Nelson Mandela Blogpost

Day 4 - Johannesburg

How scared should I be? It's a question I've asked myself many times in many places across the world. Some offered up the answer without pause. Belize City had policemen too terrified to go down its dark alleys. Tegucigalpa simmered with a viscous air of menace. San Pedro Sula was the official murder capital of the world. Looking from the window of the taxi every building we passed had a sign affixed promising a swift, overwhelming, armed response to any attempted break in. Residents seem to contract a security company with the same normalcy as they would a gas or electricity supplier. Houses were surrounded by thick walls topped with electric fencing. How scared were they? Did they erect these barriers and carry on a normal life behind them or did the crackle of the electrified wire never let the perceived danger be forgotten? My eyes flicked nervously to the wing mirror at every stop of the taxi, the stories of people pulled from their cars and shot for their possessions played out in my mind. It was all I could do to reassure myself that due caution was being exercised. Men in high-vis vests guarded streets and cars and seemingly anything of nominal value. If this place ever became safe the unemployment rate would go through the roof...which would probably create more crime. It's hard to gauge the necessity of all this though as who wants to be the first person on their road to take down their fence or let their security contract lapse. We were dropped off at The Purple View Guesthouse so named for the jacaranda trees blanketing the pavements outside with their pretty blossoms. Inside the owner had cultivated an eclectic little escape replete with objet 'd travel collected from far and wide. Our accommodation was in Melville, one of the city's more genteel districts. Having said that, it was next to Hillbrow which, as Louis Theroux had recently shown me, was about as genteel as a South African necklace. The barely lit path to the local bars was deemed safe however and to the accompaniment of some violently bad karaoke a pleasant evening was had.
South Africa is one of a few countries, Germany another, that has an instant association in the mind with a dark part of its history. It, too, has a central figure from that period around which this history is wrapped. One name is everywhere, which is ironic as he had about five different ones. If South Africa means apartheid then apartheid means Nelson Mandela. I've long found it a curious habit to attach the names of famous people to mundane infrastructure. What did John Lennon or JFK ever have to do with airports, beyond using them more than the average person? Maybe that is the reward when you reach the very top of frequent flyer programmes. Mandela's name stands for many things but it is also now where you want to take a left to get to the zoo or what you need to cross to get from one side of the station to the other. Rather curiously this Mandela Bridge becomes Jan Smuts Avenue, named after a man who supported segregation (though he later changed his views so maybe he got to keep his road). Anyway I digress. Mandela looms over the country in forms physical, emotional, political and most other -als you might think to name. It was also appearing as if Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum had given itself over to the man because after a short introductory section on the racist system it turned into an exhibition on its most famous opponent. Turns out we had veered off the rather haphazard path 'laid out' through the museum and had missed whole sections on apartheid. Indeed we found ourselves facing wall after wall of information, jumping back and forth in time with impunity. A slight shame as understanding the genesis of a system or culture like that and its implacable resistance to overthrow is essential. Go anyway because, firstly, your comprehension of it may be better than mine and, secondly, because there is nothing else to do if you find yourself in Johannesburg. It may be the largest city in the country but from where I stood it offered nothing to the visitor. Well no, actually it did offer curious stares as we walked the streets of its centre. I felt it was curiosity rather than hostility but I was acutely aware that mine and Sandra's were the only white faces I'd seen for quite some time. No implicit danger in that mind you but we absolutely, categorically did not blend in. Tourist is a benighted word, a label never worn with pride but, short of blacking up (and I always try to stop short of blacking up), we surely couldn't pass as anything but. My camera barely left my bag. I didn't want to be that foolish tourist unsurprisingly relieved of the burden of carrying his expensive consumer goods because he didn't understand the place where he was waving them. But I also didn't want to be that foolish photographer who returns from holiday with a load of pictures capturing grinding poverty and hard lives in the name of 'gritty realism' and appraised from a comfortable distance. Both reasons are the same reason really.
The news filtered through that another symbol of post-apartheid nationalism had finally reached the end of the road (that may or may not have been named after Nelson Mandela). I struggle to think of other countries that are named after people real or fictional (not looking at anyone in particular El Salvador) but apparently there's quite a list. A list which Rhodesia dropped off in 1980 after independence. Zimbabwe has been lead ever since by Robert Mugabe with...questionable competence. But at 93 years of age he'd decided that it was just about retirement time and graciously stepped aside to let a spritely 73 year old take his place. Hopefully it portends better things for the country's future. Our time in Jo'burg was up too and we were bound for Bloemfontein and the place from whence all this sprung.