There is no escaping Jo'burg's fearsome reputation, but the city is a fascinating place, where a brutal past competes with remarkable optimism and spirit, writes Conor Pope
IT’S A HOT afternoon and I’m in a shack in Soweto being scowled at by a Zulu chief. He hands me a clay urn filled with vile-smelling home-brew. There is a silent command to drink. My guide has assured me that failure to comply will not go down well so I take a swig. Any hope I had that it would taste amazing – or even okay – disappears as soon as the thick, frothy liquid hits the back of my throat. It’s revolting. I can’t very well spit on the dirt floor of his shebeen, so I swallow and make what I hope is the universally recognised expression for “yum”. He stands up, indicating that we can now continue with our tour of the sprawling township on the outskirts of Johannesburg and off we go.
There is no escaping the fact that Jo’burg has a bad reputation. It’s synonymous with murder and mugging, car-jacking and rape. Hotel complexes behind high walls and heavily policed checkpoints do not help. Nor do persistent warnings about the dangers of flagging taxis or walking alone in the city. Its fearsome reputation has made it difficult for the South African tourism authority to build on the success of last summer’s World Cup and convince people it is a safe, interesting place to visit. It’s certainly not a destination in which tourists can amble aimlessly, but it is not as dangerous as it is made out to be and, while it is hard to get a handle on any place where going for a walk is considered hazardous, it is clear that this is a fascinating city, where a dark, brutal history competes with remarkable optimism and spirit.
BRUTALITY AND optimism are both on display at the Apartheid Museum, Jo’burg’s most visited attraction. It takes about two hours to get through a collection made up of still pictures and video footage capturing more than a century of oppression in stark – and sometimes horrifying – detail.
The clips of Hendrik Verwoerd, the “architect of apartheid”, describing his system as “good neighbourliness” and the “final solution” is as chilling as the roll call of people murdered in the country’s prisons through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Towards the end of the tour, black and white stills give way to violent and disturbing scenes from the Soweto uprising of 1976 and the massive civil unrest of the 1980s. Clips of police with billy-clubs savagely beating protesters in an ultimately doomed attempt to cling to power are hard to forget.
While it is a sombre, unsettling place, there is still some evidence that the human spirit can triumph. A portion of the museum is given over to the indomitable Nelson Mandela, but the most cheering sight when we visit is not an exhibit but a small blond girl holding hands with her black schoolmate as a school tour of the museum giggles its way through the narrow corridors. Even 20 years ago such a scene would have been unimaginable.
And 20 years ago, a bunch of pasty tourists wandering through Soweto would have been equally unlikely. In the dying days of apartheid, there was almost universal unemployment, abject poverty, few paved roads, no electricity and a political regime that brought little to the township but attack dogs, tear gas and murder.
On June 16th, 1976, police in Soweto opened fire on school students peacefully protesting against government plans to force them to learn half the curriculum in Afrikaans – a move that would have further eroded the already bleak education prospects of black children across South Africa. The shooting lit a fuse that saw hundreds of students killed by police and thousands more imprisoned.
Ultimately, the Soweto uprising led to a concerted campaign of civil disobedience throughout the 1980s which the apartheid government tried and failed to crush. Eventually, it relented. Mandela was released in 1990 and went straight to Soweto, from whence he engineered a new beginning for South Africa. His home is a stone’s throw from the house of fellow Nobel laureate archbishop Desmond Tutu and, as we pass, on bicycles rented to us by an endlessly informative and good natured guide called Lebo, it is swamped with tourists, black and white.
More than 2,000 tourists now visit Soweto daily and many opt to sweep through on these bicycles. I had imagined this tour would sugar-coat the reality of slum living, but as we splash through an open sewer and take in the mounds of rubbish piled up outside a school, it is apparent there’s no sugar-coating going on. This is real life in South Africa’s biggest township – home to more than three million – and it’s very, very tough.
After our visit to the shebeen, we stop off at the house of another Zulu who offers us a tour. It takes three seconds. The 14sq m concrete room is furnished with a TV, a stove top, a fridge covered in pink princess stickers and three mattresses. It is just another reminder that, no matter how hard we think we have it here, most of us are doing okay. Nearby is an orphanage overflowing with children, who have lost their parents to the Aids epidemic which continues to ravage South Africa, and across the road there’s a skeletal woman with a sickly infant on her selling bric-a-brac. And everywhere in the township are lean, hungry-looking men.
Despite the poverty and misery, there is space for optimism in Soweto. The children who chase after our bikes high-fiving us as we trundle past are filled with laughter and hope. New businesses are springing up to cater for the swelling numbers of tourists coming into the township, and unemployment is falling.
Fall guys take a dip in Devil's Pool
JO’BURG IS A fascinating place to visit, but not a city in which many will want to linger. It is more frequently a stop-off en route to a safari in the Kruger National Park or a visit to the more well-heeled and postcard-pretty Cape Town. We go to neither and instead fly 1,000km north to the Zambian town of Livingstone, gateway to the Victoria Falls.
We stay at the Royal Livingstone, a hotel in a national park on the banks of the mighty Zambezi, just 10 minutes’ walk from the Falls. Our arrival on a water taxi, past slumbering hippos and wild elephant, is awesome. Zebras, baboons, impalas and giraffes roam freely around the grounds and monkeys are frequent visitors to the rooms, which we are advised to lock against them.
