From Mail & Guardian
Once you’ve lived in Johannesburg long enough you realize that there is a distinct physical or geographic orientation to its humor. Typically, the best jokes are told in a southern voice – by someone hailing from Diepkloof when the speaker is black, or Glenvista and environs when white. But it is the butt of the joke that is revealing: typically the funnier jokes are directed east.
“Turns out she comes from Boksburg, Brakpan, Nigel, Springs; used to be an usherette, saleslady, hair-shampooer, manicurist, go-go dancer, Rand Show demonstrator, singer, East Rand Princess, and is studying to be a travel agent,” wrote playwright Barney Simon in a story in his 1974 collection Joburg, Sis!
Four decades on and Ekurhuleni, a sprawling metropolitan municipality of 3.1-million inhabitants, retains much of its unfussy working-class character. Formed in 2000, the amalgamated metro comprises nine small East Rand municipalities, including Alberton, Benoni, Germiston, Kempton Park and Edenvale, as well as the four towns mentioned by Simon.
Key landmarks include OR Tambo International Airport in Kempton Park and the N3 highway, which forms the metro’s western border with Johannesburg. Were the congested highway a river it would be feasible to compare Ekurhuleni with working-class New Jersey, which is similarly looked down upon by aristocratic New Yorkers gazing across the Hudson River.
Like the state of New Jersey, Ekurhuleni is also a rust-belt enclave. One of largest concentrations of industrial activity in Africa, the metro is consistently posting declines in its manufacturing base. Once the epicentre of the early gold mining boom, Ekurhuleni’s 337 hectares of vacant mining land is another potent symbol of its lapsed economic glory.
Informal settlements
In Ekurhuleni, long an entry point for migrants drawn to the Gauteng region, fallow industrial and state land is now increasingly being occupied by informal settlements. It currently has 119 informal settlements, among them Gabon, Lakeview, Hollywood and Freedom Square.
Located in the northeast of the metro, on the outer edges of Tembisa, a township intimately connected with the evolution of the kwaito sound, Freedom Square resembles informal settlements elsewhere across the country. Tightly clustered corrugated-iron shacks abut frailer structures made from tarpaulin. Rubbish lingers in this community of 5 000 residents established in 1992.
They may have flushing toilets and communal taps, but residents of Freedom Square share a uniformly bleak outlook on life in this settlement.
“We live a fake life in fake houses,” said Stanley Phele, a trader whose makeshift stall displays apples and chips.
“We live like soldiers in the Vietnam War,” added Ouma Mphuti, a young woman struggling to secure a university loan after matriculating in 2012. “When you’re sleeping at night you don’t feel safe.”
Written by Sean O’toole | Read more at Mail & Guardian
