South Africa-MONTH ONE

South Africa – MONTH ONE (JOHANNESBURG)
In this episode, I...
-Visit Soweto, South Africa’s most notorious township
-Walk around
-Cause a diplomatic incident with a Swedish diplomat
Arriving in Johannesburg from Dubai, I had already been on the road for a week or so, but landing in Africa (said to be the homeland of us all) for the first time is a surreal experience to say the least. My first impressions of Jo’burg were a city that’s quite spread out, basically a series of disparate suburbs climbing up and down one hill or another. Compared to Dubai, it’s helluva lot more green with rolling hills and lots of vegetation. It’s also a lot grittier, but perhaps not as gritty as you think.
with expressways going every which way and following system unbeknownst to many (including many lifetime residents who are heavily dependent on their in-car navigators despite the fact that such devices get just as confused in these streets as humans do). Problem is a lot of the streets were renamed after apartheid and the acceptance of the new names has been met with mixed success, so getting from point A to B can get a little hairy; especially if you don’t actually have a car here (which I don’t).
I heard legends before I came about the aggressiveness of Jo’burg drivers and it generally lives up to the reputation, with many religiously touting the often-quoted false principle that you’re safer if you drive faster, while they spin around a roundabout and charge over another speedbump—both quite plentiful and both completely ineffective in slowing reckless drivers. For some reason, standard transmissions are more affordable here than automatics and most cars come as compact standards, so while you’re clinging to your seat, the driver is also jabbing you in the leg with the stick shift.
That said, many of the myths around Johannesburg aren’t as well deserved. Yes, crime here is an absolute serious issue—a product of a mixture of poverty, corruption, and bureaucracy—but its not like I need an armed guard just to walk outside. I’ve walked on my own now numerous times without issues. As long you keep yourself safe and use common sense, you should be fine. Just mind the drivers.
That said, South Africa’s troubled history has created something of a security culture. Everyone above a certain class, black, white, or whatever, lives in gated compounds, often topped with barbed wire (or even sparking electric fences) other security apparatuses. The most annoying are the guard dogs which bark venom at you for the crime of walking past their gate. For some who loves dogs and has fond memories of canines greeting guests at the door, the fact that these dogs have been trained to snarl at any stranger that walks by is a bit disheartening but such is life.
The place I’m staying doesn’t have any dogs, although they do have 2 cats, 3 chickens, and apparently giant tarantula-like spiders as my hostess Anriette loves to tease me about. I live in a small basement suite under the deck, while Anriette and her family live in the main house upstairs. The property’s quite nice, very lush and vegetative even with a pool (although its not heated and usually too cold to swim in). To give you an idea of the biodiversity around here, Anriette says that over 60 different bird species have been spotted on her property alone.
The neighbourhood is called Melville and is considered the hip Bohemian neighbourhood of Joburg. It’s quite safe, although you sometimes hear otherwise, and while it apparently has lost some of its lustre in recent years—so the locals say—its still a good hangout place.
Soweto
Of course, its not the only neighbourhood I’ve visited and not the most famous in Jo’burg by far.
Soweto, while technically a separate city, is a place whose very name brings up memories of racial segregation and oppression under apartheid. That said, Apartheid ended over 20 years ago, and Soweto didn’t freeze into a time capsule. One of the things that surprised me most about my tour of Soweto was how much wealth did exist in the city.
Unless Rocinha, the slum I visited in Rio de Janeiro where everyone but the drug dealers and an odd soccer player were desperately poor, Soweto had very obvious class differences. The neighbourhood has seen the rise of a burgeoning black middle class—and like middle classes everywhere, they want their two car garages.
And so you see them, large suburban homes with fancy cars and paid servants, displaying a wealth I could never hope for. This is the new Soweto.
But it is not the whole Soweto.
Beyond the wealth suburbs, you only have to cross the street to find the upper lower classes. These houses are more like what you would find in Rocinha, hastily thrown together with whatever was available. Still they seem reasonably stable and livable and the rule of law still applies.
Beyond though you can seem some of the darker sides of Soweto, row housing like shantytowns occupied primarily by often illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. These sections are said to be run by gangs and are said to be avoided, but even here you can see new decent construction replacing the old houses. It’s hard to say how long the show homes have been there and whether or not the movement of people into the new buildings—said to be plagued by corruption—is going quickly (like most things in Africa, I’d say its probably not), but its nice to see that some progress has been made (especially compared to Rocinha, where the situation seemed static).
Some parts of Soweto, notably the area around the former homes of Nelson “Mandiba” Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu have become regular tourist haunts, almost overrun in fact. But all in all, it appears to be a place where hope for a better tomorrow has already taken them along way.
Apartheid Museum
The most famous museum in Johannesburg is actually a private enterprise—although its curation is much more easily to follow than poor public Museum Afrika—the museum is massive and much like the Holocaust Museum in Berlin has visitors experience the history through artistic means—such as being issued a card saying whether they are white or non-white and being told to enter through separate doors. The museum does a great job of explaining how the system of apartheid came about and the horrors of it, but without demonizing the Afrikaans. Lots of videos of key figures, both for and and against apartheid are played and there is a room full of nooses standing as a memorial to those who lost their lives fighting to bring apartheid down.
The Origins Centre
Africa is the birthplace of humanity (which makes apartheid highly ironic, since we all originated here and are effectively just cousins). And while at some point I’d like to get out of town to explore the Cradle of Humankind itself (where some of the earliest human remains in the world have been found) it looks like I’ll need to rent a car for that.
The Origins Centre based at the University of Witswaterand (pronounced Vits, don’t ask me why) has a great little exhibit on the evolution of humankind and the people of South Africa. Apparently they used to take your DNA tell you what your ancestry was (Europeans for example, are all descended from only 7 seven who each entered Europe at different epochs, the so-called “Seven Mothers of Europe.” There’re similar women for all the other continents). For someone like me who loves history—or in the case pre-history—minus the technical stuff about australopithecine bones and what have you, this was a great place to spend a day, although I really want to get out to the Cradle of Humankind and see the real deal. Anyone willing to lend me their car?
Speaking of South African peoples, most of the people I’ve come into contact here are Afrikaans, although I do work with a couple of black South Africans as well, although most of them are from Zimbabwe (is everyone from Zimbabwe? Is there anyone left there?), Kenya, and other nearby African countries. Being Caucasian, I’m often mistaken for Afrikaans until I open my mouth, at which point I’m promptly mistaken for being American (“What part of the States are you from?” and such are always great questions).
That said, I will say I haven’t seen as much racial tension as South Africa’s reputation had let me to suspect. Maybe I’ve been protected from it, but generally speaking people seem to get along regardless of whether they are black, white, “coloured” (South African term for mixed-race), brown, yellow, or whatever. Granted whites and other non-blacks seem, on the whole, to be far wealthier on average, the main division in this country these days appears to be based on class rather than race.
Case in point, I went to an open-mic comedy show at a local legendary spot called Cool Runnings (love the name) a Jamaican-themed pub. The stand-up comedians, while predominantly white there were black and Indian comics as well, performed before a primarily black, although there were other groups there as well. Anyway, like many basement stand-ups, these guys didn’t hold any punches when it came to jokes about the various ethnicities in South Africa and they didn’t really care too much for political correctness either. Some told jokes about blacks that back home might’ve got a white comic lynched, but here sent a primarily black audience rolling the aisles laughing. Well there weren’t really aisles, the place was full wall to wall.
I consider that a good thing. If both/all sides can joke openly and with each other about their country’s issues with race, without being racist or worrying about appearing as such, probably a lot more honest discussion comes of it.
Although it must have been hair-raising for my buddy Henrik Almostrom.
Henrik is my work mate and my closest friend here in South Africa. He and I went to the comedy show while his gf Katrina was out of town.
If I offered a prize for the most Swedish person I ever met, it would be Henrik.
Tall, blonde, big ears, big grin, and with a fashion sense that can only be described as European, Henrik’s a great guy, but he gets a LOT of attention I can tell he’d prefer not to have. I’m used to people I’m with getting hit on more than I do, but usually its considered a bad thing. Not this time.
A couple times we’ve gone out for drinks now, Henrik and I have been just having a chat over a beer and some drunk inexplicably decides to aggressively hit on him despite various messages to back off. Henrik, to his credit, stays friendly through most of it, although he’s clearly uncomfortable when they won’t leave him alone.
Anyways at the comedy show, they were clearly identifying anyone in the audience who might be foreign and having a go at them: Americans, Greeks, a couple of Indians from India, and you could see Henrik hiding in the dark when the MC scoured the crowd. That said, we had a good time.
One thing about being Canadian, its sometimes hard to pick on us. I remember once a comic tried to pick on me and it went something like this.
“You’re Canadian?”
“Yeah.”
“I went Toronto once. It was pretty clean.”
“Um. Okay...”
“Yeah, that’s all I got.”
But the Swedes have IKEA, and that’s a whole new kettle of worms.
That said, Henrik got a good laugh at my expense a little bit later on. While both of us were helping at a conference that had been poorly organized by one of APC’s rivals, I was doing an ombudsman type job with name tags, as a lot of people had their tags lost or screwed up.
One guy came up to me and said.
“I am not from the Swedish embassy.”
I looked at his tag. It said Swedish embassy on it, so I crossed it out with a felt marker and handed it back to him, jokingly answering “there you go, ambassador.”
To which he gruffly replied “not anymore.”
Henrik then explained that this man was the former Swedish ambassador. To which I responded, “Oh.”
A little bit later on, we had a talk about American politics and I guess he forgave me as the former ambassador asked me what the word “deification” meant after I mentioned the “deification of Ronald Reagan.”
All and all its been an eventful month and I’m sure the next one will be just as eventful.
Until then.