A Loop around Southern Africa – Day 1: Johannesburg and the stripper index
I arrived in Johannesburg at half past two in the morning on a flight that was supposed to arrive at midnight. I was fortunate that my friend Ezra, who had agreed to pick me up, is the embodiment of South African generosity. He politely said that he had been unable to sleep, but I later found out that he had slept before I came and woke up specifically to come fetch me. He drove me to his house in the dead of the night, sliding his car back and forth at the stoplights to discourage robbers from coming to smash our windows. I asked Ezra whether anything like that had ever happened to him before, but he said it did not. He did, however, have his car stolen last year.
I
teleworked for half the day because it was a Friday and because my friends, who
had foolhardily agreed to join me on my madcap trip through Southern Africa, were
only due to arrive later in the day. Brent and Joel made it to their hotel in
Sandton sometime around half past two, and I was at their gate at three on the
dot. We did not have enough time to visit Pretoria and return by the time our
fourth crewmember, Tiana, made it out of the airport, so we decided to make a
quick trip to Constitution Hill instead.
We arrived
at the site just in time for the last tour of the day, which left the reception
at four o’clock. It occurred to me then that I had done absolutely no research
on the site, and I barely knew what it was until the guide started talking. Constitution
Hill was originally a fort, built by President Paul Kruger in 1899 to defend
the Transvaal Republic from the British. When the British invaded anyway, they
imprisoned some of the Boer leaders at the fort and later expanded the place
into a whole prison complex. Its most prominent political prisoners were
Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who now have their own exhibition halls
inside the museum.
Between the
larger part of the former prison and the fort stands the Constitutional Court,
which is accessible to the public and media. From the small gallery above, we
looked at the chairs for the eleven justices, each of them behind a desk draped
in a big black and white cow hide. Below these desks are another eleven chairs
for the eleven main assistants of the justices, and the eleven junior
assistants sit to the side. The red bricks of the former prison feature very
prominently in the architecture of the Constitutional Court, which our guide
said symbolises the conversion of the oppressive space into a space of freedom
and justice.
We reunited
with Ezra and another friend at a Palestinian restaurant downtown, where we
were soon joined by Tiana. She was lugging a suitcase and duffle bag filled
with items she had just carried through the whole of Southeast Asia. One of
these items, which had not been used at all so far and which Tiana packed on my
insistence, was a puffer jacket: I have heard Septembers in Lesotho are very
cold. Since I was told it is the end of orange season, I ordered two glasses of
orange juice. Despite the restaurant being Palestinian, those who had ordered
cocktails were surprised by their potency.
On our way
back to Ezra’s house, we rode along Oxford Road, where despite the locale’s
reputation we only saw two prostitutes. We took this to mean that business was
good and that the South African economy is booming.
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