(Photo: Tebogo Losaba on Unsplash) Here I sit, feeling guilty because I’m resting this week instead of telling you my Big Fat Story about my day of walking around the Joburg inner city last Friday. It was an utterly extraordinary experience. But it must wait a week.
First, I have to rest, because it was the Golden City that gave me the asthma that drew attention to a much bigger underlying problem: I have pneumonia. Again. It’s at a very early stage, and I’m on the penultimate day of antibiotics as I write this.
This means I have Johannesburg to thank – for giving me the asthma attack that, two days later, sent me to the emergency room, where after two hours of tests and two X-rays I was informed that I have very early stage pneumonia.
Having fought double pneumonia seven years ago – which led to me being taken off night work as Daily Maverick Chief Sub-editor and writing about food instead – I can confirm that it is potentially deadly. I am grateful to have survived. Oddly, that was before Covid struck and millions died of it.
The asthma attack last Friday night was triggered by pollen and pollution (thank you, Jozi), and now I’m (mostly) resting because the story I have to tell needs time and health if I’m to do it properly.
A thunderstorm is brewing
So, let me rather tell you the other story of last Friday: not how I went into the Joburg CBD and spent hours there (yes, I did), but how, at the end of the day, I got out of there.
Let’s cut through most of the day till about 5.30pm, when you’ll find me on Gandhi Square in downtown Joburg, which today is a large bus station surrounded by a miscellany of gaudy signs for money lenders and human sharks (same thing), punctuated by Chicken Licken, Mochachos and Let's Meat Up.
A thunderstorm is brewing. My minder, Mo, had suggested we go into the McDonald’s on the far corner of the square.
“They’ll have plug points,” he said.
My phone battery had died half an hour earlier somewhere near the public library, which meant I couldn’t call an Uber. Mildly stressful. And I had an appointment to meet my friend and colleague Ray Mahlaka (formerly aka The Kak Cook) for dinner, and you wouldn’t want to miss that, he’s probably the most entertaining person in the city.
If my phone was charged, I could call an Uber, and if an Uber came along, I could get out of there.
So Mo said we could probably get my phone charged at McDonald’s.
New York wise guys up to no good
Inside, there were people everywhere and no empty tables. On the wall, here and there, were three-point plug sockets. No twos. And I had a USB cable but no two-pronged adapter with a USB at the other end.
So Mo said, tapping my shoulder and whispering in my ear as if we were two New York wise guys up to no good: “Ask him if you can plug it into his laptop.” (Pointing to a guy at a table behind me who was staring at his screen in a very secretive sort of way.)
So I did, and the guy shot to his feet, grabbed me by my lapels and shoved me against the wall … just kidding: he smiled and said sure, so I plugged it in and a second later the apple lit up and there was a bit of charge on my phone. (I don’t have lapels.)
Ray and I had arranged to meet at Melrose Arch, so I typed the destination in and, after three or four tense minutes (I was uncomfortable inconveniencing a stranger even if he wasn’t a Usual Suspect), an Uber driver nearby accepted my request and was on the way.
Mo, very decently, insisted on standing on the kerb with me for fear that an old white guy standing alone on a pavement in the Johannesburg CBD might find himself in the middle of a shootout the minute he walked off.
The clouds were looming and you could sense the imminent downpour. After too many minutes (Uber had said 10, it was 14), Mo said, “Looks like it’s cancelled, better call another one.” We were turning back inside to ask Benny the Spike whether he could give us another charge, when a little white Toyota Etios pulled over with a little plump woman at the wheel peering myopically at her phone.
“Tony?!”
Yebo.
“Yoh!”
What? (said Mo)
“No, nothing, haha. Get in, Tony.”
I climbed in and she continued staring at her phone, frowning, while shooting me quizzical glances.
Sorry but can we get moving please? I have an appointment.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Taxis come at us from all directions
There are more white minibus taxis in the Joburg CBD than on the N1 to Cape Town at Christmas. Or maybe just as many but they’re all here, at once, together, and they all want to be in front of all the others.
