Many Different Worlds in Jozi

In the midst of a strike being carried out by 1.3 million people across South Africa, including nurses and teachers, I find it extraordinary that my day-to-day existence is not at all affected. Such is the reality of a divided society where those in the private sector economy of northern Johannesburg lead a sheltered existence. Meanwhile over 50 premature babies have been abandoned by nurses; several mothers have lost their babies in childbirth, or simply been turned away from hospitals; and funeral businesses have brought work to a halt because Home Affairs workers are simply not around to issue death certificates.

Photo credit: News24

Meanwhile regular South African pastimes such as rugby matches continue. Thousands of free tickets to last weekend’s match against New Zealand were given away in high-density historically-black areas such as Soweto, in the hope of drawing more blacks to the matches. But apparently many of the recipients simply sold the tickets instead. At the same time, parts of Soweto defy outsider assumptions. A colleague who watched the game on Vilakazi St in Orlando West was a bit disappointed that he hadn’t really felt the ‘township vibe’, commenting that he could have been anywhere in Sandton.

Not so for a recent Saturday that I spent in Soweto, not forgetting that Soweto is basically a city in itself, with significant socio-economic stratification. A friend of mine is writing a doctorate on the political economy of waste dumps; her research assistant is from Mofolo, and between them they know a lot about the wider area. Along with a visiting architecture academic, we travelled to the far south-western corner of Soweto, to the informal settlement of Protea South. To give you a sense of the scale of greater Johannesburg, Protea South is 50 kilometres from where I live on the northern border of the city. There is some running water in Protea South, but no sanitation. Some of the porter toilets are communal, but many households have their own which they clean themselves. Hand-shaped charcoal bricks lie in the sun to bake – it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of fuel. In Protea South, one can buy a shack for 1500 rand (200 dollars). Consider the extraordinary contrast with parts of Sandton (Sandhurst, for example), where one can buy a mansion for upwards of 20 million rand (2.75m dollars). I’ve even seen some advertised for 50 million.



Yes, Johannesburg is many different worlds. I am regularly humbled by people that I meet, or stories that I hear, for example, about the Zimbabweans who are putting themselves through university on waitressing wages. Leaving Sandton at about 11pm the other evening, I stopped to give a woman a lift. There was something about her that seemed quite desperate. She was trying to get to the northern township Diepsloot. In the absence of a decent public transport system, travelling by minibus taxi costs to and from Sandton for work are 50 rand (7 dollars) a day. Even on my salary I would consider that a high transport spend – and it is no doubt a ridiculously high proportion of her monthly wage. The possibility of her ever accumulating enough funds for basic economic security is virtually non-existent. She will continue to live hand-to-mouth.

So my day-to-day life is full of contrast, wherever I choose to be open to it. This evening I sit in Cape Town with a Czech colleague and his Sri Lankan friends. We have such different life stories. I listen to how he grew up under communism in an 800-year old Czech town that was razed to the ground in the interest of coal mining, and how the snow used to turn grey within a day. And I tell him about growing up in a national park in Zimbabwe with pythons and lions in the back garden. Meanwhile, our Sri Lankan dinner partner tells us about arriving as a migrant worker in Hillbrow, Johannesburg: he was robbed 8 times in his first month, and early one morning came across a half-headless body in the street on his way to work ….at which point he decided to move to Sandton.