Touring Johannesburg

Mark and I spent an afternoon taking a private tour of Johannesburg. Sidney, our professional guide, showed us the highlights of the city, starting with a stop at the house where Nelson Mandela died last year. Between the street and the wall around the house, there are squares with a tree in the center that are surrounded with rocks decorated by the people of South Africa after his death.

 

 

Like most of the South Africans we spoke with during our trip, Sidney is very proud of the fact that their democracy is only 20 years old and everyone is trying to follow Mandela's vision of working together. Sidney is from the Khosa (Xhosa) tribe like Mandela, and anyone with Khosa ancestry is very proud of it. (In South Africa, the spellings Khosa and Xhosa are used interchangeably.)

 

Next we went to the observation deck on the 50th floor of the Carlton Centre, called Top of Africa, for a panoramic view of the city. This area used to be one of the best in the city but has fallen victim to urban blight in the past 15 years. Multinational corporations moved out and squatters moved into the office buildings.

 



 

 

Johannesburg sprawls in all directions and Sidney says it was designed that way to prevent sicknesses from spreading throughout the population.

 

The large flat areas of yellow or brown soil are tailings from various mining operations. Much of South Africa's wealth comes from gold and diamonds. We drove past the worldwide headquarters of DeBeers on our way to Soweto, the only area of the city where blacks were allowed to live during Apartheid.

This young man was our guide at Nelson Mandela's house in Soweto and he was excellent. From there we went to lunch at a small restaurant down the street. Wherever we went with Sidney, we usually were the only white people around. Perhaps because it was obvious we were tourists with a local guide, no one bothered us.

 

This young woman is wearing beadwork typical of her tribe, the Zulus. She was set up across the street from the Mandela house, and I bought a little cloth doll from her that is decorated with beads. The bus behind us was full of Japanese tourists!

 

The one thing I found hard to get used to in Johannesburg (and in the other parts of Africa we visited) was the way that homes are surrounded by tall masonry fences topped by razor wire or several electrified lines. Not just fancy homes in expensive neighborhoods, but even very tiny houses with tiny yards had some type of security, such as shards of glass set into concrete at the top of the walls. There is a very high crime rate throughout South Africa, and they also have a law that allows anyone who squats on a piece of property for 48 hours to stay there (forever!).