More extremes

Today I went to Montecasino - yes, Montecasino, Johannesburg - an entirely spurious Italian village housing a real casino and dozens of real restaurants and real shops. The experience is surreal - there are fake pigeons on the balconies, a fake municipio (town hall), a fake campanile (belltower - when the bell chimes the bell rocks a bit to make it look real, but it's actually a recorded broadcast), a piazza surrounded by eateries - and a group of singers churning out famous Italian hits like Funicoli Funicola.

The casino section is roofed over, with a fake Italian sunset on one wall and twinkling stars in another corner. Almost the weirdest part of all this, for me, was that many people prefer to eat inside, in the fake penumbra of a fake Italian evening, rather than sit outside in the healthy South African sunshine. This is presumably partly due to the fact that the indoor air conditioning brings the temperature down by ten degrees (today it was 30 degrees outside; sorry). Disneyland meets plastic Siena. Bizarre. Part of the attraction of these places is that there are vast underground car parks where it' s easy to park (the staff selling tickets greet you with a resounding Buon giorno!), andthere's heavy security at the entrance; once inside you're completely safe, to enjoy your fake Italian meal in a fake Italian setting in a fake climate - then you can wander off to do some slot machines.

Later (this same day) I went to the very wonderful Walter Sisulu botanical garden, where you can inspect hundreds of real exotic South African plants, climb up a real cliff next to a real waterfall, and inspect the real nest of some real Black Eagles - which really do fly down and carry off the real Guinea Fowl innocently pecking around in the real grass on the lower levels. Fake Italy, real South Africa... guess where I saw more people.

(Above: fake Italy; fake storks under a fake sky; real weaver bird nests; real waterfall.)

Mda's Madonna

I've only read newspapers and work-related stuff since I got here - except for the very wonderful "The Madonna of Excelsior" by Zakes Mda (short for Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda), who was born in SA but spent a lot of his life abroad because of apartheid. Mda is new to me - a colleague lent me this novel and I didn't know what to expect - and I was immensely impressed by a lyrical blend of historical fact, political commentary, and a touch of magical realism. The story revolves around a real incident in the 1970s when the police arrested several white men and their black domestic servants for having sex together (the mixed-race children were held as evidence) - which was illegal, of course, at the time. Read it if you haven't already. There's a lot of insight into the politics and sociology of race and culture, some of which is uncomfortable reading for an Englishman, e.g.:

"....We put these friendships down to the old love affair between black people and Afrikaners that the English found so irritating. Even at the height of apartheid, blacks prefered dealing with Afrikaners to the English-speaking South Africans. The English, common wisdom stated, were hypocrites. They laughed with you, but immediately you turned, they stabbed you in the back. The Afrikaner, on the other hand, was honest. When he hated you, he showed you at once. He did not pretend to like you. If he hated blacks, he said so publicly. So, when you dealt with him, you knew who you were dealing with. When he smiled, you knew he was genuine. One could never trust the smile of an Englishman."

Albie

This evening I met a man who is so famous in SA he's refered to in the media as just as "Albie" ("like Elvis", as one of his friends said) - Albie Sachs, fighter in the freedom struggle, imprisoned, exiled, and now a Justice on the Constitutional Court. An attempt was made on his life by the SA security forces in 1988 - a bomb was put in his car; he lost most of his right arm and the sight in his right eye. When he meets you he promptly holds out his left hand so you know what to do. Tonight he was helping to present a new book on the art works in the Constitutional Court, and his presentation was generous to a fault - he made the choir sing a few times, encouraged the audience to join them on stage, called up everyone he recognised in the audience to thank them and hug them, and said almost nothing about his own role in creating the art collection. He passed on a nugget of wisdom from his grandmother - "never steal anything, except books" (which must have made the publishers nervous - there were stacks of the new book everywhere). An extraordinary man. I felt the power of his enthusiasm for life - and his survival - just in those few minutes.

To get a sense of Albie's intelligence and charisma, try a part of this interview. He also talks about the bombing.

Gold Reef City

(See below for minimal narrative.) Photos above: the Anaconda ride in the theme park (Joburg centre in the background); fountain at the entrance to the casino; kitsch decoration...

An amazing irony is that the money for the casino, theme park AND the Apartheid Museum was put up by the Kroc brothers, who made their fortune selling skin-lightening products for black women - products which turned out to have toxic long-term effects.

Soweto

Today I went to Soweto to see the Hector Pieterson Museum - a very moving memorial to the 13-year old schoolboy who was shot during the Soweto uprising in 1976, and a very effective exposition and condemnation of the whole apartheid system and the increasingly violent lengths the regime went to in repressing protest. The schoolchildren were protesting against a new law mandating that half of the teaching in their schools had to be in Afrikaans - which very few of them spoke - and so they sat in class for week after week not understanding what half of the teachers in front of them were saying, and slowly realising that they would inevitably fail the subjects being taught in this alien language. (They wanted to go on being taught in English - another colonial language, but one that they at least already understood.)

