One week in Gauteng

Monday, November 24^th (Day 15)

I had less than one week to spend in Gauteng before to leave to Cameroon. Gauteng (attention, read it like [chauteng] – phonetic transcription for Czech people, for others… well, in Spanish it’s like [jauteng] ;) ), for those who have never heard this name, is a South African province which is the smallest one in terms of area but the most populated one. It is highly urbanized: it contains both the South African capital Pretoria and the largest South African city Johannesburg.

Our first stop was in Pretoria where we immediately visited the neighbourhood where all embassies were situated: actually it’s also what is the most characteristic for Pretoria, the administrative capital. We visited the Cameroonian embassy where I applied for the visa that was supposed to be issued three days later.

We still had few hours to spend in this city before to move just few kilometres next to it to Johannesburg (or Jo’burg as you will hear the most often in the everyday language) so we decided to explore the city centre and to have a look on another important element of this city apart embassies: Union Buildings – the seat of the government where we could admire an immense statue of Nelson Mandela.

At the end of the afternoon, we took Gautrain: the train that connects Pretoria with Johannesburg. “Where are we? Are we back in Europe?” was our first reaction. A very modern train which was on time! (Actually it left even one minute earlier so we missed it and had to wait ten minutes for another one) Where is that famous “African time”? Furthermore, it is prohibited to eat and drink at the train station – again very different from the usual train (metrorail) we are used to take from Stellenbosch to Cape Town (which a lot of white people are scared to take even though there’s no reason for it and they prefer to drive by car) where plenty of salesmen walk through the railway cars with huge plastic bags full of chocolates and chips. And of course, the prize of the tickets was also quite European. Thus within 40 minutes we were in the heart of Jo’burg!

At the train station, we met Thulani, our guide for couple of following days, who had been already waiting for us. He is friend of our fried Tony studying in Stellenbosch but who comes from a township Katlehong close to Johannesburg. We were actually staying at our friend’s place but since he was still busy with his exams in Stellenbosch, his friend from the township took the role of our guide.

It was late afternoon and we need to get quickly to the township before it would get dark. So we quickly passed through crowded streets around the station and arrived to the mini-buses station. We were impressed by the vibe of the city. So busy, market full of people going somewhere, noisy, and what’s more, almost no white people to be seen around (here we begin to realize that Western Cape with Cape Town is really not representative picture of South Africa). Finally we feel like being in Africa even in the city and not only on the countryside. The atmosphere was just great. We began to fell in love with this city.

We succeeded to fit our huge backpacks on our knees in the minibus so as it did not occupy more seats – we would have to pay for two places otherwise – and we were heading, with the sounds of thunders signalizing approaching storm, in this crowded vehicle to Katlehong.

Just a short paragraph about the system of minibuses: there are two fares: one local, another one if you go further. Everybody thus know how much he is supposed to pay and forwards his and his neighbours coins to the driver or a person sitting next to the driver who organizes finances. All this finance staff is happening while driving already – at least, we don’t lose the time. Drivers here are pretty multitask: driving, talking, calculating… and managing to fit the bus in a very narrow space between two other cars to overtake them and go as fast as possible even through the traffic jam.. There are no obstacles for them.

In the township, Thulani led us directly to the house where we were going to stay: a decent house with nice interior. Lot of people imagine shacks and places with very poor sanitation when hear about townships. Indeed, it exists in townships but it’s not only about it. Townships are places where a non-white population lives (legacy of Apartheid and its policy of spatial segregation). And there are also some very nice houses as also black middle class may live there. Actually there are huge inequalities also within the township.

We met Tony’s mother and sister who welcomed us very friendly. In the street, children were playing soccer. Thulani showed township to us and introduced to his friends. Everybody was so friendly! We loved the atmosphere of the township and paradoxically, we realized we even felt safer there than in the city.

We tasted a locally brewed beer called Jo’burg. A bit unusual but quite tasty! They drink it mainly during some festivities. Then, for dinner, we tasted another local speciality: bunny chow, also called a kota. It’s kind of sandwich with chips. For R12 (not even 1€), you get three slices of bread (the white toast bread) filled with chips and different fillings such as cheese veggies, ham, … and of course some chilli which cannot miss (they love spicy). Quite difficult to eat, not very healthy but we enjoyed it ;)

Quite a long day, time to go to bed now! Wait, bed? After many nights of camping, sleeping in our broken tent and on the floor of student residence, the real bed. And very comfortable one!

