Just as the fragile jacaranda flowers drop, so too does Johannesburg's water and electricity supply (Photo by Gallo Images/Lefty Shivambu)
Joburg residents, the legend goes, are abandoning Africa’s business hub in droves. Apocryphal, possibly, but in May an estate agent in Oudtshoorn, where I was at a health retreat, said an estimated 30 000 families from Gauteng (and strife-torn KwaZulu-Natal) had moved to George in 18 months.
If people haven’t gone yet, they’re being encouraged to. On Sunday 23 October an expo was held in Johannesburg titled Move Down To Cape Town: The Jewish Community Awaits.
There were one-on-one meetings, lectures on community and communal life, education, business, property lifestyle, and more — all held under the auspices of the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies. To make it digitally real, there’s a website, and Instagram and Facebook pages.
They picked the wrong month. Johannesburg in October is a purple paradise, so beautiful it takes your breath away.
It’s as though South African poet C Louis Leipoldt was referring to this city when he wrote: “Dit is die maand Oktober, die mooiste, mooiste maand; Dan is die dag so helder, so groen is elke aand.”
It’s indisputable: Johannesburg puts on its party frock in October and November and enchants everyone who lives here.
This week, I left the house early enough to see the sun rise slowly over the sleeping city. Armies of workers freshly disembarked from taxis and buses — gardeners and helpers and young artisans on their way to places of employment — quietly walked the streets.
A fine mist rose off the damp tar, whisps coiling upward, curling around ankles. It had rained in the night, the first real rain of the summer, a heavy downpour that dislodged the delicate blossoms on the myriad jacaranda trees that line the arteries of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs.
I stepped out into a mauve-tinged world, the tar cloaked with a translucent purple carpet that popped as I stepped on it. Pop pop pop. Sometimes a sigh replaced the pop as air left the droplet-covered violet pods.
But even in the midst of this splendour, Johannesburg hides a malicious bite. Once squelched, the exquisite lavender blooms mush underfoot, turning the magnificent carpet into a treacherous slippery hazard.
That’s Johannesburg for you, a gloomy fellow walker shrugged as I battled for purchase on the slick sidewalk. Beautiful on the surface but always trying to trip you up. You have to be on your guard. Constantly. Stop being vigilant and … well, you’ll land on your rear end.
She could be forgiven for being bleak. We’ve had a rough few months in Johannesburg (I can’t speak for anywhere else). There has been no water in my apartment block for five days, which I understand counts as luck. One suburb has relied on tankers to supply water for more than 13 days.
We vacillate between level three and level four of load-shedding. And, as the systems come under greater and greater strain, local substations falter and the lights often fail to come back on so periods of no power are erratic and one can’t make plans in advance — I mean like loading the washing machine or vacuuming the house.
And yet, we walkers congratulated ourselves for living in the most exquisite treed city, whose magnificence presents itself in a riot of colour that turns the light violet and softens the air and is so beautiful that you gasp in awe, every day, no matter how often you are exposed … for as long as the city is purple.
The delicate nature of jacaranda blossoms makes them exquisitely beautiful but fragile — loosely attached to the tree to make the lightest breeze able to drop the light-as-air pods. And so they rain down like gentian blue confetti, gently caressing cheeks and shoulders and heads before landing.
When it rains in Thailand, and most of Asia I am reliably told, although I have only ever experienced it in the Land of Smiles, the water falls suddenly and unexpectedly from a clear sky. It comes down in sheets, and looks like a pane of moving corrugated glass that hits the ground with a thud.
Of course, the Thais are expecting the seasonal downpours. After all, if you are there between July and October, it’s monsoon season. There are no droplets, no fine drizzle and no mist masquerading as rain. The Thai monsoon means business; rain falls hard enough to hurt the skin. It is incessant and does little to relieve the unbearable furnace heat that turns the air soupy and damp … the country into an oppressive steam room.
It stops as suddenly as it starts and life continues apace. Travel guides will advise tourists, with good reason, against visiting during the monsoon. And yet this destructive rain does not make leaves fall off the sturdy trees, prepared for just this level of punishment.
I suppose the comparison is a metaphor for South African life. In this season of great beauty, we are shown how fragile our ecosystem is — how delicate the systems that we have in place, how the very core of our state is in a state of such disrepair that we cannot rely on a constant supply of anything: not potable water, not power, not good healthcare, not well-maintained roads, not adequate policing … the list is long.
I’m not sure if life in Cape Town is less inconvenient, I’ve never been there long enough to test the hypothesis, but the special expo seems to suggest that it is.
We had a power outage that lasted so long that my four-hour-lasting inverter ran out of power. I was in the middle of covering a hybrid (in-person and online) conference being held in Pretoria and needed a strong signal. My phone would not be a hot-spot so I stood in my lounge and threw a tantrum. As a freelancer, no work equals no pay. Frustration rules.
I am witnessing a new attitude among South Africans. There’s quiet despair as we shrug and go about going around the obstacles that are constantly being thrown in our path.
I suspect that for the first time in our history, we are defeated by the hopelessness of it all. Helpless because we know that there are no short-term solutions and that our suffering will have to be endured for a long time to come.
Does the Western Cape provide hope? Is that the reason people are moving to George? If you know the answer please let me know.
Charmain Naidoo is a journalist and regular Thought Leader contributor.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
[/membership]