A small detail which is also indicative of the pathos and desperation of those times is that Hector's original surname was Pitso - his family changed it to Pieterson in the hope that they'd get better treatment as being less "African" and more "coloured". I don't have any photos from the museum (not permitted) but there are some above from the streets of Soweto. Note the nearly-completed new Soweto football stadium where the final of the World Cup will be played in 2010 - and note also the "informal housing" in the field in front of it.

Just to rub in the extremes of poverty/ money here, on the way back I stopped at the Gold Reef City complex - which rather oddly includes the excellent Apartheid Museum (take a look at the web site to see the Flash creativity, as well as the content, of course) along with a theme park with thrill rides and a casino - which is of course decorated in high kitsch. A city of contrasts indeed.

Differences

A tiring aspect of moving to a new country is that you have to form completely new habits. For a while, you're doing everything for the first time: getting money out of a bank, driving from home to work, going around a supermarket, buying milk - the most banal things are all slightly different and require more concentration than usual. It's exhausting. Then habits start to form and you stop paying so much attention - but this has a downside, because you start to take for granted all the small (and large) differences which were so fascinating to start with. So - I want to note here now and then some of the small differences that strike me in SA, before they go unconscious and I stop noticing them. (Also, so I don't only record things I happen to have a photo of...)

For example:

Traffic lights are called ROBOTS (this is sometimes painted in large letters on the ground to warn you they're coming up).

Pickup trucks, delivery vans etc. are called BAKKIES.

There are intersections at which no-one has right of way - everyone has a stop sign; everyone stops in fact and there's an etiquette about taking turns to cross over (imagine this in Italy!). It seems to work.

When you turn the ignition on in your car, all the doors and boot automatically lock. This is a safety feature.

If someone wants to say "it's not a serious problem" they'll say "it's not a train crash". If they want to say "oh well it's a way to make a living" they'll say "oh well it puts porridge on the table". (In fact there's a whole book to write, or has probably already been written, on colourful expressions here. There's a good web site glossary.)

The earth is a deep ochre ORANGE/ RED, not brown. This is noticeable from the sky, when you're flying, and at any construction site, and in flower beds etc. (photo above)

The "bungalows" in the northern suburbs (i.e. single-floor villas) often have skylights in the roofs to let in some extra light; these can be disguised as light fittings - in fact in my own house I didn't understand at first where the light switch was for this odd light which was on during the day but faded at night.... (photo above; note the huge fridge on the right and the "trelly" in the background - trellis security gate on an external door)

The SKY seems to be enormous compared to how it looks in the northern hemisphere. I don't understand how this is possible, the horizon must be the same distance away - perhaps it's something to do with cloud formations (I don't think I've seen a completely clear sky yet) - but there seems to be lots of space up there. There's a lot of space down on the ground, too. Johannesburg is a city of eight million people which has spread out horizontally in every direction, and why not? - there was nothing at all here 120 years ago; apart from the business district, most buildings here are just one or two stories high - and there's always somewhere to park your car. Imagine that in any European capital!

Kagiso 2

More images from my trip yesterday. The photo immediately above was taken at the school - note the white hill in the background - this is not snow, but slag from a gold mine (the colour depends on the seam, or "reef" as they call it here) - white dust flies off the peak in a wind, just like snow.... and if you happen to be downwind it gets into everything.

Then: wall art and encouraging slogans ("kasie" is Afrikaans for "township" - an abbreviation of lokasie, or location - under apartheid kasies were dormitory towns for blacks only); a pink shack (yes everyone calls them shacks - there's some talk of encouraging the owners or builders of "low-cost housing" to use sandbags rather than combustible material) - if you look closely however you'll see that there's a garage attached to this particular shack, and the garage is slightly larger than the house; and there's a satellite dish on the shack next door; people are making investment choices. Then reentering Johannesburg. This really is a country of extremes...

Kagiso

Today I went to see a school in Kagiso, a township near Krugersdorp, about a 40-minute drive out of Johannesburg. It was another world. The secondary school was built under apartheid to serve 1100 students - its headcount is now1800 and enrolments are capped to stop the facilities - and the teachers - being overwhelmed. The structures are attractive enough (helped by the wonderful blue cloud-dotted sky in this warm late spring) but resources, as you'd expect, are severely limited. The older students were sitting their end of year exams (yes, it's the end of the academic year here, before the long summer holiday) so I didn't see much of them, but the primary school kids gave me a riotous welcome - outside, when they were allowed to; in the classrooms they were silent and ominously well-behaved.

