Category Archives: South Africa

The Walls of Johannesburg

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The Safest Place in Joberg - The Mall

The Safest Place in Joberg - The Mall

Johannesburg is very sketchy, the crime statistics are scary and in a place where even locals don’t go out at night tourists have to adapt. As a consequence of crazy crime, the security business is booming – everyone has high masonry walls around their homes and at least one of the following on top: razor wire, barbed wire, electric fencing, or crushed glass. Every home has a sign advertising the security firm they use and many include an “Armed Response” sign as well.

In a city where it’s not safe to go out after dark almost anywhere, and many places where you can’t go day or night hostels in Jo’berg take on Orwellian proportions. Their goal is to have everything you need on site so you don’t have to leave for any other reason than to go to the museum of the airport. And when you need to go there, they also operate their own in-house taxi service to get you from A to B. The message here is: do not interact with locals.

So why would you go to Johannesburg? Good question, well, it’s a huge transportation hub, and home to the busiest airport in Africa. If you come to South Africa, you are almost certainly going to land here, or transfer here – welcome to Johannesburg.

The Malls of Johannesburg
Here is a near complete list of “Safe” places to go in Jo’berg: The Mall, the other Mall, the Casino, and the Apartheid Museum. In our few days in Jo’Berg we spent a ridiculous amount of time at the Mall. In four days time we probably spent more time in shopping malls than we have in the last four years.

Jo’berg, the home of the happy (and safe) shopper.

QANTASed Again!

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It really never ends. It’s actually become quite comical. The wrath of QANTAS Beijing is still upon us. One of the changes we made was adding return flights to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from Johannesburg. Again, after much confusion, we believed that these flights were confirmed.

Much to our delight and surprise, we were upgraded to Business Class on the flight to VF, but we had less luck on the return flight to Jo-burg. In fact, we arrived at the airport only to learn that we were not booked on the flight at all. This isn’t good when the flight is fully booked for the next week. I guess our paper tickets were for some mystery flight. We’re still not clear. After some insisting and digging in our heels, we made our way onto the flight without a seat to spare. It really does help to have a paper ticket to wave in front of their faces. It seems to add just a little more legitimacy.

We suspect that we may not have been on the flight to VF, but that the airport staff passed the buck until we got to the gate and they realized that there were already people in our seats so they just quickly bumped us to solve the problem. That’s my kind of solution!

So now we’ll be calling ahead for every flight just to make sure (1) there is a flight and (2) that we’re on it. Sometimes those basic details are really important.

Fear and Loathing on Flight 749 to Johannesburg

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Things not to do on a flight to South Africa include: read a South African newspaper. LeeAnne did just that and it was fairly unnerving. South Africa in general and Johannesburg in particular have issues with crime. And while most of it is based in the poorer African Townships, it still makes the news.

At one point in our flight LeeAnne turned to me and asked “Would you like to know about what I just read in this Johannesburg newspaper?”. I turned and saw just one headline before I replied – the headline read: “Lone Cop Fights Off Gang of 8 with AK-47′s”. Nope please keep it to yourself babe.

Still there is something reassuring about being an American in a country that’s more violent and with deeper racial issues than my own. South Africans and Americans are really cousins in that regard – but I’m glad I can go back to the US.