Urban spaces: Johannesburg

Downtown Johannesburg is starting to look like a war-zone -- this building has become unusable -- every single window is covered with cardboard and plastic bags to cover it up. Like other buildings near this one, decay has been allowed to set in.

Like car jackings in other countries, in South Africa, specifically Johannesburg in Gauteng Province corruption has set into the property sector. It works like this: All the paperwork that accompanies property owenership gets falsified and enters the system... the lawful owners finally have to defend or try and proof that they are the lawful owners... I have in my whole life never thought that it is possible to steal a building...

The local govenment, led by the ANC party that also governs the national government is helpless in the face of these and other forms of corruption. But enough about politics and corrupt officials or dysfunctional systems...

Buildings are living spaces and reflect something about society -- hinting at a past era -- or providing insight of the current state and people's attitudes towards their environment.

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Journey into the "other" South Africa

The setting is a large rural settlement in South Africa's Mpumalanga Province. The background to this region's development is of course intricately linked to its past: a homeland outside Pretoria created by the Apartheid Government in the name of 'separate development'. The environment is rural: cattle, goats, donkeys and chickens roam freely, while members of this community carry on with their daily lives, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the "other South Africa" - the one characterised by Western civilisation's pillars: individualism, private property & title deeds, credit and mortgages, money, commercialisation, consumerism and personal wealth accumulation. They are all at odds with an idealised Africa. Here in Siyabuswa, the R578 carries traffic, goods, and passengers past rural dwellers for whom time has a different meaning. It is safe to assume that the principles outlined in "The Fifth Discipline" are unknown to the locals, a...

The Old Johannesburg Stock Exchange and surroundings

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The essence of being

It took considerable courage for me to put down everything, block out the noise and pick up the book. It's overcast outside, the kind of weather one would expect to encounter in London NOT Johannesburg in early summer. It's Saturday and I don't need to be at work. Exhausted after a week of traveling to the school where I try my best to teach students for whom school seems an unnecessary stumbling block, staying in bed a bit longer than usual was especially welcome. I recently received five copies of Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius. Reading Ghost Boy was not going to be easy. Martin Pistorius's life story is a moving one, since he fell ill as a child and became trapped in an unresponsive body. Yet, once he came out of his coma no-one actually knew that he was awake and completely aware of his surroundings. In fact, he could follow conversations. Being placed in front of a TV for long periods meant that he was "re-schooled". While other...

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