Darkly funny tale of two cities

• Published date: 07 May 2024
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

The breeze which had sprung up in the morning had died away like a ghost returning to the grave. As the sun burned down, sweat stung my eyes and I wiped it away on my shirt sleeves. At the corner of Beit and Nugget Street a homeless person stood at the faulty traffic lights with a board that said: "LET'S DO LUNCH, YOU BUY, WE EAT." His dirty shoes were falling apart and attached to his ankle with a dark string

I smiled at the man before spending a moment exchanging banalities with him. His face radiated joy and he had a cataracted eye.

"My brother, how is life?" I asked.

"It only takes time, but in the end it will come together, my brother."

"Heita daar."

As he smiled at me, rivulets of sweat ran down my back, and my shirt clung to my skin. Before the traffic light, a motorist dropped a cigarette he was smoking on the ground. It lay burning faintly. The homeless man ran towards it, picked it up, and smoked whatever was left of it.

"We shall survive, my brother," he said to me. "Life has no plot while we are still living. Surviving means being born and reborn over and over again."

"That's the word," I said as I left him.

In front of me the city looked happy and loud, although there were signs of dirt, neglect, decay and ageing infrastructure everywhere. Nostalgia hit me as I crossed the railway line separating Hillbrow and the CBD. A black rubbish bag sailed from the train bridge onto the line below from a hawker, and it burst up, scattering rubbish between the disused railway lines. Big fat rats scattered and then regrouped before foraging the teared bag.

The deeper I penetrated the city, the more diverse the population. I strolled down the congested De Villiers Street, crossed Claim and towards the MTN Noord Taxi Rank. I became acutely aware of the rubbish on the street. The streets were filled with a world of languages. There were working men and thieves of various kinds. As I walked slowly, I might have heard all eleven South African languages and more than a dozen languages that I could not understand. In front of me a young homeless man walked round the edge of a pile of rubbish. The oversized dirty T-shirt that he was wearing made him look even thinner than he was.

At Klein Street I turned to the right into Wolmarans Street, passed the now-neglected Johannesburg Art Gallery building into Joubert Park. The July wind stirred up the black plastic bags before they got trapped by the fence next to the gallery. I couldn't help but move my jaw several...