Divisions

Johannesburg fascinates me. It’s regarded as being more racially integrated than Cape Town as the latter’s geography has permitted the maintenance of a kind of spatial apartheid. Whilst Johannesburg does feel different, it is vast and sprawling and the differences between neighbourhoods can be extremely stark. Economic class lines are drawn, but mainly it is divisions based on race that stand out very obviously. Leafy and empty streets, huge gates and fortifications characterise certain areas whilst others have a lot of destitute people with hopeful pleas on cardboard, begging at traffic lights or on slipways.

Worlds collide all over the city. A pair of muscly white men in pristine activewear jogs past a group of homeless and skinny black men resting on an embankment. Beggars approach people exiting upmarket malls to seek support for their families. People wander aimlessly, devoid of opportunities whilst others rush hither and thither from corporate jobs to their state-of-the-art gyms. Of course many societies have these contrasts yet in South Africa they always seem more extreme, and more painful because of the history.