So many horror stories have been told about
Johannesburg. Before I came to work here, I was simply uninterested in what
happened around this city. Everything just looked chaotic, and life seemed
precarious. My interface with the city
was mainly through the Noord taxi rank – an epitome of chaos. But what was strange was the order you will
encounter just a few meters at the Park Station. The station is itself iconic, because migrants from
the Eastern Cape used it many years before us.
For the last three years I have been based in
Braamfontein, an area that has seen tremendous improvement in the last ten
years. A friend who went to Wits University in the late 90s, told me of stories
of crime and grime that were manifest in Braamfontein of his time. Things have
changed for the better. I have since walked the streets of Hillbrow will little
or no trepidation. I have also
comfortably visited Newtown with not much worries. Armed with this background,
I was fortunate to guide two film-makers from Denmark on their quest to film
interesting sites and things about Johannesburg. Gustav and Kristen are from
Copenhagen, that Scandinavian city whose life seems to hinge on bicycles –
roughly everyone owns one. Their idea was to film sections of Johannesburg on a
bicycle. At first, I didn’t know how this was going happen, but when they
finally arrived in South Africa, I discovered that you can actually rent a
bicycle at a shop down the road here in Braamfontein. I also discovered some
rustic shops and restaurants in the same street. Given that the Danish people
use bicycles all the time, Gustav reveled in biking around Braamfontein. He did
that on his own.
Of course bicycle filming was used in those
areas where it was feasible to do so. For instance, when we visited a landfill
site in Turffontein, it was not possible to use a bicycle there. We literally
drove to the top of the heap to see how waste is managed. Many people will not
know this, but to run the landfill site at Turffontein you require R1m. But
what attracted the attention of these film-makers to the landfill was a project
started there about 2009 to extract methane gas from the landfill and convert
it to electricity. This is not a new innovation, many countries in the West
have been doing this for years. When I visited Sweden in 2007, we visited a
plant there that converts waste and turn it into electricity, mainly for
district heating (heaters installed to warm houses during Winter). EThekwini
municipality has implemented similar technology for their waste management.
We drove around the CBD and found it
surprisingly clean, no doubt an outcome of the recent controversial operation
clean sweep that sought to remove illegal street vending. We also visited places like Maboneng and Arts
On Main, but there was not much activity, because it was in the middle of the
week. The Danes, rather curiously had
chosen to stay at the Reef Hotel situated right in the centre of the city. It
is a stylish hotel offering great food at cheaper prices and amazing rooftop
bar.
Of course a visit to Johannesburg is not
complete without going to Soweto. The intention about Soweto was to show the
Danes the improvements that have taken place, for eg., the many green spaces
that now charactarise Soweto landscape. But it was also to show them the many
shades of Soweto, looking for instance at its built environment. A clear
example of a contrast would be to show Diepkloof Extension and Pimville. They
are both in Soweto, but there is a clear class difference. We had our lunch on
Vilakazi Street – it was a buffet of typical South African dishes including,
umngqusho, ulusu, dombolo, umleqwa, oxtail, boerwors and pap. Kristen, an avid
meat-eater enjoyed the meal immensely. Thereafter Gustav biked down Vilakazi
street.
Our visitors were somewhat underwhelmed by
Sandton. Their observations were that, it was high-walled and gated, and that
streets were so wide (a clear sign that the area was never designed with
pedestrians in mind). European cities were mostly designed before the advent of
a car, and they make for walkers paradise these days.
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