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You need to forgive the semi incoherent vibe of this gemlog post - it is full of a lot of half-processed observations, and incomplete reflections on my experienes in South Africa to date.
As a foreigner, South Africa is never what you think it is. You can't arrive here and correctly interpret what you see through a European lens, or an American lens, or an Australian lens. Even if you have been here a while, you will find that your understanding of the dynamics of the place continues to evolve, sometimes radically. Hell, as far as I can tell, even as as a South African, South Africa is never what you think it is. This is a compartmentalised, stratified and unhomogenised country, despite the abolition of formal apertheid. And between the layers exists a knotted connective tissue of transactions, agendas, perceptions and mythologies that slide and chafe against each other like jungle vines while the place grows and convolves and evolves.
Recovering from a nasty 72-hour virus, I'm sitting pretty in my penthouse CBD apartment, replete with designer European fittings and appliances, and stunning city views across to the storied 55-floor Ponte City tower:
=> images/NightVista.jpg | images/PonteCityExternal.jpg | images/PonteParkade.jpg | images/PonteEntry.jpg | images/PonteCoreGround.jpg | images/PonteCoreUp.jpg
In the 1970s and early 80s, Ponte was the tallest residential tower in the Southern Hemisphere, and a top address for upper-middle-class Jozi socialites. By the late 90s it had been abandoned to white flight, and was hijacked by warlords, subdivided and packed full of new residents, with garbage and dead bodies piled in its core void up to the 14th floor. After a stop-start redevelopment rollercoaster in the 2010s, it is enjoying its third life, and is again a desirable address for a new class of urbanites, carving out new social designations in a formerly white-only area.
=> Wiki article about Ponte City
They'd all be right, from a certain perspective, in a particular light. They'd also be equally wrong from just 12 degrees counter-clockwise.
The area I'm living in is more dangerous than your average European or Australian is accustomed to. You are likely to be mugged on the street if you venture alone too far from the building's entry one too many times, particularly if you stand out as a tourist or -- you know -- white. But the building's security team is good, and I feel safely overseen by the guards out front on the rare occasion I venture across the street to the nearby convenience store. They really are attentive, and they're happy to come for a stroll up the road for a R50 tip if things look a little wooly (usually they don't, unless it's getting late.)
I'm mindful to remain sufficiently vigilant in the CBD; I keep my valuables sheathed and locked down, and only carry my "ablative" second-tier tech and a small amount of cash (plus an emergency stash should the kit & kaboodle go missing). I stay out of places that aren't well trafficed and patrolled, and uber everywhere -- there's a smorgasbord of "safe" places nearby, and Uber is an affordable form of transport in South Africa. Trips to Sandton and Rosebank are cheap, and even an Uber to Pretoria is not going to break the bank.
The CBD may be overtly "dangerous" -- a "reclaimed" space where you see few white faces -- but I see far more reports of break-ins and hold-ups and muggings in the WhatsApp group for my former residential street in Melville, a pretty and leafy suburban enclave with high walls, bristling cameras, electric fences and security guards posted in huts every 100 metres. The veneer of safety breeds complacency, and hence vulnerability. And yet some of my suburban friends refuse to come visit me here -- they haven't been to this part of town since the 1990s.
In a highly stratified society, luxury and affordabilty are all relative. The monthly Air BnB price of my penthouse apartment is far cheaper than the monthly rent on a very basic and non-glamourous shoebox in Melbourne, and it is one of the more desirable ones in this area. But go 10km north and you'd be paying at least double, if not triple, in Sandton, for something not nearly as spacious, and without this view. By immediate local standards this is a desirable, expensive apartment, but not in the broader context of the financial and social heirarchy of Johannesburg. The's more than one society co-existing in this metropolis of many hearts.
Between the strata echo memories of Apartheid. It's why my apartment has no vacuum cleaner. The same reason the last place I stayed had no vaccum cleaner. The place comes with a cleaner (of the flesh-and-blood variety) "and has no carpets". Completely illogical from an Austailian point of view, but plain as day reasoning in South Africa. In the last place I actually bought a convertible cordless vacuum cleaner so that I could dust-bust up spills and tidy things up before the cleaner came. I ended up giving the vac to the cleaner, who seemed to think at least a few Christmases had come at once. This time around I've decided to spare the expense and grumble over a dustpan following my worst spillage transgressions, and accept that the cleaner actually expects there to be some reasonable amount of dirt to clean when she turns up every week.
Many of the towerblocks that make the pretty night-time vista of twinking lights across from me are hijacked, abandoned by their former owners and run and rented out by warlords. The city and police services let this situation persist. A number of buildings are completely abandoned and in some stage of decay -- some stand like hulking hollowed-out skulls, scorch marks of some former tragedy etched above their empty windows. Yet if you drive through the area in the day you see thriving community and commerce; not to a European template, but to a new rhythm and pattern wearing its way through the old Western city plan. I frequently hear joyous gospel rising from the churches, and on New Year's eve, that part of town echoed -- Roared -- with revelry, cheering and fireworks going off past daybreak. A post-Débordian Society of a new Spectacle, where many there seem happy with the lives that they've carved out in this repurposed urban space, even if they are sneered at by some of the former residents of that once white-priveleged neighbourhood.
It seems much of the connective tissue between Joburg's strata is grift and graft. Given the tensions and friction, it is that -- and the common goal of keeping as near to the fresh air at the top of the pile as possible -- which keeps the whole place from blowing apart at the seams. The strata are not divided purely down racial lines. In fact, wealthy areas like Sandton and Rosebank have a large number of black faces on the customer side of the counter. And the counter there is more often than not Prada or Hermès. The glitz and glamour of the wealthy enclaves of Jozi aside, money only affords you so much protection and comfort. You can buy a house in a gated community, pay for neighbourhood security, palisade fencing, electric perimiters, active monitoring, private guards, panic buttons, safe rooms and hardened doors and windows and vehicles. But the ability to afford that shows. It makes you a target. More prone to a professional attack on your defences, the bribing of a guard, a cleaner, a gardener, a service technican.
The grift and the graft makes it more likely you will get shaken down -- by officers of the SAPS or JMPD (no less) -- for cash at a traffic stop. It's already happened to me, and from what my friends tell me it's par for course. The graft is why your municipal water is off for a day at a time every other week, while leaks in the mains under fourth avenue gush water, turning the street into a delightful babbling suburban brooke for weeks on end. It's why you don't report valuables that go missing from your luggage whilst processing through the OR Tambo Airport; to do so would only invite more pain and drama, so it is much, much easier to just let it go.
Yet as I sit in my deluxe pad, surveying the cyberpunk dystopia that is Jozi, I can't help but fall in love with her. I will fear no Evil.
Or: Have tazer, will travel. And don't mess around with the demolition man...
..
=> Pretoria News article about the state of Jozi
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Updated 20250105 New Doornfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
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