South Africa - Johannesburg

 

Crime in South Africa which had been consistently falling since apartheid ended starting rising alarmingly since 2010, mirroring the economy of South Africa which fell because of corruption. The Gupta Brothers from India (Ajay, Atul, Rahul) who owned Sahara Computers, financed Jacob Zuma, who became the president of South Africa in 2008. Since then, there was a "State Capture" by the Guptas, who fleeced the country through their corrupt contracts. They appointed and fired ministers, bankrupted the electricity giant Eskom causing billions of dollars of loss, destroyed the state owned railways of Transnet and PRASA. In 2016, they fled to Dubai.

Youth unemployment has risen alarmingly to 60%. Mobile snatching and chain snatching by youth on motorbikes happens often, and South Africa's Gini coefficient of inequality stands at 0.65, the highest in all of Africa. . South Africa is struggling to recover from the Guptas. Is India going through a similar State Capture? Are we in India in a state of limbo like this young man at Rosebank Mall, Johannesburg? 

South Africa's crime rates, falling post-apartheid, surged since 2010 amid economic decline from corruption. The Gupta brothers (Ajay, Atul, Rajesh), who backed President Jacob Zuma from 2009, orchestrated "state capture," looting Eskom, Transnet, and PRASA before fleeing to Dubai in 2016.

Rosebank Mall Statues: These statues at Johannesburg's Rosebank Mall highlight wealth disparity—juxtaposed against Soweto's poverty—evoking global divides like India's Ambanis. Anant Ambani's 2024 wedding cost ₹1,260 crore pre-events, while Anil Ambani's group faced ₹49,000 crore in bankruptcy claims. 

South Africa's Honorary Whites today all live and dine in posh upmarket places like Rosebank, ensconced behind their 15 feet high electric fences and 2.8 Million registered private security personnel (0.6 M active) with semi-automatic weapons protecting them from the poorer Blacks, perpetuating a new apartheid. 

At Sandton City Mall. 

Nelson Mandela statue at Sandton City Mall 

At Sandton City Mall. 

At Sandton City Mall. 

At Sandton City Mall. 

Prawns (the waiter said they were small) at a restaurant, Pappas on the square, at Nelson Mandela square, Sandton Mall. Succulent, huge, and the butter lemony gravy was to die for! 

Mariotts at Melrose Arch. Post 6 pm, we were told as tourists to strictly take a Uber or Bolt, and not go with the local taxis, or venture out on foot. Melrose Arch was heavily guarded, and had its own residential and office complexes, restaurants and shopping complexes and was in short, its own Utopia fenced in by high walls, electric fences, private security checks. The British before Indian independence must have felt the way we felt in their cantonement areas in India in the midst of native Indians - perfectly safe, but beware walking through the natives' city at night! 

Rosebank Mall where the Hop On Hop Off bus started for a city tour. 

Hop On Hop Off bus tour 

Hare sitting on a Crate by Guy Du Toit, a South African artist. 

A "live, work, play" hub at Melrose Arch that seems a little slice of Manhattan in Jo'burg. Observe the almost invisible electrified wires at the top of the walls surrounding the opulence. A warning sign, "No criminal elements allowed" would have been too reminiscent of apartheid era. 

The second of Nelson Mandela's houses, where he moved in from his down to earth Soweto house, about 9 days after his release from prison. 

The Flame of Democracy erected in 2011 at one of the remaining stairwells at "Awaiting Trial Block" on Constitution Hill, where Nelson Mandela was kept prisoner

About 90 prisoners were overcrowded into each of these rooms. This was Number Four prison where Gandhi was kept prisoner.

Mahatma Gandhi was a prisoner for 7 months and 10 days in Prison Number Four for protesting against "Pass" laws for Asians and passively resisting by not carrying a Pass between 1908 and 1913.

A warder from another prison who came in to Number Four prison

Discrimination extended even to the food given to white and non-white prisoners.

Communal Toilets where feces overflowed into the dining area when blocked.

Gandhi was an inspiration for Mandela, decades later. They were in the same prison but separated by decades between them.

Solitary confinement rooms.

Prisoners made their own games drawn on blankets with stones.

Some prisoners made paper mache dolls to pass their time.

One of the prison rooms, where they made "blanket sculptures".

