Becoming a Jo'burger

Drinking coffee like a local

Tonight I walked home from the restaurant where I had dinner at 7:15 pm.  This might not sound like a big deal, but as I put my key in the gate of my new guesthouse (the gate is embedded in the 3 metre high wall topped with barbed wire) it was very definitely dusk.  Not dark, but dim.  The street lights were on and there was nothing left of the post work flurry of street activity.  I realised that this is the latest I have been out on my own since I arrived in Jo'burg, and I felt pretty chuffed with myself.

I feel I have conquered a few cities so far in my life - Melbourne, Bristol, Beijing, Sydney.  In each city I went out on my own (more or less) and made a previously foreign place my own.  In a small way, I feel I have begun also to do that in Jo'burg.  For a start, I now routinely refer to it as Jo'burg, rather than Johannesburg, though I think it will be a while before I adopt the term 'Jozi'.  But I have been reflecting on what else it is that makes one feel like a new place becoming a kind of 'home'.

In the three short weeks I have been here, the following experiences have made me feel like I am becoming, in part, a Jo'burger:

• Getting a local phone number.  Day one, tick.
• Walking the streets.  Not much on my own, granted, and never past 7.15.  But in truth this is the practice of many locals - Jo'burg's reputation as the crime capital of the world, though definitely exaggerated, is not without its basis in reality.
• Catching the bus.  Twice in fact!  Though both times with help - I think I am almost ready to try this solo.  Public transport is truly the key to owning a city as your own.
• Mastering the local taxis.  I can book them, give directions, chat about the weather...
• Making friends.  This seems remarkably easy here, I have many new phone numbers and promises to catch up when I back later in the year.  The other day I even received a call from Tania and Jo, my walking tour guides, invting me to join them for coffee in a cafe near my hotel!  Yep, local.
• Going to the gym.  Not the hotel gym, the real gym - I've been to two.
• Going to the market.  Ok, so this is precisely the kind of thing that tourists do, but it was a fabulous market so I wanted to include it.
• Being recognised in the street.  I was stopped as I left my previous hotel in Braamfontein by Josef, the 'artistic director' of the inner city rejuvenation, who told me he had been on the lookout for a redheaded Aussie hanging about the suburb.  My reputation precedes me...
• Being mistaken for a local.  My taxi driver this afternoon said he could not tell I was from Australia, I sounded just like a South African to him.
• Being greeted by name in your local cafe.  This is perhaps the ultimate local-defining experience, and one of my personal favourites - when the cafe staff not only know what coffee you drink, but your name as well!

The lovely woman who works at my current guesthouse, Bongi, told me when I arrived home tonight, 'Once you know Jo'burg, you know South Africa.  Capetown, Durban, Pretoria - they're a piece of cake compared to Jo'burg!'

Albert Street School

Albert Street School

Today I visited the Albert Street School, a church-run school in Johannesburg’s CBD which provides primary and secondary education to hundreds of refugee children who cannot access South Africa’s public schools.  The school is funded almost entirely by donations – only those few families who can afford it pay fees – and when there is not enough money for both the matriculation exams and teachers’ salaries, teachers forego their earnings to ensure that senior students have the opportunity to graduate and to attend university.  The school was started only three and a half years ago by Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church, and in 2011 it achieved a 97% pass rate in the ‘O level’ exams.

Nearly every person in Johannesburg I have spoken to about my research has told me about city’s Central Methodist Church.  Located in the heart of the city, the church has become famous as the home of literally thousands of Zimbabwean refugees.  At its height, the church housed over 3,000 people, in its offices, hallways and even stairwells.  Today it is still home to around 600 people.

Bishop Paul Verryn first began opening the church as a place to sleep in 2008, when Zimbabweans began turning up on his doorstep, destitute and with nowhere to sleep.  The influx of Zimbabweans into central Jo’burg was the combined effect of Operation Murambatsvina in Zimambwe – a government crackdown on slum areas which left around a million people without homes or livelihoods – and the widespread and brutal xenophobic attacks taking place around South Africa itself.  Many of the people who sheltered at the Central Methodist Church during this period have since found other accommodation, or moved on to other cities in South Africa in search of work, but many others remain.  Despite numerous attempts by authorities to close the church down – including a government raid in which around 300 people sleeping in and around the church were arrested – Paul Verryn maintains it is his Christian duty to provide shelter to those who have nowhere else to go.

As well as being a place of shelter, the community within the church has established its own governance structures – including weekly meetings to discuss issues and make decisions – and numerous organised activities, to help pass the time and develop skills and opportunities for inhabitants.  Chief among the challenges faced when this community was first established was what to do with the children.  Hundreds of young children – including many who arrived in South Africa without parents or a guardian – spent their days loitering in the church grounds, with energy to burn and nothing to do.

