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Travel Talk

The joy of Jo-burg

Except for the great piles of mine waste there is nothing to distinguish the turf on which Johannesburg stands from anywhere else on Africa's eastern plateau. South Africa's largest and busiest city is surrounded by utterly flat, barren grasslands of the "highveld," which extend to the horizon in every direction. With a population of more than 5 million Jo'burg is twinned with Birmingham and New York, but unlike most of the world's other great cities it has neither a seaport nor a river and the surrounding countryside is too dry for agriculture. Johannesburg, one of the newest major cities in the world, is there because of the gold, and the quest for wealth continues to sustain it.

As we drove in from the airport to our hotel in the Sandton district I got occasional overviews of the city – a downtown cluster of nondescript high-rise buildings surrounded by a sprawling residential and industrial megalopolis beneath a pall of brown smog. But as we moved from the drab countryside into the northern suburbs I was impressed by the lush gardens and the number of trees, particularly the bright purple jacaranda trees. Like almost everything else that grows here the jacarandas are imported from somewhere else.

The freeway was choked with impatient traffic and at one point Mtusi, our driver, took off across the open veld and bounced onto a side road. We passed the stark remnants of a derelict coal-fired generating station, its huge colourfully decorated cooling towers forming one of the few prominent landmarks on Jo'burg's skyline. The headframes of an abandoned mine are now part of an amusement park and earth-movers are busy excavating one of the old mine dumps in an effort to squeeze a little more gold from the rock.

But what Jo'burg lacks in aesthetic appeal it makes up for in its rich and colourful history. From its beginnings as a small prospecting settlement to its present status as the economic and financial hub of South Africa, Johannesburg has often led the way and the country has followed.

Nomadic Bushmen and later Bantu-speaking farmers inhabited the Johannesburg region for hundreds of years before the first Europeans arrived. A few adventurous Boers started small subsistence farms in the area as early at the mid 1600s but major European settlement did not begin until the discovery of gold in the 1880s. The ensuing gold rush brought thousands of prospectors from around the globe and an influx of black laborers seeking work in the mines. Johannesburg was suddenly overwhelmed by an explosive growth of both its black and white population. Conflict between the gold-seekers, "uitlanders," and the early Boer settlers culminated in the Anglo-Boer War, a conflict that was followed by bitter guerilla warfare and draconian British reprisals that resulted in the deaths of 26,000 people in British concentration camps.

In May 1902 a peace treaty was signed, the old Boer republics became British colonies, and over the next decade the differences between English and Afrikaner began to fade. By the time the Union of South Africa was established in 1910 the uneasy alliance between South Africa's two white groups had already embarked on a social structure that excluded the black population. And even before apartheid became official government policy in 1948 it was a reality in the gold fields of the Witwatersrand.

Since its discovery in 1886 the Witwatersrand gold reef has produced about half of the worlds gold. It is the richest gold deposit ever mined and the city of Johannesburg sits right on top of it. Getting the gold out required a huge labour force and blacks, who made up 70 per cent of the population, provided an abundance of labour. But the white, gold-rich elite wanted nothing to do with them as neighbors and unskilled Afrikaners resented having to compete with black labour. The solution was a set of draconian laws that included a system of forced removals. Non-whites were moved out of sight, but settled in townships close enough to the mines and the city to provide cheap labour. And so was born the shantytown of Soweto, an acronym for South Western Townships, the place where blacks were forced to live during the apartheid era.

We arranged a tour of Soweto with Beth, a black woman in her 60s, and her driver Ben. I was totally unprepared for the size of the place and the emotion that Beth clearly experienced as she recounted the history of her community. The monotonous rows of cement-block houses, dilapidated hostels, and squatter's shacks sprawl over an area of 150 sq. km. The population of Soweto is close to 4 million souls and many of them have no running water, electricity, or waste disposal.

The shacks of long-time residents are gradually being replaced by small government-built houses and a few neighborhoods show signs of rising out of the pervasive poverty. But the clutter of squatter's shacks continues to grow around the edges of the Township as rural immigrants and refugees from other countries flock to the city in search of a better life. According to Beth many of the people who qualify for government housing can't afford to live in it. They end up selling out for cash and moving back into shacks. And as bad as things are now they were infinitely worse during the apartheid era only a dozen years ago.

Our tour included stops at the Regina Mundi Church, the Hector Peterson memorial and museum, and Nelson Mandela's former home.

During the harshest years of apartheid repression the Regina Mundi Church became a refuge where leaders of the resistance movement, including Desmond Tutu, got around the ban on political meetings by calling them religious services. But it was only a matter of time before the protest erupted into violence. On June 16, 1976 police fired into a crowd of school children who were protesting the use of Afrikaans as the primary language in black township schools. Twelve-year old Hector Peterson was among the first to die and photographer Sam Nzima captured the tragedy on film. His picture of the dying Peterson in the arms of a crying friend sent shock waves around the world. The Soweto Uprising put a human face on apartheid and although it would be another 14 years and cost thousands more lives before the discrimination ended, Hector Peterson's death was a critical turning point in the struggle against apartheid. A simple granite memorial, including an enlargement of Sam Nzima's photograph, marks the spot where he fell.

Nelson Mandela, the man whose name personifies the struggle against apartheid, lived in Soweto before he was sent to prison. His house on Vilakazi Street has been preserved as a small museum, and the corner store once owned by ex-wife Winnie is still in business across the street. Although Mandela's house is in a relatively up-scale part of Soweto there is nothing remarkable about Vilakazi Street, yet it is the only street in the world that was home to two Nobel Laureates – Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu both lived there.

Perhaps the most memorable part of my brief visit to Soweto was a chance encounter with Simon. I had wandered off into what appeared to be a deserted cluster of squatter's shacks when Simon, a short black man with a big smile, popped out of a doorway, introduced himself and shook hands. "Where are you from?" he asked. "Oh. Canada is very cold. Here we are always warm." He went on. "This is my house," he said with a mix of pride and apology as he pointed to a squalid pile of rusty corrugated iron, plastic sheeting, sticks and mud cobbled together in the shape of a shed. The mud had crumbled away from one of the walls exposing the supporting sticks like the ribs of a decaying animal carcass. Simon scooped up a handful of dirt – "When the rain comes," he apologized, "I will mix this with water and repair the wall."

There was no rancour or resentment in his voice. "Things are better here than where I come from," he said as we parted. I wish I could have chatted longer with Simon but Ben was honking at me to get back in the van. Simon and his house were not part of the official tour.

Like many visitors to Africa our stop in Jo'burg was a waypoint between flights where we stayed just long enough to get over our jet-lag. But we were there long enough to glimpse the legacy of the city's past – the opulent homes and shopping malls of the Sandton district nestled behind vine-covered walls topped with razor wire and the squalor of the "informal" squatter's camps that envelop the city. It was a theme that repeated itself over and over again during the next six weeks as we traveled through southern Africa.