We landed in Johannesburg
after a short, 40-minute flight from Hoedspruit.
The Joburg airport is gigantic and modern
(the product of South Africa
hosting the 2010 FIFA World Cup).
All
four of our bags did in fact make it through to Joburg and, waiting for us
after we exited the secure section of the airport, was a friendly gentleman
named Wyatt holding an “O’Brien
x2” sign, who transferred us to our hotel.
We chatted with Wyatt (a native
of Johannesburg)
on our way to Houghton – a posh, suburban section of
the Joburg area.
As we approached Houghton, the homes got very luxurious looking, but were surrounded
by high walls, topped with barbed wire or electric fences.
“In Joburg,” Wyatt
said, “you can tell a person’s status by how high his wall is.”
Our hotel was the nicest, most well-serviced hotel in which
I’ve ever stayed. It was a boutique
hotel – only nine or ten rooms – and took up two or three lots on a beautiful
block in Houghton, but instead of building a single
hotel, seemed to reconfigure and connect the three houses that were previously
there. As a result, the interior was a
maze of beautiful artwork, decorations, colorful rugs, fish ponds and
sculptures. We literally got lost our
first time back through it. There was an
elegant dining room, accompanied by a grand piano and preceded by a beautiful
bar and lounge. Our room was probably
bigger than our first house – and included an outdoor shower and tub (something
our first house (and current house) also didn’t include). The staff was beyond polite, responded to any
request almost immediately, and dressed formally (including top hats on the
gentlemen providing security at the front gate). This place was gorgeous. As in, there-was-a-Rolls
Royce-in-one-of-the-car-park-areas-that-had-a-red-velvet-rope-around-it
gorgeous. And it wasn’t very expensive –
that’s what is weird about South
Africa (or at least one of the things): luxury
abounds but is somewhat affordable, largely because of the cheap labor force
(made even cheaper by the influx of immigrants from other African countries,
which has led to a xenophobic phenomenon in recent months).
As impressive as out hotel was, there was something quietly
discomforting about it – as if the walls surrounding it were not so much as to
keep the hotel safe from any particular criminal element, but instead were a
means of separating the haves from the have-nots. They seem to represent in a
very patent way the continued existence of a mentality that allowed this
country to continue apartheid until nearly the 21st century; a mentality that
continues to manifest itself in economic and structural ways that may not be as
obvious as a law on the books.
While in Johannesburg
we also had the opportunity to see portions of the city from a more traditional
point of view through a tour we booked through a company called “Tours By
Locals.” It wasn’t a great tour, in
fact, it was a bad tour. It was very
overpriced, at times felt mildly unsafe, took place in a car that had seen
better days (to say the least), and the company’s website, communications and
electronic payment systems left a lot to be desired. But, in hindsight, I think we took something
away from it – perhaps just from the almost beautiful juxtaposition between the
tour itself and the location it began and ended (our palatial hotel).
After checking in and taking a quick shower, we began to
wait around for our tour guide, Nathan,
who was scheduled to pick us up at 5
pm.
Around 5:15, the
concierge told us that someone was outside claiming to be here to pick us up, a
hesitant suspicion not well-hidden in her tone.
We went out to the front gate to find Nathan,
still trying to remove loose items from the back seat of his dated Nissan
(which had a cracked windshield).
Nathan saw us approaching and jumped out of the car
with a big smile.
He seemed somewhat
unorganized, as if he had just remembered that afternoon the tour I booked in
May and the multiple e-mails that he and I had exchanged since.
He seemed rather disheveled and almost
awkward.
His English was pretty good,
but came via a harsh, throaty voice that was predisposed to local tribal languages,
which made his English sound worse than it was.
Against our better judgment, we climbed into Nathan’s car – a stick
shift that sounded as if it was threatening to go on strike at the next jerky
gear shift (which were frequent in Nathan’s driving style).
As we lined into Joburg rush hour traffic
(which was as thick as the worst U.S. traffic, but filled with much more
colorful, worn vehicles, many with several dirt-covered men in jumps suits
riding in the back beds), Nathan jumped into an oral history of Johannesburg,
which we struggled to pay attention to in the midst of Nathan’s driving and the
stuffiness atmosphere of an over-allotment of car fresheners.
