Going to the No-Go Zone

A friend I met the other day offered to take me to downtown Johannesburg. Pretty much everybody I talked to before coming here and everything I'd read instructed me clearly to not go downtown. For any reason. And once I got here, the first bunch of people I talked to said the same thing. But all of these people were either white or scared of leaving their cars or both. So I asked some black people, some locals. Pretty much all of them told me that the rumors about downtown might have been true in the '90s, but were total exaggerations now. Despite a bit of skepticism, I agreed to go downtown with my friend.

So we met in my neighborhood and got on one of the minibus taxis that are the bloodflow of the city's carless masses. These are essentially minivans with room for about 15. Or 18. Or 20, depending on how crammed people can get. They pick people up wherever and drop them off wherever, all for about $1. They all have specific point As and Bs, but the route in between is always subject to change. I'll get into more detail about these later, as I get more experience riding them. I'll just leave it to say that I am always the only white person on board.

We take the minibus downtown, to one of the taxi ranks, where minibuses line up to pick people up and ferry them off to various locations within and beyond the city. The place is a zoo, and I'll get into that another time as well.

So we walk down towards the Newtown Market Square, a plaza that's being set up for a concert later. THe streets are packed with people, and lined with crummy little shops selling appliances and sodas and weird cooked animal parts that I can't really identify, except for the one stall selling cooked heads. Those were definitely heads.




My friend takes me into the MuseuM Africa, and we look at the displays about mining, pre-colonial times, apartheid and post-apartheid. It's pretty interesting. He gets pretty excited when we check out the replicas of the shacks people used to (and still do) live in inside the informal settlements and townships. He tells me how his great-grandfather stayed in a place just like this tin-walled shack.

We leave the museum and walk across the square to another park. This area has all these posts with wooden heads on them. Really cool.



These dudes were fixing them up.

We see another museum. It's the Workers Museum, which shows what life was like for mine workers who lived in compounds. Pretty inhumane. So many people, so little space, and so much work.

After that we end the day with a tour of the South African Brewing company. Pretty lame promotional tour. But we got some beers at the end so I guess it was OK. And they let us keep the glasses, so now I have two glasses in my meager little room.

We left and I caught a bus back to my neighborhood. So I went downtown and did not get robbed, shot or even killed. I'd say it wasn't that bad. But I guess it was daylight the whole time. Not sure if I really want to go back at night...