Crime and safety in Johannesburg
With Johannesburg’s extremes of poverty and wealth, its brash, get-ahead culture and the presence of illegal firearms, it’s hardly surprising that the city can be a dangerous place. Despite its unenviable reputation, it’s important to retain a sense of proportion about potential risks and not to let paranoia ruin your stay. Several hundred thousand foreign football fans visited Johannesburg during the 2010 World Cup, with not a single noteworthy incident. Remember that most crime happens in the outlying townships, and that the vast majority of Jo’burgers are exceedingly friendly; as in all major cities, taking simple precautions is likely to see you through safely.
Walking around Johannesburg
If you’re wandering around on foot, the most likely risk of crime is from mugging. Although significant effort has gone into making the riskiest central areas safer – such as the installation of security cameras – remain alert when exploring the central business district (CBD), Braamfontein and Newtown, do your touring in daylight, use busy streets and never be complacent.
No-go zones
Joubert Park, Hillbrow and Berea are regarded as no-go zones; Yeoville and Observatory are safer and generally fine if you’re confident or have someone to show you around. You’re very unlikely to be mugged on the streets of Melville, Parktown or Rosebank. If you want to walk around one of the riskier areas, study maps beforehand (not on street corners), don’t walk around with luggage and avoid groups of young men (the main offenders). If you’re carrying valuables, make a portion of them easily available, so that muggers are likely to be quickly satisfied. Never resist muggers. You’re unlikely to be mugged on public transport but, as always, it’s wise to stay alert, especially at busy spots such as Park Station and taxi ranks, and to be extra vigilant when getting off minibus taxis. Waiting for buses in the northern suburbs is generally safe.
Brief history of Johannesburg
Johannesburg dates back to 1886, when Australian prospector George Harrison found the main Witwatersrand gold-bearing reef. Almost immediately, this quiet area of the Transvaal became swamped with diggers from near and far, and a tented city sprang up around the site. The Pretoria authorities were forced to proclaim a township nearby: they chose a useless triangle of land called the Randjeslaagte, which had been left unclaimed by local farmers. Johan Rissik, the surveyor, called it Johannesburg, either after himself or Christiaan Johannes Joubert, the chief of mining, or the president of the South African Republic (ZAR), Paul Johannes Kruger.
Mining magnates such as Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato possessed the capital necessary to exploit the world’s richest gold reef, and their Chamber of Mines (a self-regulatory body for mine owners, founded in 1889) attempted to bring some order to the digging frenzy, with common policies on recruitment, wages and working conditions. In 1893, due partly to pressure from white workers, and with the approval of the ZAR government, the chamber introduced the colour bar, which excluded black workers from all but manual labour.
By 1895, Johannesburg’s population had soared to over 100,000, many of whom were not Boers and had no interest in the ZAR’s independence. Kruger and the burghers regarded these uitlanders (foreigners) as a potential threat to their political supremacy, and denied them the vote despite the income they generated for the state’s coffers. Legislation was also passed to control the influx of blacks to Johannesburg, and Indians were forcibly moved out of the city into a western location. Before long, large shantytowns filled with blacks and Indians were springing up on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
The Anglo-Boer War
In 1900, during the Anglo-Boer War, Johannesburg fell to the British, who had been attempting to annex the gold-rich area for some time. At the same time, more black townships were established, including Sophiatown (1903) in an area previously used for dumping sewage, and Alexandra (1905). Bubonic plague erupted on the northern fringes of the city in 1904, providing justification for the authorities to burn several Indian and African locations, including Newtown, just west of the centre.
Meanwhile, white mine workers were becoming unionized, and outbreaks of fighting over pay and working hours were a frequent occurrence. Their poorly paid black counterparts were also mobilizing; their main grievance was the ruling that skilled jobs were the preserve of white workers. Resentments came to a head in the Rand Revolt of 1922, after the Chamber of Mines, anxious to cut costs, decided to allow blacks into the skilled jobs previously held only by whites. White workers were furious: street battles broke out and lasted for four days. Government troops were called in to restore order and over two hundred men were killed. Alarmed at the scale of white discontent, Prime Minister Jan Smuts ruled that the colour bar be maintained, and throughout the 1920s the government passed laws restricting the movement of blacks.
Populating Soweto
During the 1930s, the township of Orlando became established southwest of the city, with accommodation for 80,000 blacks; this was the nucleus around which Soweto evolved. By 1945, 400,000 blacks were living in and around Johannesburg – an increase of one hundred percent in a decade. In August 1946, 70,000 African Mineworkers Union members went on strike over working conditions. The government sent police in, and twelve miners were killed and over a thousand injured.
