Johannesburg Introduction
‘There’s a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi. There’s a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe. There’s a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique – from Lesotho from Botswana from Swaziland.’ These lines are from Hugh Masekela’s quintessential anthem, Stimela (steam engine), which profoundly captures the essence of the millions of migrant labourers who, since 4 October 1886 (when the first claims were laid out) have mined the gold that built the economy of Johannesburg and South Africa. The city today has progressed far beyond the status of a mere gold rush settlement, becoming a vibrant, violent and unpredictable place, where fortunes as well as lives can be lost and found like a small child’s toys.
In Zulu, Johannesburg is called E’goli (place of gold), an epithet no longer quite fitting, as the last of Johannesburg’s mines ran out of gold-bearing ore decades ago. The towering yellow mine dumps, once the city’s prime icons that dominated old postcards, have largely been recycled. New commercial, retail and industrial districts have risen to replace these 40-million-ton yellow-white mounds. In ancient cities, one may be able to find a sense of permanence within the walls of a formidable fortress; but Johannesburg is a city in flux, a place where change is the only enduring feature.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s greatest and, at over 2,500sq km (900 square miles), the world’s largest inland city, Johannesburg straddles rows of jagged quartzite ridges, beneath which a century of gold mining has produced a veritable honeycomb of tunnels. Technology may have claimed the mine sands, but millions of trees have risen from the sprawling suburbs (on satellite images, much of Johannesburg resembles a rainforest), an unexpected backdrop to a formidable array of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, as well as concrete, chrome and glass skyscrapers. Makeshift shacks of scrap, reflected in the glossy glass façade of the old Johannesburg Stock Exchange building on Diagonal Street, bear testimony to the chasm between the fantastically wealthy and the desperately poor that still divides this city.
Situated 550km (344 miles) from the nearest port, on a vast inland plateau, 1,700m (5,700ft) high, Johannesburg’s climate is much milder and drier than its latitude would suggest and is also free of malaria – a disease that plagues much of the rest of Africa. Crime may have become synonymous with Johannesburg in the minds of many people, however, things are changing, with the green and yellow uniforms of the Central Improvement District (CID) security guards and ubiquitous security cameras a new feature on almost every street corner in ‘targeted’ areas.
Josi, Jo’burg or Joeys to the locals, this is a city undergoing dramatic changes. Black people, formerly excluded from living (legally) outside of townships, such as Soweto, are moving into the downtown and inner-city areas, while formerly privileged (white) citizens are migrating outwards, due to increasing crime, squalor and perhaps some reluctance to live side by side the newly enfranchised majority. Paradoxically, almost all of the old apartheid-era street names, such as Barry Hertzog Avenue and Hendrick Verwoerd Drive (named after the architects of this ‘crime against humanity’) still survive. However, plans are afoot to change this: DF Malan Drive was recently renamed Beyers Naude Drive, after the dissident anti-apartheid cleric and shortly, in Newtown (amongst others) West Street will change to Ntemi Piliso, Becker to Gerard Sekoto, Bezuidenhout to Miriam Makeba, Wolhuter to Margaret Mcingana, Park to Barney Simon and Goch to Henry Nxumalo, so visitors should be warned that some of the street addresses in this guide could soon be obsolete.
In Zulu, Johannesburg is called E’goli (place of gold), an epithet no longer quite fitting, as the last of Johannesburg’s mines ran out of gold-bearing ore decades ago. The towering yellow mine dumps, once the city’s prime icons that dominated old postcards, have largely been recycled. New commercial, retail and industrial districts have risen to replace these 40-million-ton yellow-white mounds. In ancient cities, one may be able to find a sense of permanence within the walls of a formidable fortress; but Johannesburg is a city in flux, a place where change is the only enduring feature.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s greatest and, at over 2,500sq km (900 square miles), the world’s largest inland city, Johannesburg straddles rows of jagged quartzite ridges, beneath which a century of gold mining has produced a veritable honeycomb of tunnels. Technology may have claimed the mine sands, but millions of trees have risen from the sprawling suburbs (on satellite images, much of Johannesburg resembles a rainforest), an unexpected backdrop to a formidable array of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, as well as concrete, chrome and glass skyscrapers. Makeshift shacks of scrap, reflected in the glossy glass façade of the old Johannesburg Stock Exchange building on Diagonal Street, bear testimony to the chasm between the fantastically wealthy and the desperately poor that still divides this city.
Situated 550km (344 miles) from the nearest port, on a vast inland plateau, 1,700m (5,700ft) high, Johannesburg’s climate is much milder and drier than its latitude would suggest and is also free of malaria – a disease that plagues much of the rest of Africa. Crime may have become synonymous with Johannesburg in the minds of many people, however, things are changing, with the green and yellow uniforms of the Central Improvement District (CID) security guards and ubiquitous security cameras a new feature on almost every street corner in ‘targeted’ areas.
Josi, Jo’burg or Joeys to the locals, this is a city undergoing dramatic changes. Black people, formerly excluded from living (legally) outside of townships, such as Soweto, are moving into the downtown and inner-city areas, while formerly privileged (white) citizens are migrating outwards, due to increasing crime, squalor and perhaps some reluctance to live side by side the newly enfranchised majority. Paradoxically, almost all of the old apartheid-era street names, such as Barry Hertzog Avenue and Hendrick Verwoerd Drive (named after the architects of this ‘crime against humanity’) still survive. However, plans are afoot to change this: DF Malan Drive was recently renamed Beyers Naude Drive, after the dissident anti-apartheid cleric and shortly, in Newtown (amongst others) West Street will change to Ntemi Piliso, Becker to Gerard Sekoto, Bezuidenhout to Miriam Makeba, Wolhuter to Margaret Mcingana, Park to Barney Simon and Goch to Henry Nxumalo, so visitors should be warned that some of the street addresses in this guide could soon be obsolete.