In response to the growing crisis, the Bishop decided to open a school.  The school is housed in a separate church building, in Albert St, also in the CBD and within easy walking distance of the church itself.  It is at best ironic that the Albert Street School is probably the most dangerous place I have been in Jo’burg.  Noone said as much, but my driver would not let me out of the locked car until he had been to check we were at the right place, and the teacher who greeted me in the walkway was quick to usher me inside and out of street view.  The building had previously been a school, which was closed in 1958, deemed a black spot in a white area.  When it was reopened in 2008 by the church, it had 17 students and 5 volunteer teachers.  By January 2009 there were 561 students and 21 teachers, who are now paid a very modest stipend, when there is enough money to pay them at all.

At law, asylum seeker and refugee children are entitled to public education in South Africa.  In practice, however, most cannot meet schools’ demands that they produce a birth certificate and transfer letter from their previous school before enrolling.  In addition, most public schools offer only the local matriculation certificate, which students must complete in a local language such as Afrikaans or Zulu.  The Albert St School offers the Cambridge Curriculum – O and A levels, as in the UK – which students complete in English.

The Albert Street School day is divided in two – in the morning, primary students attend from 7.30 am until midday, then from 12-4.30 the high school classes are run.  The principal, William Kandowe, explained to me the school’s concerns about the limited time available for high school classes.  He would like to begin them earlier, at 10am, and the school has two extra classrooms it can use – but they must wait until they can afford chairs to make these classrooms usable.  The lack of facilities at the school has already caused William enough headaches – the government recently threatened to close the school down unless they installed sufficient fire escapes and obtained a health certificate.  The school managed to do both, but the government is still threatening to withdraw its registration.

William attributes the constant harassment from government officials to the school’s success.  Their pass rate is well beyond any South African school, something the government views as a threat.  An offer of building space by a local businessman recently was quickly withdrawn when he was visited by officials who warned him not to proceed with the arrangement.  I have been told by others that Zimbabweans here are often better educated than South Africans, one reason they have been the target of such xenophobia.  When I visited the grade 4 classroom and was introduced to the students working diligently on their maths problems, I was told that today their teacher was away – she is sick and in hospital – and so the children must study unsupervised.  I could hardly hide my astonishment as I imagined what a class of 9 year olds would do at home if left to their own devices.

Accessing education is not the only difficulty faced by refugee students in South Africa.  Many of the children at Albert St School are ‘unaccompanied’ – meaning that they arrived without parents or a guardian.  For such children, the Church is the source not only of the child’s education, but also their clothing, food and access to health services.  A basic kitchen in the school serves lunch to the many students who travel into the school each day from Soweto, to the city’s south-west.  These children travel by train, an activity my Lonely Planet guide warns distinctly against.

While I spoke with William he had a steady stream of other visitors.  Three separate donations of textbooks arrived, a student’s mother came to collect a mobile phone which had been confiscated, a former student asked to be readmitted despite his past truancy, and students of all ages walked in and out collecting and delivering forms.  I asked William what the school needs most - he said school fees.  Most of school’s major donors disappeared as the 2008 ‘crisis’ abated, but the school still has more than 200 students who cannot afford to pay, and it is these fees that the school needs to pay for its bills, its teachers, and the students’ exams.

** More information on the school can be found at http://www.worldmissionspossible.org/albert_street_refugee_school__s_africa_0.aspx.  If you are interested in supporting the Albert Street School – through donations, by sponsoring a child’s school fees, or volunteering – please contact me and I will very gladly forward further details.  tamarajanewood@gmail.com  **

The building was formerly also a school, which was closed
down in 1958 for being a black school in a white area.

The kitchen where lunch is served for students who travel every
day from townships around Jo'burg to attend the school. The students
who live at the Central Methodist Church can walk home for their lunch.

The school's fire exit - built with the assistance of some large
donations in order to help the school to get its registration.



Albert Street School students



Albert Street School students

More students - some things are the same in schools everywhere!

Beyond Apartheid

Yesterday I visited Constitution Hill, the site of the old Fort Prison complex.  Fort Prison is perhaps most infamous for its Number Four section, reserved for black male prisoners and the place where Nelson Mandela, along with many others, spent many years.  Constitution Hill, along with the Apartheid Museum which I visited last week, paint a vivid picture of life under the Apartheid regime.  The vast collections of photographs and video that make up the exhibitions in both places are a reminder of just how recent the history of Apartheid is.  A concerted effort has been made to bring many ex-prisoners back to this space, as a way of reclaiming their dignity and place in the city, and in many of the old prison cells I viewed footage of interviews with individuals describing their time there.  Some of these former prisoners are now members of government.

I won't recount here the incredible reach, oppression and brutality of the Apartheid regime and the struggle for equality (but if you want to know more I highly recommend Nelson Mandela's autobiography, which I have almost finished).  Having spent some time at both the Apartheid Museum and the Fort Prison however the main impression that has stayed with me is the sheer force of people power displayed by the resistance - a resistance which ultimately brought the ruling regime to its knees, forcing them to the negotiating table.  The final exhibition at the museum celebrates the success of the end of Apartheid as a great victory for human rights, and reminds us that South Africa was the only country in Africa to free itself from colonial rule without a civil war.