Rolling down the window helped a bit, but
came at the cost of introducing the dusty, industrial grit that seems to hang
in the Joburg air at all times.
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| My view from the back for the first 45 minutes of the tour. |
Joburg, the financial capital of South Africa, would not exist if it
wasn’t for gold. The city was built out
of gold and still heavily relies on gold mining as part of its economy. In many ways the city itself is a metaphor
for this shiny, metallic element: there are beautiful portions of elegant, rich
life that are only available to those who can afford it, but if you look deeper
you will find the dirt, sweat and fruitless toil that is required to both mine
this precious metal and sustain a high-class way of life. Gold was first
discovered in Johannesburg
in 1886 by George
Harrison (not the Beatle, but
rather an Australian wanderer), who later sold his claim for only 10 pounds and was never
heard of again. But the discovery was
enough to spark a gold rush, similar to that of California
in 1849 (hence the San Francisco
49ers) and the Alaskan Yukon. Within 10
years, Johannesburg was larger than Cape Town (which was
founded some 200 years earlier). The scars
of the gold rush are still in many ways present today: massive mounds of rock
and debris that were the extracted waste of gold mines still make up the
skyline at the outskirts of the city and the Eucalyptus tree, brought from
Australian because of the incredible amounts of water is sucks from the ground
(thus making it easier to mine and less likely for mines to collapse) is now
considered an invasive species in this arid climate where water is valuable.
With the gold rush came a need for cheap labor and black
South Africans came from far away to work in mines on claims. In 1904, British authorities controlling Johannesburg opportunistically used an outbreak of bubonic
plague to an evacuation camp on the site of a sewage field outside of the Johannesburg boundary, which laid the groundwork for the
modern day Soweto (which stands for SOuth WEstern
TOwnship). Soweto
would be the focus of our tour with Nathan
(it is also his home town).
We took an early exit from the highway to get out of traffic
(much to the relief of Nathan’s car, I’m
sure) and went through the downtown, which includes the tallest building in Africa.
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| My attempt to capture the Transnet building - the tallest building in Africa. Instead, I think I captured a better image of what our tour was like. |
Businesses
relocated to outside the downtown years ago because it was considered too dirty
and dangerous.
Today it still looks like
an area that businesses would want to vacate, though there are spotty attempts
at public art and indications of the possible beginnings of a movement to renew
this urban space that has so much potential.
We meandered through industrial parts of the city, seeing a sea of white
vans (the most common South African version of a taxi cab) pooled together to
collect and pack in groups of workers who were going home to common areas.
A new, impressive-looking bridge with modern
white supports was a positive mark on the landscape, but only crossed over an
expansive mass of commuter and freight trains that seemed slammed together on
at least 30 different tracks.
Eventually we rounded a curve and came to a high
point on the landscape and Nathan
announced “Welcome to Soweto
– this is my home!” Dusk had fallen on Soweto, but lights were
visible for as far as the human eye could see.
This was not the organized, matrix-like series of lights that one sees
when landing in Chicago
at night or when looking downtown from an office in Manhattan.
There was a perfect randomness to these lights. They were patternless, and all low to the
ground, each light marking the residence of a family group – their own little
piece of land and place in this seemingly endless landscape of tiny dwellings.
We drove into Soweto
as night fell. It was alive and vibrant,
full of smiling people greeting one another and an inherent energy that can
only come from a group of fundamentally human persons all getting along in common
hardship and with very little possessions.
Women sold fruit on street corners.
Little restaurants, bars and roadside meat stands were on every
block. As you drove past a house, you
could look inside for a split second as the car passed and catch a glimpse of a
mother and daughter cooking dinner or a family sitting down to eat
together. Inside one small building
there was a man cutting a little boy’s hair while a couple of other guys sat in
the background appearing to tell jokes.
Even within Soweto
there are separate neighborhoods – some with relatively nice houses, others
were the common floor plan still lacked an indoor bathroom. Nathan
pointed out one section of government-provided housing. When we asked how long it takes to get
government housing, Nathan laughingly
replied “years and years” in a way that indicated it was impossible. For those with government housing, Nathan pointed out that nearly all of those
properties were since accompanied by metal shanties on the back and sides of
the government-built house, in which extended family members live, or other
boarders rent for a meager supplemental income to the home owner.
