It is an elusive city; it always slips through your fingers when you try to grab it. This is the problem with living in a poverty-stricken metropolis: you want to hold up the darkest corners and show their beauty in the light. But when you lift the veil to see them, you are often met with a concrete reminder of why they have been covered for so long.
New foreigners say the city is full of contradictions, but often fail to point out its complexities. Yes, if you go to the suburbs in the morning, you will see the upper-middle class whites out for a morning jog, passing the black maids and gardeners walking to work from the taxi ranks. But at least these men and women are employed. You will go out to Diepsloot and see the Ferraris driving past the shacks. But the contrast just exemplifies people born in different circumstances. You will never become indifferent to the wealth discrepancy, but there is an inevitable callousness that ensues if you see it for long enough.
You will probably be taken advantage of. You will try to forget your skin color, your nationality, and your honest-looking face. You will try to cross the racial boundaries, but will get tired of being terrified of crashing in the taxis. In the beginning, you will empathize with the poor. Then, you will battle with yourself when you don’t, because you’re afraid it means your intellectual reasoning has trumped your humanity.
You will wonder why you were mugged, if it was karmic or just a coincidence. You will blame yourself for trying to get too close to the city—burning your hands in the fire when you just wanted to warm them.
And at night you’ll lock the garage, the gates and all of the doors. You’ll put your computer in the cupboard and turn the key before the maid comes. You’ll wish that trust wasn’t such a high commodity. We are all people, after all.
Then, the city will redeem itself. Even when it has pushed you to the brink, you remember the amount of good you can do here with so little. You will go to the townships and be embraced by the community. You will change a child’s life. You will dance to Kasi music: the African beats mixed with electro new-age pop. You will feel the heartbeat of the city. Someone will give you an opportunity you could have never dreamed of, because here tenacity is rewarded. And you will remember that the struggle of life in Johannesburg is more unified than it is divided.