Tuesday, November 25^th (Day 16)

With Thulani, we visited house of three sisters and one brother. Again, they were very welcoming and friendly. We had an interesting discussion about marriage with them. Lobola (traditionally, a groom has to give a certain number of cattle to the bride’s family, nowadays in the cities, they usually transfer the value of the cattle into money) and all different habits and traditions, importance of parent’s consent and so on. And it was quite difficult for some of them to understand some liberal opinion that one might not want to get married at all.

Then, we continued to Thulani’s grandmother where we also met his cousin who loved to talk. Thus, we learned a lot about the history of Katlehong, about the relation of Katlehong with Soweto, about the meaning of names (in most of African cultures, names have a clear meaning).

Wednesday, November 26^th (Day 17)

In the morning, we visited the Magistrate Court in Palm Ridge where Tony’s aunt worked. We had to wait long time because she was busy with a complicated case (a rape case that was closed to public). But eventually she took us to see part of another case and she answered lot of our questions we had about the criminality in the area.

After this, time to discover Jo’burg. Well, just a small part of it of course, we had just an afternoon for it. We had a lunch in Newtown where we also saw some street art before to go to SAB museum. SAB are South African Breweries. The exhibition itself was pretty much focused on “exciting effects” that looked rather like a publicity than a museum. However, some information were quite interesting. And the end was great! You get a small beer in the glass you can keep and at the very end, there is a bar, where you can use your two vouchers you got with the ticket. Actually, it looks like the price of the ticket pays just this beer consumption.

Then, we went to the “Top of Africa” – the tower of the Carlton shopping centre. We took the elevator to the 50^th floor and enjoyed the awesome view over the entire Joburg!

Then, it was time to get back to Katlehong as it was getting late and thunderstorm was coming (again).

Two great days in Katlehong (and little bit of Joburg), shame I couldn’t stay longer. I will have to get back one day!

Thursday, November 27^th (Day 18)

I needed to get back to Pretoria to pick up my passport with the visa. At the embassy, I felt relieved: great, I got the visa, no problem occurred and now I could leave for Cameroon within two days! But… wait... when I checked the visa, I saw: 30 days. Only 30 days? I applied for 62 days! “We give the tourist visa for 30 days only.” Was told to me. Probably new rules, on the website of the embassy was written up to three months. “So I can stay only 30 days?!” No, you can stay longer, just go to the police at the place of your stay and tell them you are staying longer.” Well.. it seemed too easy but if they said so at the embassy… (more about the story of my visa in another article ;) ) Anyway, at least I could get to Cameroon, I would think about the rest later.

We had a lunch together with our friend Alex (who also had to go to Pretoria again because of the visa issues) in the Pretoria city centre. Just before to leave the restaurant, an Afrikaans “couple” (actually a mother with an adult son) asked us what we would like to see and they recommended us few things that are worth to see. Finally, they told us they would show us something: an abandoned theathre just next door. We entered an ordinary-looking building and we remained speechless. The interior is something that used to be a nice theatre with a stage, today quite dilapidated, and in the middle of all this, there was a parking full of cars! “The son” was studying theatre so he explain us all the history of the place and showed us around.

Then, we visited the Palace of Justice that “the mother” (she was advocate) recommended us to visit. We were walking through its corridors when suddenly we heard from an open office: “Hello, can I help you?” “Ehm, we are just visiting, we didn’t want to disturb you.” “No problem, come in! You can visit! You can have a look in the office of the judge, he is not there now.” Wow, really?

Friday, November 28^th (Day 19)

We spent the night in Pretoria and we had planned to go back to Joburg immediately in the morning to enjoy the city. However, tired after all this travelling (and well, little bit also after the partying from the night before), we were quite slow and eventually didn’t have that much time left to see lot of things. Thus, we decided to stay in Pretoria for a while yet and to visit the Freedom Park, me wearing my big backpack again… (Mouna left hers in Katlehong as she was coming back) … at least another good hike. And it really was worth it as it is a nice place with nice view over Pretoria.

Then we returned to Joburg again. We changed our plans several times about the place we would stay that night. Eventually, we finished by joining three our friends from Stellenbosch in their backpackers: all of us travelled differently and we finished by meeting in that backpackers my last night in South Africa before to leave to Cameroon! So we enjoyed the evening together, a good bye party…

Next time you can read about my journey to Cameroon!