I asked Nathan if
it was safe here – and what would happen if a white guy like me just happened
to be walking around at this time of night.
He said that people would look at me and wonder what I was doing, but
that I would be safe. That there is a
civilian code outside of the law here and that people who rob one another or
assault one another are themselves subject to “peoples’ justice” and would
themselves be chased down by a mob of civilians and beaten. He said that the police here are not helpful
and are not trusted, so as a result the people police themselves and help each
other. It sounded nice, and I took his
word for it.
We drove by the Chris Hani
Baragwanath hospital, which is
probably the tallest building in Soweto. Nathan
said that until China
built two hospitals, this was the largest hospital in the world (and is still
the third largest). He said that even
today physicians come here from the around the world to study advanced medical
techniques and test cutting-edge cures and vaccines.
We then headed to the Orlando
section of Soweto,
which was behind one of the few walled sections of the area and was rather dark
and unsettling.
We drove through a gate,
which looked as though it had not been functional for several years (if not
decades), where little dancing, barefoot kids eating mouthfuls of fruit had replaced
the guards.
We weren’t sure where Nathan was taking us – and he didn’t seem to
understand my question when I asked – but it soon became clear that he was
showing us two enormous, mural-painted cooling towers from a closed-power
station.
Orlando, he explained, had been a power station –
the brick homes that we drove by were once those of the workers and engineers;
the surrounding wall used to keep the Soweto
locals out.
When the station was in
commission, it supplied power to much of the surrounding area, but purposefully
and completely bypassed Soweto.
Today the towers are a beacon of color,
beauty and art that celebrates the Soweto
way of life.
Nathan
explained that several years ago a student took his would-be college loan and
opened up a bungee operation that drops from a small footbridge that extends
between the rims of the two towers.
Inside of the towers there is a massive trampoline and you are lifted
and then dropped onto it.
Surrounding
the towers there are go-kart and dirt bike tracks.
Soweto
has retaken its own land that it was once walled apart from and turned it into an
energetic, entrepreneurial enterprise.
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| Our nighttime view of the towers |
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| An online image...the picture I would have liked to have captured. |
We told Nathan that
we wanted to head back to Houghton and he insisted that
he show us one more thing: Vilakazi
street, the only street in the world that housed
two Nobel prize winners.
We drove over
to Vilakazi, which was populated with tourist traps and little restaurants that
had shut down for the day.
Nathan insisted that during the day this area is full
of tour vans and buses and is gridlocked.
On one side of the street was the home of Desmond Tutu,
a social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop.
On the other side of the street stands the
home of Nelson
Mandela, which is now a
museum.
The Mandela Family Restaurant,
owned by his ex-wife Winnie, still
operates next door.
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| Nathan insisted on taking this picture of us. |
Soweto
is truly a unique little section of the world and it is hard to describe in
words. Having only driven through for
one hour at dusk, we only got a hint of a glimpse at what this community is
like. With its vibrancy and its
bondedness, it is clear why this was the heart of the movement to end
apartheid.
We drove back to Houghton (a
setting on the opposite end of the spectrum to Soweto) and discussed American politics and
the role that large American banks played during the recession (all questions
prompted by Nathan). When we got back to Houghton,
we said goodbye to Nathan (after some
negotiation as to how much money I owed him) and then Jen and I went back
inside to our luxurious accommodations.
We decompressed a bit, having been out of our comfort zone during the tour
with Nathan at times.
We ended our night with some delicious wine and small bites
down in the fire-lit lounge of the Residence at Houghton, capped with a
digestif that tasted like Amarula and Crème de Menthe (but which the bartender would
not reveal) – which was truly a treat and felt even more special considering the
wide range of humanity we had encountered during the day.
It was a long day – which started with an amazing game drive
where we touched a rhino, included a flight and a tour of Soweto in the middle, and then ended back at
our hotel with a delicious, warm meal and wine.
Tomorrow we get up early for a transfer back to the airport and continue
our adventure, now in Zambia
and Zimbabwe.
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| Madiba's portrait was hanging at the entrance of our room to welcome us home for our night in Joburg. |