Fort Prison closed in 1983 and the site has been redeveloped as a museum and the home of South Africa's new Constitutional Court.  It is symbolically powerful that a place of such oppression has been reclaimed as the seat of South Africa's new democracy.  South Africa's Constitution is one of the most liberal in the world; its Bill of Rights extends much further than those of most Western, developed nations.  It has formed the basis of considerable litigation by individuals seeking to enforce their rights against the government - including a successful challenge to the government's policy of not allowing asylum seekers to work or study, which was struck down by the Court for infringing the right to human dignity.  And the Constitution is not just a document for lawyers - it occupies an important place in the popular consciousness of South Africans.  The language (if not always the practice) of human rights is part of the local vocabulary, and at least twice on this trip someone has told me in conversation that the government could not do something because 'it's unconstitutional'.

Photographs are not allowed inside the Apartheid Museum, so most of these photographs are from Constitution Hill.

The Apartheid Museum, near Soweto.  When I paid for my ticket I was given
a pass that directed me to enter through the 'non-white' entrance.

Enlarged display of 'pass cards' - identity cards stating a person's race - white,
black, coloured - that all South Africans were compelled to carry during apartheid

One of the pillars outside the Apartheid Museum - a tribute to the new democracy

A 'casspir' - these enormous, armoured vehicles were used
by police and security personnel to patrol the townships. 

Another police vehicle - the water gun on top was
used to break up protests and other group gatherings

Constitution Hill - the site of the old Fort Prison and
now home to the South African Constitutional Court

Part of the Number Four section of the prison - where
Nelson Mandela spent some of his 27 years in prison

Inside one of the Number Four prison cells - prisoners used to make sculptures
from their blankets to appease the wardens and secure special privileges. 
This one is of an army tanker, you can see a sofa in the background.

One of the solitary confinement cells at Number Four.  Nelson Mandela
has said, 'No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails'.

Mahatma Gandhi was one of the earlier prisoners of conscience held at Number Four.



The view from the outdoor exercise areas of the prison.



Solitary confinement cells in the Women's Jail within Fort Prison.  Many
of the women here were imprisoned simply for failing to produce an ID card.



The foyer of South Africa's new Constitutional Court - charged with
implementing and enforcing the Constitutional Bill of Rights.



Inside the Constitutional Court - the windows around the edge of the Court
allow passers by to look in, keeping the law open to the people.

Johannesburg - people and places

In my first week in Jo'burg I spent an afternoon walking the city and inner suburbs with Jo and Tania.  Both are recent graduates of Wits University's Archaeology Department, and both have a fervent passion for their beloved Johannesburg.  They are both part of the tour company, Past Experiences, founded by Jo as part of her one woman crusade to bring the people - locals and visitors alike - back to central Jo'burg.  (Her company was even featured in the Sydney Morning Herald just last month - see here.)

Wandering the city with these two energetic and enthusiastic young women was fabulous.  For a start, I was much less jumpy than usual - nothing like the power of numbers to make you feel a bit safer.  But this 'tour' was much less about ticking of tourist sights, and more about learning how to navigate the urban sprawl and how to find its hidden gems.  We found cool cafes in Braamfontein, caught the local bus through Hillbrow (still a place even these intrepid tour guides will only go in a vehicle), wandered the CBD's Main Street, saw Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo's law offices, found apartheid-era signs noone has bothered to take down, admired the graffiti in Newtown and took in the varied architectural delights that are Johannesburg's buildings.  Here are just a few of the photos I took of people and places on my wanderings!




Chancellor House - the home of Madela and Tambo Attorneys
in the 1950s - the first black law offices in South Africa.  The
original sign is still in the top left window.



The quintessential corner store

A gentleman minding his shop in the CBD - when he saw me taking photos
he requested that I take one of him.  (I think his pose looks well-practised!)

A larger than life tribute to Walter Sisulu - freedom fighter and former secretary
general of the ANC - and his wife Albertina Sisulu, affectionately referred to as 'Mama
Sisulul' for her role in the struggle against apartheid.  The statue has been created to allow
children (and agile adults) to sit in the laps of Walter and Albertina!

A remnant of the apartheid era - I asked whether some of these signs
have been preserved in memory of the struggle, but am told they are
not - this one still is here because noone has bothered to take it down.

Inside a traditional medicine shop - I confess I didn't
look too closely at the items hanging from the roof.

A local taxi driver - who also asked that his photo be taken!

Creative taxi signage.  The building behind has apparently
been in the process of being painted for some years - this is
the latest version.  (Inside there was a fabulous jewellery shop.)

The 'diamond building' - so named for its shape and reflective qualities.

Public art in Newtown, Jo'burg's 'cultural precinct'