bundled up against the cold in a swaggy winter warmer or cute blankie. Drop donations and/or pictures with Debbie at Raw Pet Food Deli in Parkhurst, or email [email protected], and we'll come pick them up. It's open, it is for a good cause, and we would love to feature your fluffballs.

It's real, and it is happening. Melville turns 130 in October, and a proper cross-suburb committee has formed to mark it, pulling together the Business Association, the Security Initiative, the Melville Art Mile, the Koppies, the Residents Association, the Artisanal Market, Snaps On Seventh and a growing crowd of residents. The first planning meeting is done, and the early shape is a four-day celebration from 1 to 4 October: a themed Melville Art Mile launch, a heritage hike on the Koppies, and a pedestrianised 7th Street party in the spirit of The Happening.

The heart of it is a project called My Melville Memories, an open call to anyone who has ever lived, worked, studied, performed or misspent a weekend here to send their stories, photographs and footage. The team is also calling for artists, musicians, storytellers, historians and sponsors.

If any of that resonates, this is your invitation to get involved and join a working group. Full disclosure, Snaps On Seventh is the media partner, so you will hear plenty more from us. Start digging out those old Melville photos now. Reply, and we will point you to the right group. Tune in for the full-length feature next week!

Join the committee WhatsApp Group

84 down and 16 to go. The road to #100 Melville Untold Issues continues! Was it a goody? You can show us love by buying us a coffee. 👈 Just hit the link!

You can also support us by joining us on our VIP tour. Come and enjoy the Mile in style!

Read something that made you smile? Forward this mile…okay, we’ll stop! Forward this email to a friend who loves the Ville.

Til next week, Melville,

Stay strong, stay soulful, stay searching

Sala hantle. ✌️