How Dangerous is Johannesburg, South Africa really? 🇿🇦

A short, fast video — he discovers mid-shoot that he has a flight that evening and has to cut it — spent almost entirely inside the CBD and Hillbrow in Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is the first time Harry has ever used private security, and he is thoughtful about what that costs him: it makes him safer and it makes him unapproachable, and he says both.

The subject is hijacked buildings — how a normal block of flats becomes a ruin with no power, no water and sewage in the street — and the counter-example at the end, a famous hijacked tower that has been brought back.

Obs: the video carries a read-aloud crypto debit-card sponsorship plus eSIM and camera affiliate links. No provider is recorded here.

Key moments

• [00:02] Opens on a Mandela quote about courage being the triumph over fear rather than its absence, and calls the CBD one of the most dangerous square miles in the world.
• [00:02] 80% of South Africa’s wealth held by 10% of the people (from video – unverified).
• [00:35] The rule for the day, stated in the first minute: this is not a place he will be stopping. See keep moving.
• [01:05] What he’s giving up by it — men playing checkers, someone selling watermelon, the people he would normally stop and talk to.
• [01:37] Sewage running down the middle of the street.
• [01:37] Into a hijacked building, which took a lot of negotiating to enter. No electricity; he films by phone torch.
• [02:14] How a hijacking works: people already living there paid rent to a landlord; others take control of the building and collect the rent instead. Don’t pay and there is trouble. More people move in illegally, the power and water get cut, cooking fires start, and the building eventually burns or rots.
• [03:15] In the heart of the city with the highest GDP in Africa — which is the contrast the video is built on.
• [03:46] Security tells him it’s time to leave, and he notes that this is what security is for, because he always stays longer than he should.
• [04:21] The odds, from his security detail: walking here alone, the chance of being robbed is put at 99% (from video – unverified), and they add that local Black South Africans avoid walking here too.
• [04:52] The crime is opportunistic rather than organised, in their assessment — people who aren’t working, needing rent money. Robbery is the common one, often with a firearm.
• [04:52] A Gini coefficient of 0.68 and a crime index of 8 out of 10 (from video – unverified; he describes 0.68 as one of the “lowest” while clearly meaning most unequal).
• [05:23] The honesty note: he doesn’t like YouTubers who dramatise, and says this is the one place he wants to.
• [05:23] He realises on camera that he has a flight to Istanbul the same night.
• [05:55] A second building, entered by bribing the way in.
• [06:27] Mike, from Malawi, part of the group controlling the building.
• [07:03] It was flats. It burned in 2006 and has been a shell for twenty years.
• [07:35] One man lives in the whole building. He was the security guard before the fire, never left, and pays nothing. Sometimes his brother.
• [08:05] Nobody expects the government to repair it.
• [08:40] Being a foreigner here: he is not treated the same, and the police in particular won’t let him trade where he sits.
• [09:12] What the CBD used to be. Thirty years ago, living here meant you were wealthy — predominantly white, under apartheid. Today he thinks they are the only white people in the district, and says people are visibly surprised to see them.
• [09:43] Police are a rare sight, and cruise past without getting out of the car.
• [10:14] The nice areas are next door. Beautiful neighbourhoods a short distance away, sometimes with actual barriers between. His practical warning: do the research before you arrive, because you could walk into this on holiday without knowing.
• [10:45] Apartheid as the cause, without blaming individuals: total segregation of transport, shops, housing and work, and a divide that outlived it — the townships are still there, and it shows up in who does which job.
• [11:48] Then the state: underfunded, corrupt, and unable to deliver services — including 24-hour electricity.
• [12:24] At least 35% unemployment, and he says people put it higher (from video – unverified).
• [12:24] The statistics caveat that makes the video better than its title: South Africa tops crime tables partly because South Africans are encouraged to report crime for insurance claims, and plenty of countries barely report at all.
• [13:34] On having security, and the trade-off he names: he feels safe and much more confident, and it puts a barrier between him and everyone he would normally talk to.
• [14:10] Amapiano playing on a Sunday — music that came out of the townships and became a route out of poverty for the people who made it.
• [14:42] No 24/7 electricity: generators running, and water pumped from the ground.
• [15:17] A destroyed bank plaza, a chicken shop, abandoned blocks in every direction — he compares it to a zombie film.
• [15:17] People are not welcoming, and he understands why: they see almost nobody who looks like him.
• [15:50] Ponte Tower, the most famous hijacking of them all, now restored.
• [16:25] What the core of it was: residents threw rubbish out of their windows into the middle of the building until it stood three storeys deep, and people jumped from the upper floors to their deaths.
• [17:01] Now it has paying tenants, the rubbish is gone and the windows are sealed.
• [17:36] On private security versus police, from a security professional: the police and military are under-resourced, which created the gap. Around 9,000 registered private security companies in South Africa (from video – unverified). Better resourced than the police — but, he is clear, not more powerful.
• [18:41] The view: six million people, Mandela’s city, enormous history, and going the wrong way.
• [19:14] Ponte as the possible model — gentrification, against corruption and without much opportunity for the people already there.
• [19:50] The flight cuts it short. He’ll come back to South Africa, and probably not to the CBD.

Extracted pages

• Country: South Africa
• Place: Johannesburg
• Tips: Keep moving, Travel with a local guide