When the ribbon is cut on the Nelson Mandela Bridge tomorrow one of the world’s most infamous cities will acquire not just a landmark but a symbol that perhaps it is not doomed after all.
Those who stand beneath the white cables for the opening will see a different Johannesburg from those who consider it a byword for decay and crime.
On one side are the theatres and museums of Newtown, on the other are the new business and academic centres of Braamfontein, connected by the 284-metre cable stay structure.
Most guidebooks have yet to register the fact, but South Africa’s sprawling metropolis is in the process of transforming its core into a commercial and artistic hub.
Violent crime has dwindled, businesses are returning and new apartment blocks are rising amid a flurry of initiatives, prompting giddy talk of emulating New York’s renaissance.
”We are witnessing the winning back of the city,” said Neville Huxham, of Business Against Crime, one of the groups spearheading the changes.
The former president after which the bridge is named is expected to hail the revival at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Costing about R80m and with two lanes for cars and two paths for pedestrians, it is not huge, and passing beneath is a railway rather than a river. But it would be beautiful, said Graeme Reid, head of the Johannesburg Development Agency, thanks to the designs of the Danish architect and French lighting engineer.
Clambering down from a cable and splattered in paint, Sello Lehana (35) was proud of working on the bridge. ”I’m just so happy that our town is improving.”
Nobody denies immense problems remain. What were gleaming skyscrapers 10 years ago are today mostly dilapidated following the flight to northern suburbs of whites scared by the surge in crime.
Many of those buildings not boarded up are occupied by squatters as South Africa’s rural poor flock to what they hope is still the city of gold, even though the mines are close to exhaustion.
In fact the entire continent is pressing into Johannesburg in the form of refugees and economic migrants from Zimbabwe, Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Mozambique, hustling a living whatever way they can and turning it into one of the world’s most populous cities.
With parliament in Cape Town, the embassies in Pretoria and businesses following the stock exchange’s exodus to Sandton, a new financial citadel to the north of the city, many thought Johannesburg’s modern infrastructure swamped forever by a tide of poverty.
Several things are changing that perception. Some 200 cameras in the city centre have cut crime by 80%, according to Business Against Crime, which operates the cameras from the sixth floor of the Carlton Centre.
Uniquely, the cameras can track suspects and a police unit is on standby to respond within 60 seconds of an incident.
By the end of the year there would be 360 cameras and eventually 3 500 across the city, said John Penberthy, the managing director. ”The pied piper of Hamelin has walked through the place and taken the rats out of town.”
Some of the crime has been displaced to other areas, he acknowledged, but some of those who previously engaged in spontaneous crime were now finding jobs as businesses returned, boosting occupancy in some buildings from 15% to 95%.
Hawkers and mini-bus taxis are being herded into new malls and multistorey car parks to impose order on the teeming informal economy, prompting shops to spruce up facades.
Keith Atkins, head of the Metropolitan Trading Company which manages the malls, said the process reminded him of Birmingham’s turnaround.
The Anti-Privatisation Forum and other groups complain the poor will be evicted to make way for paying tenants. But nobody objects to the new arts centres, such as the Dance Factory in Newtown.
On the other side of the bridge an old apartheid jail is making way for a new constitutional court which will be surrounded by human rights organisations.
In a recently published collection of essays, From Jo’burg to Jozi, the author Rian Malan celebrated returning to its energy. ”Foreigners think we’re nuts, coming back to a doomed city on a damned continent, but there’s something you don’t understand: it’s boring where you are.”
After the gold rush
Four farms transformed into gold rush town within months of prospector George Harrison discovering world’s richest gold-bearing reef in 1886
Mansions, bars, brothels and townships mushroomed and culture flourished as mix of Boers, English and Africans made the city South Africa’s economic dynamo
Apartheid laws stopped blacks living in central Johannesburg, which resembled Dallas, but by 1994 there was no stopping the surge of humanity seeking work — and the affluent fled
Johannesburg region accounts for 20% of GDP of entire continent, arguably making it capital of Africa – Guardian Unlimited Â