Friday Note: Joburg – evolving, imperfect, home

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When the holidays come, most people “go home” to be with family. I mention the holidays not only because I’ve got the redeye for them — what a long-ass year it’s been — but Christmas lights are up and soon it’ll be the Big Days, aka Dezemba, aka the holidays. 

While most people will travel “home”, usually a village or province outside the one in which they live/work, I will take a 45-minute drive to my mother’s house on the West Rand to spend time with my family. 

My version of going home is different because I was born in Joburg; my parents were born here and so were my great-grandparents. Senaoane, Meadowlands, Dobsonville, and many other places in the city, is where you’ll find my family. That’s not to say I don’t probably have family lineage in faraway places but it’s so many generations removed all I’ve known to be home is the City of Gold. I reckon I’m one of a few people who have always called Joburg home. 

I have never lived in a city longer than I’ve lived here. Going to school in Berea from 1993, and walking every day back to the city centre to take taxis back to Zola, I saw Joburg change in front of me the very year after we became a democracy. 

I watched as Milky Lane (yes, I’m showing my vintage, I know) closed in Hillbrow, as the Johannesburg Art Gallery skittishly tried to grapple with its proximity to the Noord Taxi Rank and felt heartbroken watching businesses run out of the inner city as Joburg moved from its corner of shame and oppression to the hope of many African people. 

Living eZola meant if I took a taxi in the Jozi CBD, could fall asleep on the ride and still wake up before I got home, that’s how far it is from town. On some days, those trips were a snoozefest and others, a total delight. One Saturday, headed to Jozi’s first big hip-hop venue, Le Club on Market Street, two guys wearing baggy jeans, oversized T-shirts and Timberlands jumped into the taxi. It was Mandoza and General from Chiskop. 

Le Club was where I first saw Amu and Stogie T rap. Later, younger rappers like Prokid would join the fray as we embraced this new music by our black brothers and sisters across the ocean. The combination of the sheer grit it took for black Americans to have such a dominant music genre after being so oppressed was something many black South Africans understood. The anger and frustration were something we knew too. That taxi ride from Commissioner Street to Zola was epic — an exercise in witnessing Joburg’s duality — sometimes it was hilarious and others just straight-up terrifying. 

Jozi Maboneng, Johustleburg, or whatever you call it, is not in a grey area. You either love it or hate it. And because it’s built solely on commerce, digging for gold and selling it, it’s an unforgiving city that implores you to steel yourself because things can escalate quickly here. There’s no real natural beauty to marvel at — Joburg is like that girl who doesn’t have much going for her but a great personality and killer dress sense. Joburg works with what she’s got because well, sis is not for everybody. 

Some people are like me, rooted in Joburg, and others are like artist Roger Ballen. They find themselves leaving their country of birth and falling in love with this temperamental African city. His exhibition at the Standard Bank Art Gallery is his view of the City of Gold; while Jo Buitendach looks at Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon’s book about his decade experience in Joburg’s inner-city and the undocumented people who live in dilapidated buildings. 

But it is Tseliso Monaheng and Shingai Darangwa who double down on the music genre I fell in love with when I was 13. South African rappers took hip-hop, breathed some Tswana and Tsotsi-taal into it, and made it uniquely ours. 

But as we look to heal us ourselves in a post-pandemic world, with therapy, meditation and self-love, it’s obvious the bravado associated with rap music is not always congruent with the reality of being a superhero MC if you can’t share your broken parts with the people who love your music. The genre has to accommodate vulnerability; the braggadocious showmanship is losing its shine, it’s taken away too many special people. 

For a long time, I’ve worked hard on presenting a side of myself I think people would prefer to see. I have hidden trauma behind seeking perfection and only presenting certain parts of myself. But, like the Joburg you see in these pages, I’m evolving and am no longer interested in performative displays of confidence and a glossy life. 

I have no problem with being vulnerable and showing the reality of my struggles. I’m a product of my country and the city that made me. I may not live in Joburg forever but I’m glad this city chose me first because duality — the grotesque and the joyous — is the essence of life.