This one is not about a wedding

I promise. I won't mention it once.

I'm just feeling a sudden rush and swell of goodwill towards the beautiful city I live in.

This happened prior to reading this hilarious article by Jeremy Clarkson about our lavender lined streets. Ok, so Jeremy hasn't been to Alex in winter near midnight, and obviously hasn't had the experience of being young sexy poor female and Zimbabwean on the streets of Hillbrow, or rich and driving a verrrry desirable car on the Malboro offramp, but still - he's right, to a certain extent. Joburg is piss-easy and safe, if you play it right.

I'm busy working on a little something with a dear friend, for the Grahamstown festival. A piece about Jozi. A love poem to Jozi. An exploration into - what is it that makes you love and survive this place? One of my favourite things in this city is listening to people give directions. It literally makes me gas up with giggles, I can't quite say why. Its a certain goodwill promise we have to each other as citizens - we help you get where you need to be. You take the Riviera offramp, ok, then turn left but get into the right lane immediately...then right and second left into, I think its second avenue Houghton...
Oh, I could write a whole play with people giving directions. Or a dance piece. lost people, giving each other directions and missing. Wrong turns and dead ends, cordoned off streets "for security reasons" and negotiating the space between the rising panic of being lost and the delight of discovering a new road or two in a part of town you've never been.

I love this mad city, all of a sudden. When I was 17 my dad owned a flat in Hillbrow - its now a derelict part of town, but (perhaps) on the rise again. Oh, I remember walking up the rise of the 'brow, to the bookshop, to Look n Listen. I remember buying James Dean posters in the poster shop, feeding a sweet teenage obsession. I remember getting flashed by a Twist street vagrant - a foreshadowing of the days when one wasn't allowed to walk those streets alone. Again.

Aah, but this city gets her grip around you, and I'd never have said that five years ago when I was trying to be faithful to The Mountain (of Cape Town. yes, Shiny, I'm talking to you).

I love her history - the gangs, the fever of goldrush, the sudden streets, the dustbowl politics and the hastily erected rules and regulations and streets and forest plantations.

I love the way whole streets and buildings have their identities erased and pasted over and erased again. Joburg has been built and rebuilt and erased and built again several times over.

I dunno, I reckon the city she has a certain something, bouganvillia and koi pond outlets aside.

Since the Georges first hit paydirt here, and the whole fabric of lies and hustle and bluff started to gather momentum, I reckon its a space where you can spin your own hustle and bluff and blunder and people might just actually pay you for it. The tricky part is, she can just just as easily eat you alive as pay you out for your chutzpah. What's it gonna be?



Ah, Jozi, my city. You wanna visit? Text me, I'll give you directions.

Jozi, my city

See the blood of my cat?











Before I launch into another 'hectic' posting about the city I live in. Before I tell you about how my cat sliced himself open jumping through the spike infested security protected walls I live behind and is now in ICU. I just want to say that I am aware that there has been a general tone of gloom and oh my god where do i live? in these posts. I am aware.

So, I have to do this.

10 reasons why I love and live in Jozi

1. Its where I was born. I think its important to connect with the place you were born. Right now, I live quite close to the site of Marymount hospital, immortalised in Ivan Vladislavic's fantastic book about Jozi, Portrait with Keys.
2. The big old stately oaks and jacarandas. The fact that its an urban human-made forest.
3.Sushi. Food security was a big issue for me growing up. First in the bush where we competed with a variety of creatures for our meagre veggie crop, and the nearest shops were 3 - 4 hours on a very bad road. Then boarding school where bolshi boys conspired to keep 'seconds' off your plate. I never take it for granted here. I marvel at shelves full of glowing vegetables. I love sushi.
4. Hanging at the Newtown Cultural Precinct, outside the Market theatre, watching glossy young actresses and muzos with overnight dreadlocks being cooler than thou.
5. Street fashion. Downtown babes in kneehighs and reclaimed camo. The Congolese girls on Louis Botha who smile at me and say " I love your sunglassses."
6. The shy Malawian fabric cutters at the Oriental Plaza. Especially the one upstairs. When I greet him in Chichewa he looks over his shoulder, leans forward and says "where did you learn that language?"
7. It's raucous past - fortunes made and lost, tavern brawls and deals, chancers and whores with golden um, thighs. One day I'll write a sccreenplay about the wild south of Jozi town.
8. The sunsets are radical - pollution and dust in the west make for some spectacular evening pyrotechnics
9. You know, really, the mine dumps do have a special kind of beauty of their own.
10. You can shop at robots (that's what we call street lights). Unless you're boycotting Chinese goods in which case there's nothing for you. ANd I love that the beautiful faced man at the Emmarentia golf course robot no longer has such a bad lame leg, becuase residents of the area clubbed together and bought him a series of surgical procedures. Yeah, its a city of dog eat dog (fence eat cat) money grubbing capitalists. But there are some good souls here. Like the lady who brought the R25 she couldn't afford and gave it to one of the refugee camps as the only donation she could manage, but which she felt compelled to give.
11. The city is home to Ivan Vladislavic, author of Portrait with Keys, master observer, recorder of urban detail. Read the book, and understand why its possible to love Joburg, with her spikey razor wire and fake Tuscany suburbs.
Eish, Jozi, my city, what can I say, you're beautiful.