More than 20 years since apartheid was abolished, and Johannesburg still feels like (and is) a divided city. I was staying in a white suburb with 10 feet walls, electrified fences, boom gates, 24 hour patrols, the works. Decided to go for a walk to a nearby park and got stopped by a patrol car. The security guy wasn't rude as much as puzzled - "Why would you go walking about? This is Jo'burg".
I was in the city centre and decided to go for a short walk around the market place (against my host family's instructions to never leave the hop-on hop-off city tour bus). I must have been about for half an hour and I don't think I saw one white fella.
Well! in some ways it is not racially divided so much as economically divided. All cities have this inequity; amazing wealth right next to abject poverty and squalor. The contrast is just more visible here. And the Haves just happened to be white for the most part.
I was in the city centre and decided to go for a short walk around the market place (against my host family's instructions to never leave the hop-on hop-off city tour bus). I must have been about for half an hour and I don't think I saw one white fella.
Well! in some ways it is not racially divided so much as economically divided. All cities have this inequity; amazing wealth right next to abject poverty and squalor. The contrast is just more visible here. And the Haves just happened to be white for the most part.
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