#172. Return to my poor neglected blog after an extended digital fast. It’s January in the city, the skies are grey, and two nights ago I was admiring the moonlit lake at Parkview Golf Course only to be told it was the 8th hole in flood after one of those incredible “will it ever stop” rain storms.
I have just been reading about the launch of the updated edition of From Joburg to Jozi: Stories about Africa’s infamous city Continue reading
#171. Admire the angel and say that if any place needs one it’s Hillbrow.
Hillbrow's angel
Perched up high between Constitution Hill and one of Joburg’s most talked about suburbs the angel is one of a number of public artworks that have sprung up around the inner city. Part of the city of Johannesburg’s public art policy, officials have been hard at work commissioning artists to create pieces that are redefining the city as an inclusive space.
As for Hillbrow, it’s a place that conjures nostalgic, that calls up myths and legends. From the post-1994 hard drug scene that sprang up around the Sands Hotel to the playground of SA’s original party girl Brenda Fassie, Hillbrow was also home to my grandmother and a great-aunt (a lot earlier than that) who lived in the Coronia residential hotel in the late 1970’s (Now it’s a disco, but not for Lola …). Tropicana or was it Tropica sold the best schwarmas in town (It was the wrap) while Estoril had the monopoly on Italian fashion magazines. At Café Paris the men smoked and played backgammon and in the late 80’s Fontana would sell you roast chicken no matter the hour. Hillbrow was the height of cool. All bright lights and big-city like. Continue reading
#166. Recommend that if you love reading and food, or recipes, or have any interest in Chinese culture, and/or Taiwan (or all of these) then you should pick up a copy of Emperor Can Wait by Joburg restaurateur Emma Chen. For the uninitiated the title refers to a chinese proverb “The Emperor can wait –while we eat”. First a disclosure – I worked [as an editor] with Chen on the initial manuscript. Now that’s out of the way … the book launched a few days ago with a wedding feast at the Red Chamber, Chen’s restaurant in Hyde Park that is celebrating 20 years of existence (In Joburg restaurant parlance, a lifetime).
That’s 20 years of the best cucumber salad in Johannesburg, possibly the world. There are people who would kill for that recipe and in this city it’s possible they already have.
#161. Read Daddy’s Girl, the third book in the Clare Hart series written by Cape Town author Margie Orford who came all the way to Sandton City [with its ambience of "hell"] last week to launch it.
“Crime is like hair in Joburg — big and bling,” Orford said. In Joburg it takes 25 men with machine guns to rob the Spar; in Cape Town it takes one guy with a knife.” She described Cape Town as South Africa’s intellectual centre, and Joburg as its money capital. Continue reading
#156. Celebrate small things, like Friday. This is not a time to be serious so check out Cake Wrecks, the blog for when professional cakes go horribly wrong. Cake Wrecks is the creation of one Jen Yates who has just produced a book of the same name after finding that her gallery of “deformed, distasteful and bizarrely decorated wedding and birthday cakes” was a major web hit. Continue reading
#153. Watch Times photographer Marianne Schwankhart’s farewell to one of Johannesburg’s best known landmarks – The Top Star Drive-In. While the Top Star hasn’t operated for the past four years it will be the end of an era when you drive around the city centre from the east and don’t see that enormous movie screen rising above you on one of the city’s mine dumps.
# 151. Follow the Spring Art Tour now at a gallery near you. Four days of contemporary art and design, walkabouts with artists, talks and white wine (usually cheap but purposeful) kick off tomorrow night. Continue reading
#150. Read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s piece in The Guardian this morning titled: “Why do South Africans hate Nigerians?” Disturbing.
The acclaimed novelist was writing in response to the wound opened up by the movie District 9. Continue reading
#146. Remember a different time. A small item in the news section appeared this morning announcing the death of Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran Ting Ting Masango from diabetes. This event deserves more space.
A reader had left a comment on the story about him being a “nobody” — a remarkable and seemingly proud display of ignorance that is indicative of a greater willful ignorance about this country’s history.
Ting Ting Masango was one of the Delmas Four, and was recently “immortalised” in Peter Harris’s Alan Paton Award-winning book, In a Different Time. I met him him close to 20 years ago when he was on hunger strike along with fellow soldiers Neo Potsane and Jabu Masina. They were facing the death penalty then and had been taken to Johannesburg General Hospital after embarking on a hunger strike.
My memories of Ting Ting Masango are of a gentle man, large and imposing but soft-spoken and with a slight squint.
It was a time of true heroism, of people fighting for a cause so much bigger than themselves — something increasingly rare in the society and the world that we live in. They were fighting a system that was inhumane and cruel, and that exacted an enormous toll on us — and in many ways we are still paying for it.
People like Ting Ting deserve to be remembered and to be honoured.
#143. Get some answers. On Saturday I was at Origins Museum at Wits (not a striking student to be seen) to listen to a discussion on Johannesburg/Kolkata, as part of a series of events that are linked to Words on Water, a South Africa-India Literary Festival. The discussion on Johannesburg prompted the question: Who is Johannes?
Continue reading
