What makes From Jo’burg to Jozi particularly interesting is that the perspectives of the 60 contributors are shaped by a wide variety of experiences.
Among them are many
journalists, writers and poets as well as architects and city
planners, performers on stage and screen, artists and painters, political activists and traditional healers. They have all spent a large part of their lives in Johannesburg although not all are South Africans by birth.
The book offers an incredibly varied perspective of Jo’burg — not only as it is today but stretching back to its origins. The genres in which the writers have chosen to write are equally varied. This is one of many features which makes this collection an English teacher’s delight.
The traditional short story is well-presented in Watch my lips by Len Ashton and well-known poems like City Johannesburg by Wally Serote are also included. Amusing anecdotes, reportage and excerpts from biographies help to make this a fascinating collection of literature well worth exploring.
Another aspect useful in the English classroom is the exciting use of metaphorical language. Seemingly nondescript elements of the city, like parking bays, come alive in descriptions such as: ‘all I can see are open parking bays like gaps in some street kid’s teeth” (City of restless sleep by Dave Chislett); or ‘There were parking spaces … like gaping, frayed holes in the tapestry of suburban living” (Nightmare in Northern Suburbia by Anne Hammerstad).
Another example is a description of mine dumps: ‘They hung around town like drunks on day release from the detox clinic” (Jo’burg Blues by Christopher Hope). A particularly evocative use of metaphorical language is in Rian Malan’s Jo’burg Lovesong where beggars are described with ‘arms waving like sea anemones, trying to earn a few cents by guiding the next Mercedes into a parking bay”.
One of the strong themes
running through the collection are contrasts which are not only specific to Johannesburg but to the country as a whole. Many of these could be explored through debate, forum discussion and discursive essays. These include the contrast between the vibrant inner city centre and the relative sterility of the urban shopping malls. Another obvious contrast is that between rich and poor. This is portrayed effectively in Malan’s image of the
beggar and the Mercedes above, as well as in his description of Diagonal Street where on the one side of the street ‘there’s a little African apothecary where a certain
K Naidoo does a roaring trade in healing and magical herbs, baboon skulls, lizard feet and tiny vials of crocodile fat. On the other, there’s a soaring edifice of blue glass and steel, designed by
Helmut Jahn, the great avant-garde architect from Chicago”.
There are plenty of opportunities for the English learner to study variations in dialect,
vocabulary and register. Hours could be spent deciphering words such as strugglistas, yuppies, buppies, tshisa nyama, chakalaka, pantsula and a’klevah majita among many others.
Perhaps the most uplifting aspect of this collection is the many very personal responses to the city like this one from Malan, who captures the contradictory feelings the city induces in his final paragraph of Jo’burg Lovesong: ‘We yaw between terror and ecstasy. Every day is an adventure. The only constant is the weather, the African sun that beats down on our backs as we potter around in the garden, digging up rich African soils all red with oxides and squirmy with earthworms. Our tomatoes are fat and red. Our Swiss chard grows like trees. Towards evening, we walk the dogs up the old stone path to the crest of the ridge to watch the sun go down. Flights of sacred ibis cross the sky. Lions roar in the zoo nearby. Police chase hijackers on freeways, sirens screaming. We’re in the wild heart of Jo’burg, and it’s a pretty good place to be”.