Joburg has a fearsome global reputation for being utterly terrifying, a lawless Wild West frontier town paralysed by corruption and disease. But I’ve spent quite a bit of time there over the past three years and I can reveal that it’s all nonsense. -JK
Read my personal account: Just how dangerous is Johannesburg?
Read my personal account: Just how dangerous is Johannesburg?
Every night, people in Mozambique pack up their possessions and set off on foot through the Kruger for a new life in the quiet, bougainvillea-lined streets of Joburg. And very often these poor unfortunate souls are eaten by the big cats. You see, a great many people in Mozambique have Aids, and the fact is this: if you can catch HIV from someone’s blood or saliva during a bout of tender love-making, you can be assured you will catch it if you wolf the person down whole.
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3 comments:
Who would’ve thought a spin doctor and not a soccer player would kick-off World Cup 2010?
I might have admired this farcical spin job in the face of incontestable evidence to the contrary – if it wasn’t such a supercilious and callous slap in the face of all South African crime victims and their grieving families.
The absolutely ridiculous hypothesis in The Sunday Times column is that local citizens “falsely” project Johannesburg as dangerous – because they want to save lions from aids! This is about as convincing as Jacob Zuma saying healthy men cannot contract aids by sleeping with an infected woman. The supporting , if contradictory, theory in the above report is that all major world cities have a key symbol and Johannesburg is using crime “to pull in the tourists and the investors”.
Is this for real? Is his target audience sensible and sophisticated adults or a comedy club?
The writer uses sarcasm to boast about his armed escort tours throughout the city and then egotistically proclaims crime must be a fiction of the imagination because, after all, nothing happened to him!
Well Mr Clarkson, unfortunately the young IT manager renting in Midrand was not as lucky as you. He was shot dead yesterday at 7-15am. His attackers fled with a mobile (cell) phone. Neither was Willie Klopper a week ago when armed robbers tied him to his car, doused him with fuel and then set him alight. Klopper died of burns to 100% of his body. The robbers fled with his mobile phone and a wallet.
Is that the “snappy one-word handle” Johannesburg needs to put it on the map? Do you think the young IT Manager and Mr Klopper agreed to become a “serious economic self-sacrifice” to save lions from aids? No! They were brutally, barbarically murdered despite both pleading for their lives!
This is the human face of the crime tragedy in South Africa. It places in perspective the 76 murders in the single police division of Johannesburg Central for the period April 2007 to March 2008. Gauteng has 130 policing divisions (or police stations)... You do the sums.
It represents the human misery perhaps not as evident in stark statistics such as 88.3 rapes per 100,000 population (2007); 485.1 assaults with intent to cause grievous bodily harm (2007/08); 228.7 common robberies (2007/08); 526.1 robberies with aggravating circumstances (2007/08); 647.2 residential burglaries (2007/08). These figures are not the total number of incidents, but a percentage of 100,000 of the population in a single province, namely Gauteng! These are official statistics, which is reported crime not actual crime.
Describing this as “tranquil” is akin to twisting a knife in the guts of those already reeling from the brutality of crime and its ghastly aftermath. It is a shocking piece of journalism and I express my deepest sympathy to all South Africa’s victims of crime and their families who may have had the misfortune to read Clarkson's column.
Thanks for your comment Johan. When you think about it, Clarkson went around Johannesburg with an armed bodyguard. So much for him not worrying about his personal security. I wonder whether he was paid to write this story in a Market SA using all-means-necessary campaign?
As a South African of 51, I think I'm pretty familiar with the security situation here.
I have also travelled widely eg. Brazil (7 months), US (New York), France, Italy Thailand, Malaysia Indonesia, Australia etc. So I maybe see things a little more in perspective.
I think South Africans are a bunch of wingers and that even if they are not aware of it, it is politically motivated (the good old days during apartheid).
Yes, very bad things happen and do quite often, but then bad things happen in every Major city.
In my entire life in SA I have never been the victim of any crime, nor has any of my family (apart from one purse snatching).
In fact I sleep with my doors open and sometimes forget to close them when I go away for the weekend! I live in the old fashioned way – in a house in a normal street, not those future slums:- (Townhouses and ‘security villages’) - the baddies love them because they know the people are wealthy and are dreaming if they thing they are living in safety.
Of all the bad incidents I know of, they involve people living in the pretentiously upmarket northern suburbs, driving high priced cars, wearing expensive clothing and living in palaces surrounded by high walls (ideal for a bad guy because once he is over the wall no one will see what he is up to)
I have been robbed twice in hotels in Avignon France, been pick-pocketed and robbed in Brazil and chased by a knife wielding gang of blacks in St. Thomas US virgin islands, simply because I had a white skin and I “wasn’t welcome there” In Sydney I was nearly assaulted by a ferry boat ticket seller who disliked that fact that I could be as rude and sarcastic as him, and it seems that my sarcasim was better directed than his own. - he backed down when he realized that I was obviously amused by his antics and that sadly I was bigger then him.
Point being, don’t go to bad areas, find out where they are before you go walkabout wherever you travel. Bad things happen in every country.
So my comment to my fellow South Africans who live in such fear – get your head out of your ass and do some traveling (not as part of a herd of tourists on a bus), go out on your own and walk the streets without a clue where you are going and see how safe you feel.
If you still don’t see things in perspective, then go live in that quaint little police state called New Zealand. You probably won’t see much crime, but you will probably be killed by the boredom.
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