Communal baths where they were allowed to have a bath once a week.

Justice under a tree - where the Constitution Court meets

The Miner's Monument, a sculpture commemorating Joburg's "City of Gold" origins depicting three miners with a rock drill

Joburg Park Station, which is the gateway to the City of Gold. On one side are the buses and squalor. On the other, high speed Gautrains, metrorail and Joburg Central Business District with its skyscrapers.

Hunslet mining locomotive, part of the Main Street Mining District. his is a narrow-gauge locomotive built by Hunslet, a famous locomotive manufacturer. These compact, powerful engines were the workhorses of the South African gold mines, used to haul heavy ore-laden "hoppers" through the tight tunnels deep underground.

Impala Stampede sculpture. The sculpture features 17 life-size impala leaping in a graceful, 7.5-meter-wide arch over a fountain. It is meant to capture "nature's most graceful charge."

The Jawbone wagon predating the locomotives. These were designed to be completely dismantled. If the trekkers hit a mountain range or a deep river, they could take the "jawbone" apart, carry the pieces over, and reassemble it on the other side—a primitive but effective modular delivery system.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was a South African lawyer practising in Joburg, a familiar figure in the Government Square law offices, since renamed as Gandhi Square!

Booysens Police Station. The building features the strong vertical concrete "fins" and geometric brickwork typical of South African government and civic architecture from the mid-20th century.

Our tour to Soweto.

Orlando Towers: Built in the 1940s and 50s, the power station provided electricity to Johannesburg for over 50 years. The murals are legendary. One tower features a corporate billboard, while the other (often visible in photos from the ground) features a massive, colorful mural depicting Soweto's culture—jazz musicians and soccer!

Soweto, a shanty town on the other side of the city. On one side of the city, you have the high-end efficiency of Melrose Arch; on the other, you have thousands of people living in "shacks" made of corrugated iron, wood, and plastic, often without formal access to the grid.

Hector Pieterson Memorial in Orlando West, Soweto. The photograph captures 18-year-old Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the body of 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, who had just been shot by police. Running alongside them in distress is Hector’s sister, Antoinette Sithole

Hector Pieterson Memorial in Orlando West, Soweto. The memorial uses red brick (matching the nearby museum) and slate. The water feature is meant to represent the tears of the community and the blood of the students.

These "pop-up" blue gazebo structures are the standard retail units for Soweto’s street entrepreneurs. They are designed for quick setup and teardown.

The market is famous for hand-woven textiles, beaded jewelry, carved wooden "Big Five" animals, and traditional South African crafts.

This is on Khumalo Road, the main thoroughfare that leads visitors from the Hector Pieterson Memorial toward Vilakazi Street -our guide told us it the only street in the world that was home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners: Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. 

You can see the hand-carved wooden "Big Five" animals (lions, elephants, rhinos), intricately beaded jewelry, and traditional African masks. Many of these are crafted using local sustainable materials—wood, stone, and recycled glass beads. The vibrant colors and patterns are often specific to Zulu, Xhosa, or Ndebele heritage.

The stall displays a variety of colorful paintings, including portraits, African wildlife such as lions and zebras, and scenes depicting township life.

"Buy Local, Support Local," - a corporate initiative by FNB Business, to promote local craftsmanship and tourism.'

Nelson Mandela's first house in Soweto before his imprisonment.

Leaving Soweto - the entire township is visible - flat, single storied, and a maze of shacks rolling into the distance. Joburg remains what it was two centuries ago here - water and electricity scarce and a luxury, with people whose lives have improved, but little, over these centuries.

The Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII)'s USP is supposedly "Consciousness-Based Education (CBE)". About a 1000 students are enrolled, learning Transcendental Meditation (TM). He believed that a sufficiently large group of people practicing these meditation techniques could create a "field effect" of peace and harmony, theoretically making a nation "invincible" to internal and external negativity. Mahesh Prasad Sharma (the Maharishi) expired at the ripe age of 91 proving his invincibility wrong. He didn't levitate - he didn't even fly - but his followers hopped. This was after unsuccesfully trying for decades to reconcile vedic wisdom with quantum physics on the basis of his scanty knowledge of the Vedas and even scantier undergraduate degree in Physics from Allahabad in 1942.