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| City Guide - Johannesburg - City Overview | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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City Overview There's a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi. There's a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe. There's a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique - from Lesotho from Botswana from Swaziland.' These lines are from Hugh Masekela's quintessential anthem, called Stimela (steam engine), which profoundly captures the essence of the millions of migrant labourers who, since 4 October 1886, when the first claims were laid out, have mined the gold that built the economy of Johannesburg and South Africa. The city today has progressed far beyond the status of mere gold rush settlement, becoming a vibrant, violent and unpredictable place, where fortunes as well as lives can be lost and found like a small child's toys. In Zulu, Johannesburg is called E'goli ('place of gold') - an epithet no longer quite fitting as the last of Johannesburg's mines ran out of gold-bearing ore decades ago, while the towering yellow mine dumps, once the city's prime icons that dominated old postcards, have largely been recycled. New commercial, retail and industrial districts have risen to replace these 40-million-ton yellow-white mounds. In ancient cities, one may be able to find a sense of permanence within the walls of a formidable fortress, but Johannesburg is a city in flux, a place where change is the only enduring feature. Sub-Saharan Africa's greatest and - at over 2500 sq kilometres (900 sq miles) - the world's largest inland city, Johannesburg straddles rows of jagged quartzite ridges beneath which a century of gold mining has produced a veritable honeycomb of tunnels. Technology may have claimed the mine-sands but millions of trees have risen from the sprawling suburbs; on satellite images much of Johannesburg resembles a rainforest - an unexpected backdrop to a formidable array of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, and concrete, chrome and glass skyscrapers. Makeshift shacks of scrap reflected in the glossy glass façade of the old Johannesburg Stock Exchange building on Diagonal Street, bear testimony to the chasm between the fantastically wealthy and the desperately poor that still divides this city. Situated 550km (344 miles) from the nearest port on a vast inland plateau, 1700m (5700ft) high, Johannesburg's climate is much milder and drier than its latitude would suggest and is also free of malaria, which plagues much of the rest of Africa. Crime may have become synonymous with Johannesburg in the minds of many people but the green and yellow uniforms of the Central Improvement District (CID) security guards are a new, comforting feature on almost every street corner in targeted areas. Josi, Jo'burg or Joeys to the locals, this is a city undergoing dramatic changes. Black people, formerly excluded from living (legally) outside of townships, such as Soweto, are moving into the downtown and inner-city areas, while formerly privileged (white) citizens are migrating outwards due to increasing crime, squalor and perhaps some reluctance to live side by side with the newly enfranchised majority. Paradoxically almost all of the old Apartheid-era street names, such as Barry Hertzog Avenue and Hendrick Verwoerd Drive, named after the architects of this 'crime against humanity', still survive. However, plans are afoot to change this so visitors should be warned that some of the street addresses in this guide could soon be obsolete. |
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