"Gold Gold Gold!" Johannesburg by Ramonq

click: South African style music

This is a sprawling city of motorways and suburbs like Auckland, or Los Angeles. Johannesburg is not pedestrian friendly and there is no public transportation. One would say that Johannesburg is a city that the cars ate, and the standstill traffic on the motorways attest to that.

Gold Reef

Johannesburg is edgy and sometimes angry. South Africa's largest city is as diverse as its inhabitants. The various tribes of this "rainbow nation" have flocked to Johannesburg seeking better opportunities and jobs; filling up the ever growing townships around the peripheries. Downtown Johannesburg has been Africanised where once only white faces could be seen. On the streets of Johannesburg, one will see African city slickers in business attires and colourful clothes. This is South Africa's thoroughly modern face, where wide avenues and footpaths have been taken over by street vendors African-style, and the streets are brimming with activities. I strolled around the city centre which appears like any modern Western city, but had to blink my eyes because most of the faces I see in dowtown Joburg are mainly African. I have been told by longtime residents that the city was once a white enclave and Joburg is now beyond recognition. Once posh apartment blocks in Berea and Hillbrow have been taken over by poor blacks after apartheid was lifted, and many of the buildings are now decaying in squalor.

Rich Districts

Johannesburg is South Africa's commercial centre and the capital of Gauteng province. Although eclipsed by its sister city, Cape Town when it comes to charm and spectacular sceneries, Johannesburg presents itself as a thriving working city. The highrises attest to that. And it has great nightlife for its hardworking population to wind down. But Johannesburg has also one of the highest crime in the world. Conversations mainly dwell on someone becoming a victim of crime, such as robbery and rape. The more gruesome the story, the more it will generate more interest from the listener. I remember hearing a radio advertising broadcast pleading and begging criminals to stop committing crime! Is Joburg that bad? Well, I wasn't a victim of crime here even though I walked around the city and mixed with locals in the shebeens in the black township of Soweto. Maybe I was just lucky.

Apartheid Museum

This is the city that gold built. Before gold was first struck by prospector George Harrison back in 1886, the area was once a ranch in a windswept veldt called Randjeslaagte. This town was named Johannesburg after the two commissioners, Johannes Rissik and Christaan Johannes Joubert, who had confirmed the discovery of gold. Three of the busiest streets in Johannesburg are named after these characters, Rissik, Harrison and Commissioner streets. Joubert Park is an area near the city centre, and is sadly now a seedy section of the city.

Top of Africa

The news of this gold find spread like wildfire and the makeshift town attracted thousands of gold pospectors from all over the world, building shanties around the area. In just 3 years, over 630 000 ounces of gold had been mined and Johannesburg's economy boomed, necessitating the formation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Johannesburg became a city in 1928, and the city started to appear like any affluent city of wide avenues, monuments and stately civic buildings. Black gold diggers were used as cheap labourers while Afrikaners and European immigrants enjoyed the most of the wealth. Johannesburg became separated on racial lines and the ultra-right wing government introduced the racial segregation system called apartheid.

Traditional

Apartheid created a huge chasm of economic disparity between the races. Black townships such as Soweto (South West Township) grew in the city's outskirts, and blacks weren't allowed to enter the affluent whites-only enclaves creating extreme bitterness among the black populace. When apartheid was finally lifted in the late 20th century with the rise of Nelson Mandela, this bitterness exploded into anger and a huge crime wave resulted against the white residents. Many of the white South Africans have moved elsewhere or to the relatively safer areas in the Cape Province and downtown Johannesburg has been thoroughly Africanised.

International city

The white residents are now cocooned in the affluent northern suburbs such as Sandton but some of Johannesburg's worse slums like Alexandra is only a few kilometers away. Many nice homes are now protected by barbed wires, electric fences, and rottweilers. A siege mentality has developed which I hope will pass away when economic development becomes evenly distributed between its diverse population. Johannesburg is still an experiment, however, it remains as black Africa's richest and most influential city.

• Pros:sophisticated nightlife
• Cons:crime
• In a nutshell:City built by gold