As I mentioned on this page the time before last, I traveled to Johannesburg (below "JNB") at the end of February. The journey was fruitful not only in terms of the Documenta Magazine Project conference, the main reason for my trip, but also because I had the opportunity to visit Soweto (=South West Township), even though that was very short. Soweto is a black township that is famous for the "Soweto riots" Richard Attenborough depicted in his film "Cry Freedom" (1987). Even after the abolishment of the apartheid system the neighborhood remained inhabited mainly by black people, which reportedly make up approximately one third of the population of JNB. A photo taken in 1985 during the terminal stage of apartheid in Guguletu, another black township, is contained in the book "One Hundres Years of Idiocy" that I edited five years ago. Shot from a rise, the photo shows a congestion of miserable houses with just a tree here and there, without a piece of ground visible anywhere.
I went to Soweto the day I arrived in JNB, as the only participant of a guided tour. The driver of my tour truck and at once my guide was a 26-year-old Zulu boy. He told me that he came to JNB to work as a salesman for electronic goods, but then became a tourist guide. "I feel that the 2010 soccer worldcup is going to change my life. I don't know yet what I'm going to do, but I'm sure there are a couple of business chances," he enthused. He kept talking all through the two hours and a half he took me around Soweto. "There are schools and supermarkets and everything else you need. Soweto is like a city inside a city." "There’s almost no more crime these days, although a bus ride can be a bit of an adventure." "See that white girl walking all by herself there? That’s how safe Soweto is now." The girl was in fact with a black man, but my driver/guide insisted she was by herself. In the background I saw rows of a small, tin-roofed houses on a plot of land that looked poorly drained. The scenery looked exactly like Guguletu in 1985.
The first time I got off the car was in front of the Hector Peterson Museum. The driver parked the car, but he didn't lock it. Under the name of the boy who was killed at the age of 12 during the Soweto riots in June 1976, the museum displays photographs, newspaper clippings, police weapons, protective gear (garbage can lids that is) of the rioting students, and other items from the times of apartheid. There were some white tourists inside, so I stepped a little closer to hear what their guide was telling them. My young friend slowed down his flow of words, and closed with the short comment, "I was lucky because that was before I was born!" From there he took me to an "upper class quarter". Bn a small rise of land, a number of simple but elegant residential house were arranged in blocks. A woman in a car that passed by in one of the quiet streets wove her hand at us. "A friend?" I asked, and the boy answered with a smile, "No, but everybody’s really friendly here." When I inquired whether he was actually living here himself, he emphasized with an even bigger smile, "Yes, I'm a citizen of Soweto. You should stay here next time you come over. We have a nice hotel here." He took me to the house where Nelson Mandela was arrested, the mansion where Winnie Mandela still lives today, and a brand new school. When taking a walk on the schol compound, he did lock the car.
Two days after the tour, in the evening I already had to leave JNB. The driver of the car the hosts of the conference had arranged to take me to the airport was a third-generation Indian. When I told him that I could only spend two nights in town, he took me to a couple of other places on the way. It was impossible to stop (except for in front of red traffic lights), let alone get off the car though. I had heard rumors about JNB being the "crime capital of the world", and this driver was indeed cautious like a timid little animal. "Last year I got mugged twice in one week. First they took my money, then my car. I can only say that I'm lucky to be still alive. I was prepared to die when they put a gun against my head."
In the twilight, the city was indeed wrapped in an unsafe atmosphere. A bit like New York between the late '80s and early '90s maybe. Wikipedia says about JHB the following: "After the Group Areas Act was scrapped in the early 1990s, Johannesburg was affected by urban blight. Thousands of poor, mostly black, people who had been forbidden to live in the city proper, moved into the city from surrounding black townships such as Soweto. Crime levels in formerly white areas rose. Many buildings were abandoned by landlords, especially in the high-density areas such as Hillbrow . Many corporations and institutions, including the JSE Securities Exchange, moved their headquarters away from the city centre, to suburbs such as Sandton. By the late 1990s, Johannesburg was rated as one of the most dangerous cities in the world."
"It’s the foreigners. Economy in JNB is the best in Africa, so people from adjacent countries keep smuggling themselves in. They have no money and no job, so they squat vacant buildings and commit crimes. They're not only after white and Asian people, but there are also battles between blacks. There are many prostitutes too, so there’s AIDS everywhere," commented the Indian driver while showing me the scenery outside. "The problems are poverty and education. When you don't have enough money you can't give your kid good education, and without good education you don't get a good job. Then you get frustrated and commit crimes. It’s a vicious circle." When I told him that I went to Soweto, and that it looked quite safe, the man shrugged. "Maybe there’s less criminality than in the city, but it still is an extremely dangerous place. The black area is still a gangsters' haven."
So, who is right, the Zulu boy or the Indian driver? I don't know. Another quote from Wikipedia: "Statistics show that crime levels in Johannesburg have dropped as the economy has stabilised and begun to grow."
By the way, the movie "Tsotsi" that was shot in Soweto is finally showing in Japan. It’s based on a novel that Athol Fugard wrote in the '60s, but that wasn't published until 1980, whereas most of the important apartheid part has been dropped because the story is now set in the present. The film does of course tell stories of poverty and things like AIDS and crime as it tries to portray the present day JNB while indirectly referring to bygone days, but I think it’s elemental to know the circumstances that have made JNB what it is today. If you're planning to watch the movie, I recommend doing some research first.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO