Jo’burg: A Tale of Two Cities

Ask Gauteng premier David Makhura or Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau, and they will speak of “a world-class African city”. And it makes sense — with all due respect to Abuja and Lagos, Johannesburg is where the heart of the African economy beats.

Any Jo’burger would easily tell you which neighbourhoods to avoid. However, sheltered naivety ignores a fundamental truth: poverty and crime is no longer only associated with certain suburbs; it has spread and sits on the doorstep of wealth.

It  was time that I stared into the abyss.

First National Bank’s headquarters, Bank City, in the Johannesburg CBD, is the home of multibillion-rand wealth. Within a few paces is South Africa’s second-oldest insurance company, Mutual and Federal. Wedged between these Leviathans of corporate wealth towers is a building where no window seems to be intact.

As you walk into this building, past the piercing glances of the security guard posted behind the heavy security gates, and as you ascend the dark stairwell, a stark realisation hits you between the eyes: in the shadow of Bank City is a completely different and alien world.

From the second floor wrap-around balcony, overlooking the apartment building’s courtyard, you are greeted with the sound of an open tap and water hitting the hollow interior of a large plastic container, the smell of old sewage,  refuse and the sight of a queue of people waiting for their 25-litre plastic containers to be filled.

My guide through this maze of abandoned buildings in Johannesburg’s CBD is Sam Ncube. He confirms that up to 2000 people live in this building alone, where each unit or flat has many individuals and/or families sharing the space.

“You don’t rent a flat, you rent a room here,” he tells me.

Rose (not her real name) has been living in the building for 30 years. Like Sam, Rose confirms that the trouble started in 2005 when the erstwhile owners started charging electricity separately from the monthly rental.

“I used to pay R1800 a month for rent and electricity was included in the amount. In about 2005 they started charging for electricity separately and then we were charged between R700-800 a month for electricity. The people revolted, stopped paying and the owners disappeared,” Sam recounts.

Soon after the water supply was also cut. It was reconnected so that one single tap worked throughout the building.

By March 2006, an unnamed white man, spoken of as though he is a phantom of sorts—Rose calls him Van Der Boss—flanked by burly Nigerians, told the residents of the building that they were looking after the interests of the owners and that they would now collect rent.

Clement Nduku, another of the building’s residents, explains how rent is collected: “They come late at night. They lock the security gate downstairs and then the Nigerian security guards knock on each flat door to collect rent, in cash, R500 per room.”

It is dark, with no electricity in the entire building; the courtyard is covered in sewage and rubble, one tap supplies water to the entire building and the toilets do not flush—and yet these people have to pay R500 a month. Per room!

It’s either this, or living on the streets.

Sam takes me to another building, less than a kilometre away from artistic centre of the city, the Maboneng precinct. Here the building has been stripped of all its doorframes, windows and is now a hollow, dark shell of brick and mortar.

I follow him into the building. A cold chill runs through me as I realise that the four scruffy looking informal recyclers he introduces me to all have needles sticking from their arms. It hits me: this is actually very dangerous!

Themba (not his real name) has lived like this for almost two years.

“We recycle cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and plastic for money,” he tells me as I fail to move my gaze from his arm, with the needle sticking out of it. I ask him what he is injecting into his arm. With no change in tone, he replies: “Oh, it’s heroin.”

“A hit costs R20, I spend R200-300 day on heroin,” he tells me. That’s up to R9000 a month—twice the amount the Economic Freedom Fighters have suggested as a monthly national minimum wage.

I wanted to ask so much more of Themba, like has he ever mugged anyone to satisfy a fix? All he told me was that drugs led him here, but what else could he tell me?

I was standing in the wolves’ den and needed to get out of there for my own safety. I had seen so much, but I have not even scratched the surface.

As a member of the Society of St Vincent De Paul and as a media practitioner, I thought I knew it all.

If there has ever been a story that humbled me and my perspective, it was this one.

Do we know what happens behind the curtain of poverty’s oppression?