The hotel is lovely but its staff are all questionably dressed. The porters are dressed as 19th-century explorers and the butlers (butlers!) dress as African princes, with sparkling white suits, ruby red sashes and similarly coloured headpieces. They look great in a hilariously over-the-top way, but it’s hard not to sympathise, particularly in temperatures that, in summer, can top 45 degrees.
This colonial theme runs through the visit: there's the high tea served in a high-ceilinged room cooled by fans. Tea is served in fine-bone china while tourists shovel dainty pastries and sandwiches – including cucumber ones with the crusts cut off, obviously – into their mouths. When we arrive, a pianist is playing By The Time I Get To Phoenixas an immaculately dressed bartender polishes glasses. It is all so genteel.
But we’re just starting with the genteelness. Next up is the steam train trip at dusk through the national park. On the Livingstone Express, we are served a six-course meal. And as night falls the train travels through the bush, past villages which have no running water and no electricity, chased by shouting, waving children. We wave from an on-board platform and it feels like we’ve been transported back to the 19th century and into the bodies of this country’s one-time colonial overlords. Both setting and train may be beautiful, but the overall experience is unsettling.
Hours later, the sun rises and I find myself sitting on Mouse. Mouse is not mini. Mouse is massive. And starving. And when an elephant is hungry, you let it eat. At least I’d let it eat. The man in charge of this safari is made of sterner stuff and every time Mouse stops to inhale a tree he barks, “Move on”. She does but grumpily – as you would if someone kept interrupting your breakfast with commands to carry a little tourist off in search of wildlife. We see a wild elephant, some impala and a baboon, but the lions and cheetahs that we’d hoped for remain elusive.
What brings people to Livingstone is not, however, elephants, lions, steam trains or even high tea in high-end hotels. People come here to see water. Lots and lots of water. Victoria Falls is hard to describe. “The whole scene was extremely beautiful; the banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation of great variety of colour and form . . . no one can imagine the beauty of the view from any thing witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” This was how David Livingstone, the explorer who gave the falls its name in 1855, described it.
The high point for many visitors between November and February is a swim in Devil’s Pool, so named because of its proximity to Devil’s Cataract, so named because, eh, none of our guides had a clue.
To get to the deep water of Devil’s Pool at the very edge of the falls, you swim in a semi-circle through the swirling currents of the Zambezi. Once in the pool you can stare into the abyss and the vertiginous drops are, frankly, terrifying. If you don’t have a head for heights, the 100m-plus sheer drops will scare you witless.
The following morning it is time for the heli-flip. This is not as terrifying as it sounds and does not involve any kind of flipping of a helicopter. No, we take a 12-minute jaunt around the falls on a helicopter. It is breathtaking.
The curios market at Victoria Falls is almost as intense with the hawkers desperate to first catch your eye, engage you in conversation and finally flog you stuff. Most of them are chancers – there are 30 stalls and at least eight stallholders called Patrick. At least they are Patrick when they hear I'm Irish; to the English tourist, they are Charles and William. Some of them even have a good grasp of Irish and at several stalls I am greeted with a hearty, "Conas atá tú?" At another stall a chap tries out a jaunty "Top of the morning" to you, which would have been grand except it's the afternoon and we're not in Finian's Rainbow.
After the exhilaration of a trip to one of the seven wonders of the world, not to mention the hassle of the market, we unwind with a massage in what must be one of the world’s most stunning settings. There are cabins along the banks of the river and judiciously placed mirrors beneath the massage tables allow you to lie face down and still gaze at hippos bathing and the falls roaring as the sun goes down. From there it is back to steamy Jo’Burg and then home, where it was cold and there was all this weird white stuff on the ground, and not an elephant, hippo or giraffe to be seen.
Where to stay and where to eat
Where to eat
* Sakhumzi. Vilakazi Street, Soweto, 00-27-11-536-1379, sakhumzi.co.za. A stone’s throw from where Tutu and Mandela used to live, the buzzing restaurant has an all-you-can-eat buffet for €6. It attracts large numbers of locals and coachloads of tourists, who stop off to sample some excellent local food including fiery carrot salads, grilled chicken and stews.
* Auberge Michel. 122 Pretoria Avenue, 00-27-11-883-7013, aubergemichel.co.za. For fine dining in Jo’burg, it’s hard to top this French restaurant which was the first establishment in the country to attain a prestigious five-star rating by the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa. It’s all amuse-bouche this and palate-cleansing sorbet that. The wines are great.
Where to stay
* The Westcliff Hotel. 67 Jan Smuts Avenue, 00-27-11-481-6000, westcliff.co.za. Gorgeous hotel set on a cliffside in a garden estate. It has three pools, two restaurants, and private terraces looking out over the adjacent zoological gardens where animals can be spotted beneath the trees, if you’re lucky. We weren’t. Doubles from 1,900 rand (€207).
* Peermont D’Oreale Grande. 64 Jones Street, Kempton Park 00-27-11-928-1770, doreale.com. This is built on a complex with four other hotels and has access to a casino and shopping complex, which is a replica of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Doubles from 1,640 rand (€178).
* Conor Pope travelled as a guest of South African Tourism and Sun International Hotels