Johannesburg

Six million people, the highest-GDP city in Africa, Mandela’s city — and the square mile Harry spends the day in is, in his framing, one of the most dangerous in the world.

The whole visit is the CBD and Hillbrow, with private security. Nothing on this page is about the rest of the city, and he is careful to say the rest of the city is not like this.

Obs: the video is cut short — he realises mid-shoot that he has a flight that evening — so the coverage is thin by his usual standard and he says he’ll return.

Hijacked buildings

The subject of the day, and the thing worth understanding.

• How it works: residents are paying rent to a landlord; a group takes control of the building and collects the rent instead. Refusing means trouble.
• What follows: more people move in illegally, the power and the water are cut off, people cook on open fires indoors, and the building eventually burns or simply rots. Sewage runs in the street outside.
• It took a lot of negotiating to get in, and the second building required a bribe.
• One of them has a single resident. It was flats; it burned in 2006 and has stood as a shell for twenty years. The man living there was the building’s security guard before the fire, never left, and pays nothing. Occasionally his brother stays too.
• Nobody expects the state to repair any of it.

Ponte Tower

The counter-example, and the reason the video doesn’t end in despair.

• The most famous hijacking in the country, and for years a centre of crime and drugs.
• Residents threw rubbish out of their windows into the building’s circular core until it stood three storeys deep.
• People jumped from the upper floors to their deaths.
• Now restored: the rubbish gone, the windows sealed, and legitimate tenants paying rent. Harry treats it as a model for what gentrifying the CBD would mean, while noting what that costs and how much corruption stands in the way.

Safety

• He used private security for the first time in his life here.
• Walking alone, his detail put the chance of being robbed at 99% (from video – unverified) — and added that local Black South Africans avoid walking here too.
• Police are a rare sight and cruise past without leaving the car.
• His rule for the day is to keep walking and not stop for the conversations he would normally have. See keep moving.
• He was visibly the only white person in the district, and says people were surprised rather than hostile — though not welcoming either, which he says he understands.
• The good areas are the next neighbourhood over, sometimes behind an actual barrier — which is why he tells viewers to research before arriving.

What it used to be

Thirty years ago, living in the CBD meant you were wealthy, and under apartheid that meant white. The bank plaza he films was a landmark; it is now a shell with a chicken shop in it. He compares the streets to a zombie film and is explicit that the cause is apartheid’s aftermath plus an underfunded, corrupt state — the detail is on the South Africa page.

Harry’s tips

• Don’t come here on your own. He says it plainly, and notes that he dislikes YouTubers who dramatise and that this is the one place he wants to.
• Research the districts before you land. The distance between very nice and very dangerous is a couple of streets.
• Keep moving, and accept that you will lose the conversations that make a place interesting.
• Understand what security costs you. His own verdict: safer, more confident, and a barrier between him and everyone he would otherwise meet — travel with a local guide.

Source

• How Dangerous is Johannesburg, South Africa really? 🇿🇦 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtmuORg8jNw