My little Uber lady is not scared of these guys. She beams from ear to ear, shoulders hunched over the wheel, while checking her phone route map (there’s no GPS voice saying “Turn onto Jeppe before that taxi hits you and it’s all over”) and just driving like there were no other cars on the streets.
Taxis come at us from all directions as we fly past intersections. Not one of the robots is working. “There’s no electricity in this part of town.” Crazed drivers curse us, mostly her. I hope they won’t see the silver-haired guy in the other seat.
Three. (I’m counting.) “That was the third near-accident,” I tell her, shakily. The imaginary wrecks of minibus taxis shake to a standstill on street corners behind us.
We roll on. “Isn’t this Braamfontein?” I ask. It looks familiar, from my early Eighties days of visiting Joeys and staying with friends there.
“Yebo.” Hmmm. I didn’t know Braamfontein was on the way to Melrose Arch.
Hang on, isn’t Braamfontein near …?
But another taxi suddenly misses us by, I dunno … three mil?
She glances at me, frowning for the 73rd time.
“Why you wanna go there?”
Oh, I’m meeting a friend for dinner.
“There?”
Yes… why?
“It’s mad, man. You can’t go there.”
It’s a perfectly nice place, I tell her. Trees and everything. My friend wouldn’t choose a bad place to meet.
But her curiosity has bubbled up now. She flashes me a funny look.
“Why you wanna go to Hillbrow?”
A sort of silence ensues. I peek at her out of my right side-eye. She peeks at me out of her left side-eye. I draw shaky breath.
I don’t want to go to Hillbrow. At no stage did I say I wanted to go to Hillbrow.
“Then why you… ag, never mind.” Much head shaking and muttering.
Rain and seedy buildings
The rain is chucking down. I wipe the side window with my palm. Rain and seedy buildings. Garbage strewn on pavements.
“You should go to Rosebank, or Sandton, somewhere nice.”
I think the restaurant I’m going to is near Rosebank. And Sandton. It’s at…
She screams round a corner and along a side street.
Suddenly she pulls over. I look at my phone. “You have arrived.”
I stay put. This isn’t it, I tell her.
“It’s there!"
Nope. That's not possible. It's nothing like this. It's ... it's ...
"There!"
No no, I told you, trees and everything. Shiny stores. Fashionistas with branded shopping bags.
"Whaat!?" She throws her head back laughing.
And is it safe to sit here at the side of a road in Hillbrow? (At least the engine's running if we need to make a getaway.)
"Aikona, there it is, man: Marble Arch restaurant.”
We swop side-eyed glances.
Marble Arch?... no no, Melrose Arch…
I’d typed in Marble Arch, not Melrose, and in my haste had accepted a ride.
To Marble Arch restaurant, Hillbrow.
But the story is not yet over. Because now the ride is over, but we need to continue. She hunches over her phone and taps mine with her left hand.
“There, call another ride, but don’t touch your phone again, I must accept it. It’s Tony, right?”
Yes. I type in Melrose Arch. I read it carefully five times. It definitely doesn’t say Marble Arch. She glares at her phone with finger poised like a Who Wants to be a Millionaire contestant who’s one question away from the big prize.
Suddenly some guy accepts my ride and is six minutes away. I jump onto message and beg him to cancel urgently. He doesn’t see it. I repeat. No response. I try to cancel myself but instead of just cancelling it throws up a questionnaire. Are you sure you want to cancel? Give us the reason you want to cancel… urgh!
Can’t they just accept an instruction?
By which time, the guy has arrived. I call him from my phone. She talks to him, he to her, in some kind of inner city vernacular, I understand nothing. She hands me my cap, my jacket, taps my phone.
“You got everything, run, quick…!”
I’m out of the door, in the rain, dart towards the new ride, grab the door handle, it’s locked, try the other one, it’s locked too.
Open the goddamn door, I yell like Jimmy the Schnozz escaping a heist.
The driver unlocks and we’re on our way to Melrose Arch and dinner with Ray. Boy do I have a story to tell him.
The new Uber driver thought it was the funniest thing he’d heard in years. He’s still chuckling. DM
Come back next week for the eye-opening story of what happened before that Uber arrived to take me to Hillbrow.