The saddest thing was the computer lab - because it had been broken into; the thieves had stolen the hard drives and left the monitors; they sawed through the burglar bars, which must have taken some time. Passing another building, I was shown a wall where thieves had actually smashed through the bricks to get inside. In another place they'd come through the roof. "If you think of a way to stop them, they'll think of another way to get in," was the principal's laconic comment. New PCs are being offered by one of the SA telecomms companies, so they'll be able to try again soon.

Above: a staff meeting; exams in progress; the courtyard; the township; year 2 pose for a photo.

Sisulu and zebra

Today I took a good step in overcoming the institutionally-induced paranoia about living here by driving on my own across the Nelson Mandela bridge (very modern) and venturing into Newtown, a no-go area for tourists a few years ago but now - reputedly - much safer than it used to be. I'm used to traffic in European capitals, so driving around here is amazingly easy, even on a Saturday morning - and I was able to park right next to the Market Theatre complex. I went to the Museum of Africa, which was probably very impressive when it opened in 1994 but has been neglected since - many of the displays were supposed to be multimedia, but nothing requiring electricity was still working - which made something of a nonsense of the "musical history of Johannesburg" exhibition. The place was deserted, which is odd, as entry is free (or at least I walked in through a deserted lobby and no-one stopped me). The best exhibition was dedicated to the Treason Trial of 1956-61, well described in Mandela's autobiography - real examples of police documents were on display, including the booking form for Walter Sisulu (above) - you won't be able to read the text, but detainees were described according to shape of head, ears, lips, etc., and their hair was given as "peppercorn", "frizzed out", "bald", "going bald", or "grey", and their "complexion" had to be indicated as "yellow", "brown" or "pitch black" - chilling evidence of the apartheid regime's insane obsession with racial categorisation.

Just around the corner from the museum I stumbled on a restaurant serving African cuisine - Gramadoelas - also a part of the struggle for freedom - and had a wonderful meal - I hesitated over the fried crocodile but decided it was too heavy for lunchtime.... I'll go back. After lunch I wandered around the very colourful market and started negotiations for a large wire-and-beadwork zebra with its friendly creator - another Zimbabwean staying away from his sad country for the moment. He didn't mind me taking the photo above, although, as he said, it's a work of art, not just an artefact.

As I'll have to talk about race here now and then (all South Africans do, it's part of daily discourse; no-one pretends that it's politically correct to be colourblind; this can be a shock to UK sensibilities) I'll add that the people I saw in Newtown were about 95 per cent black - which is a very different ratio from what I've seen so far in the northern suburbs. I should also say that I felt a bit nervous at first (paranoia having been induced, and also feeling that I'm associated, in a way, inevitably, with the people who fingerprinted Sisulu) but I was more relaxed by the time I left. Everyone I met was friendly and welcoming. (South Africans never just say "good morning", they always add "how are you?" and actually want an answer - and when you ask them back there's a great variety of responses - my favourite is "I'm first class, thank you.") I need to get out of the northern suburbs more often.

Fish and mantis

I've bought my first African artefact - a guy was selling wire mobiles in the street and I saw a fish one I liked - made up of five of these wonderful colourful constructions (above). I asked him how long it took him to make it and he said "one day"; he said he'd sell it to me at a discounted price of 120 rand because he hadn't sold anything all day (it was ten o'clock in the evening). 120 rand is about seven quid, which I happily gave him. My SA colleagues told me later this was a fair price, for a day's work, here.

The other photos is of a visitor in my garden - or rather on the back porch; it was sitting (or standing?) immobile on the table and barely budged when I moved up close to take the photo; it's still there - a type of mantis, I think, rather than a stick insect. It's about three inches long, and if it was in a tree I don't think I'd ever have seen him.

Levels of defence

People here talk a great deal about security - this is well-meaning, they want to give you good advice so you feel and are safer. However the cumulative effect induces a degree of paranoia - and learning about the security systems for a free-standing house takes quite a long time. One of the main strategies here is to have a series of barriers. My new house has: high walls all around it and a motorised gate for car and pedestrian access; cctv on top of the gate so you can see who's calling; a six-wired electric fence all the way around the perimeter - if any two wires touch an alarm goes off and the private security company sends one of the cars which is constantly patrolling the area; bars on all the windows and "trellis" gates on all the external doors; "panic buttons" dotted around the house (which summon the security cars); an internal "keep" area which you close off at night (i.e. extra gates around the bedroom and bathroom area); a motion-sensor alarm system for the whole house when you're out and for all the rooms outside the keep area when you go to bed; motion-sensor lights in the garden; and, just to make sure any prospective burglars know what they're up against, signs on the external wall, on the street, announcing that all these systems are in place and are connected to an "armed response" security company hotline. (And lots of South Africans apparently keep guns in their houses too.) If I was a burglar I'd keep well away. In fact, my new house is probably one of the safest places in the whole world. But it's strange and rather alienating to have to get used to all of this.