Forced removals of black residents from Johannesburg’s inner suburbs, particularly from Sophiatown, began in 1955. Thousands were dumped far from the city centre, in the new township of Meadowlands, next to Orlando, and Sophiatown was crassly renamed Triomf (triumph). The ANC established itself as the most important black protest organization during this period, proclaiming the Freedom Charter in Kliptown, Soweto, that year.
During the 1950s, a vigorous black urban culture began to emerge in the townships, and the new marabi jazz and its offspring, the jubilant kwela pennywhistle style, were played in illegal drinking houses called shebeens. This was also the era of Drum Magazine, which celebrated a glamorous, sophisticated township zeitgeist, and introduced a host of talented journalists, such as Can Temba and Casey “Kid” Motsisi, to the city and the world. Mbaqanga music emerged later, with its heavy basslines and sensuous melodies capturing the bittersweet essence of life in the townships.
Resistance and democracy
The formation in 1972 of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) rekindled political activism, particularly among Soweto students. On June 16, 1976, student riots erupted in the township, and the unrest spread nationwide. The youth’s war against the State escalated in the 1980s, resulting in regular “states of emergency”, during which the armed forces had permission to do anything they liked to contain revolt. Towards the end of the decade, the government relaxed “petty” apartheid, turning a blind eye to the growth of “grey” areas like Hillbrow – white suburbs where blacks were moving in.
The three years after Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990 saw widespread political violence in Gauteng right up until the day before the elections. However, as elsewhere in South Africa, the election on April 27, 1994, went off peacefully. The ANC won comfortably in Gauteng then, and retained their hold in 1999 and 2004. They also carried the province in 2009, despite a growing feeling that the ANC have not totally lived up to their promises. Black South Africans have indeed made steady inroads into positions of influence in business and politics, but, as an increasing number of township dwellers move to the suburbs, Johannesburg’s infrastructure has struggled to cope: low-income housing is not being built fast enough, energy supply is wobbling as demand surges, and traffic is often hellish, though the new Gautrain rail network should make a difference along the north–south routes.
Around Johannesburg
Johannesburgers wanting to get away from it all tend to head northwest towards the Magaliesberg Mountains, stretching from Pretoria in the east to Rustenberg in the west. Don’t expect to see a horizon of impressive peaks: much of the area is private farmland running across rolling countryside, although there are some impressive kloofs (gorges), as well as refreshingly wide vistas. Unprepossessing as the mountain range might be, a series of caves on their southeastern (Johannesburg) side holds some of the world’s most important information about human evolution stretching back some 3.5 million years. These caves, including the renowned Sterkfontein Caves, are now protected as part of the Cradle of Humankind, one of South Africa’s first World Heritage Sites.
Mrs Ples and friends
Embedded in the dolomitic rock within a dozen caves in the area now called the Cradle of Humankind are the fossilized remains of hominids that lived in South Africa up to 3.5 million years ago. Samples of fossilized pollen, plant material and animal bones also found in the caves indicate that the area was once a tropical rainforest inhabited by giant monkeys, long-legged hunting hyenas and sabre-toothed cats.
Quite when hominids arrived on the scene isn’t certain, but scientists now believe that the human lineage split from apes in Africa around five to six million years ago. The oldest identified group of hominids is Australopithecus, a bipedal, small-brained form of man. The first Australopithecus discovery in South Africa was in 1924, when Professor Raymond Dart discovered the Taung child in what is now North West Province. In 1936, australopithecine fossils were first found in the Sterkfontein Caves, and in 1947 Dr Robert Broom excavated a nearly complete skull which he first called Plesianthropus transvaalensis ("near-man" of the Transvaal), later confirmed as a 2.6-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus. Identified as a female, she was nicknamed "Mrs Ples", and for many years she was the closest thing the world had to what is dubbed "the missing link".
A number of even older fossils have since been discovered at Sterkfontein and nearby caves, along with evidence of several other genera and species, including Australopithecus robustus, dating from between one and two million years ago, and Homo ergaster, possibly the immediate predecessor of Homo sapiens, who used stone tools and fire.
Driving around Johannesburg
If you’re driving around, note that there is a small risk of “smash and grab” theft or carjacking; keep all bags and valuables locked up in the trunk, lock the car doors and keep windows up when driving after dark or when in central areas. Be aware of your surroundings when leaving or returning to your car and entering driveways and always seek out secure – preferably guarded – parking; in Jo’burg this is in ample supply. Although urban legend suggests you can cruise through red lights at night, this is dangerous and illegal; stop, keep a good distance from the car in front and be aware of anyone moving around the car.
Don’t expect too much from the police, who normally have priorities other than keeping an eye out for tourists. In the city centre and Rosebank, private guards, identifiable by their yellow armbands and, stationed on street corners, provide an effective anti-crime presence on the street.