Johannesburg, Jo’burg, Jozi

Johannesburg, March 2007

Unlike Cape Town, when Johannesburg comes up in conversation, most people don’t immediately express the desire to visit. Rather, people regale each other with stories of crime, violent crime, that they’ve heard is a daily reality in Jo’burg. Before I traveled to Jo’burg, every single person whom I talked to who had visited the area told me the exact same thing—watch out!

Prior to tackling the beast, I spent a few nights in nearby Pretoria, the nation’s capital. Thanks to my friend and neighbor in Dar, I was totally hooked up with Barbara and Sean Morrow. They knew my neighbor when they all worked at the U. of Malawi in the 1980s. The Morrows are Irish nationals and historians, who’ve lived in southern Africa for decades. Sean even has co-authored a book on the ANC training camp in Tanzania, crazy. They picked me up at the airport, hosted me at their lovely house built in the 1920s, cooked me delicious dinners, and shared stories with me. The Morrows also connected me with a Soweto-owned and –operated tour company that took me on a neat driving tour of SA’s most famous black township, that would be Soweto. I felt like every day I was learning so much about modern SA history yet wanted, needed, to know so much more and knowing that I had nowhere near the time to soak it all up. So it goes.

Then I transferred myself, via bus, to Jozi, where I stayed for two nights at a B and B, gratis, thanks to the U. of Jo’burg, where I gave a paper; the mostly grad student seminar participants was as interesting as they were diverse (white, black, and brown; from SA, USA, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique).

As for Jozi’s safety, all I know is that the Melville neighborhood where I stayed was happening, cosmopolitan, and safe to walk around day or night. Lucky me. Unlucky me was that I ended up spending much of one day with this hyper-active, 50-something rich woman (half American, half Costa Rican). Lucky me, one of my new SA friends took me to this tres-cool reggae bar on a rooftop, deep in one of Jozi’s black neighborhoods. I felt like it was my best look inside the country’s black majority, as driving around Soweto or walking around a small black township in the Western Cape didn’t leave me with many in-depth impressions.

Overall, I had a fantastic time in SA, tempered only by the facts that I had just ten days and Heather couldn’t come along. Final thoughts? SA is so much wealthier than Tanzania, Kenya, or the rest of Africa. The roads, airports, businesses, universities all make you feel like you could be in Europe or North America. But then, you drive by a huge “informal settlement,” read: shantytown with homemade shacks. I saw some of these up-close. They’re inhumane (though so is the way most Tanzanians live). The SA government is committed to building millions of new homes (I saw some of these), which is great, but the program is, understandably, moving slow.

Yet, you can’t help but wonder if the dreams of the freedom struggle are being subverted. Let us not forget that the ANC, Pan-African Congress, CP and other groups were leftist; the revolution was to have two parts—political and economic. While apartheid has ended (thank the goddess), the poor, millions of poor, are black; meanwhile, whites, generally, are far wealthier, though there is definitely a class of blacks and coloured people (they’re term; think Asians) who are wealthy and middle-class. And the black-dominated ANC is firmly in control of the government.

Basically, there is tremendous disparity of wealth which smacks you in the face daily and it’s overlaid with the traditional racial divides, as well. All of these issues will be on display to the world in 2010, when the World Cup is hosted by an African nation for the first time!