However, friends and relatives, please don't be put off visiting! The area where I live is lovely, very quiet, totally peaceful; during the day people jog and walk their dogs. Just around the corner there's a community church which offers free tea on Sundays to all comers. According to statistics, you're more likely to be involved in a car accident in Johannesburg than in a robbery - and the traffic is generally very calm and well-behaved. So, I presume, all the security stuff is at least partly generated by commerce - as soon as concern for safety becomes a commercial opportunity a defence race starts... and then once you've invested in the gear you might as well use it...

To put this in perspective, any visitor to SA will pretty certainly want to go straight out into the bush and see some lions, which is probably the most dangerous thing you could do.

The garden

Today I moved into the house allocated to me - I'm not sure I'll stay here, it's too big for me and too isolated and I'm not sure I'll get used to it. The best thing is the garden - although it was raining today so I didn't spend much time outside. As I walked across the lawn a LARGE bird took off from the other end of the garden and flew over my head - it had a curved beak, and the closest thing to it I can see in my chart of African garden birds is a Hadeda Ibis; it was a magic moment - reminding me, after all the hotels and malls of the past two weeks, that I'm actually somewhere exotic (for me). The garden, and the birds, could swing me on the house. And yes, there's a lemon tree.

A man I met at a reception the other evening told me that in Africa you're never more than four metres away from a snake - they're everywhere, certainly in every garden, but usually you don't see them because they're very good at hiding and they avoid humans - but if he visited my garden (he said) he'd find a snake for me in ten minutes, because he knows how to look for them. That's interesting to know, but I don't think I'll be looking very hard; in fact I probably won't poke around in the undergrowth at all, now...

Linguistic diversity

South Africa has eleven official languages, official as in "enshrined in the constitution", but the lingua franca is definitely English, which is great for lazy anglophone foreigners like me. However the other languages are very much in use - and it's impressive how everyone here takes for granted that very many people - perhaps a majority of the population - can slip from one language to another. One of the drivers at work can apparently speak all eleven official languages, which is an impressive feat by any standards.

SA television deals with this in an interesting way - programmes in non-English languages are mostly subtitled in English, even when the characters in the programmes are themselves slipping in and out of English. It's completely normal for a sitcom in (say) Zulu to shift into English for a few sentences, then back again, sometimes because an English-speaker comes into the scene, and sometimes between the Zulu-speakers themselves, for no particular reason. There are a lot of borrowed English words in the other languages anyway, e.g. when the subtitle says "why are you so worried about this", the actor is saying "ksdfpoujsd oiusdfknsd oisdjdij f sfoi worry?" (or something like that).

SA television has also found an innovative way to deal with the issue of swear words on TV (e.g. in American cop films, where swearing is endemic to the point of boredom) - the soundtrack is simply deleted for the split-second when the actor is swearing. This makes for a curiously restful listening experience, when the cop (or villain), clearly in a highly emotional state, shouts, for example, "Give me the (pause) gun, you (pause) (pause)!"

First Sunday in Joburg

A day off at last - I played tennis on a public court - weeds growing in the cracks, no net to speak of - but this matched the quality of my game - and not having a net allows you to think you're playing a lot better than you really are. I was a bit distracted by strange birds flying overhead, some of them the size of vultures (perhaps they were vultures; I haven't identified any of these avians yet). Then we repaired to the very wonderful Dunkeld Bakery where I ordered French toast and received the cholesterol and calorie bomb above (including bananas and maple syrup). Portions of food here are generally enormous.

Then I went to Johannesburg Zoo - this is cheating, I know, I out to be out there trekkiing in the veldt and savanna and desert and wetlands, seeing the real things in their natural habitats - but that will come, later, at some point. In the meantime the zoo was a good place to walk around on my own. It was hot (sorry) so half of the animals were asleep (see the ultra-relaxed lioness above) - but it's a pretty well-designed and managed zoo, for a zoo; and the vegetation continues to amaze me.

And now back to work - stuff to read before tomorrow... :-(

November - warming up

Apologies to everyone north of the equator, especially those of you having early snow, but today was an "unseasonably" hot day in Johannesburg - 30 degrees - summer has begun! I don't have much else to report as I've been working pretty much non-stop the past four days; but hope to get out and about tomorrow. In the meantime, a shot of the approach to my room in the hotel - just to give you a sense of how much lush vegetation there is everywhere at the moment.