SOUTH AFRICA - Johannesburg/Sun City (2000)

Johannesburg: 3.03.2000

I realised only a couple of days ago that this was my maiden trip to the southern hemisphere.

This was the longest flight I'd ever been on - a solid 8 hours from Dubai to Jo'burg. I'd arrived at Dubai yesterday night 10.00 pm and this flight left today morning at 4.00 am. So Muscat to Jo'burg was a 15-hour travel on the whole.

Reflections of Dubai Shopping Festival were evident at Dubai airport as well. The duty-free shops were crowded, a ribboned car was standing as a gift, and raffles for $1,000,000 draw was on. People were tripping over each other to buy. Mind you, these were mainly businesspeople travelling from place A to place B, who did not have serious intent to shop.

.The night wait at Dubai airport was a cold one. I was wearing a half-sleeve shirt and, in terms of woolens, a thin sleeveless. By the time it was 2.00 am, my teeth were chattering. Luckily I had borrowed a book from Udayan, so I could mostly stay awake.

.Dubai to Jo'burg flight was on Emirates. It is indeed an excellent airline. Food was very good. The seats had variable lumbar support. Each seat had its own TV screen embedded in the seat back in front. There was a detachable remote control, which was also a telephone which can had to be used by swiping a credit card through a slot. There were some 18 channels going on, two of which were continuous video shooting through two video cameras mounted on the front and the belly of the aircraft. It was quite thrilling to see the plane landing through the nose camera.

.No problems at Jo'burg airport. This is also quite big, with 3 terminal buildings. I changed some money, took a coach and got dropped at the hotel.

.I was staying at the Sandton Sun, which is one of the top hotels in Jo'burg. It's beautiful, 20 stories high, with a clear atrium in the centre housing a restaurant. Walls were mostly black marble. The Sandton area itself is extremely up-market with lots of shopping malls and offices.

After Manihar landed up in the evening (he arrived from Zambia), we took a walk around Sandton City, which is a plaza (an understatement) alongside the hotel, connected through the 6th floor, occupying some 8-9 floors. The building has umpteen outlets of famous brands, massive departmental stores, clothes shops, bookshops - you name it. The quality and variety is top-class. There is a food-court, which is a very big courtyard surrounded by Mexican, Chinese and American cooking as well. There's one floor with 16 movie halls! Simple window-shopping in this place took 2 hours - and we actually entered only 2-3 shops, mind you. Today being a Friday, the plaza was fairly crowded, especially the food-joints.

Talking of the people here, if you come right down to it, you feel you are in a European city. Most of the people visible are whites, and they are extremely trendy in talk and dress. Skimpy dresses, even in this cool weather, are quite common, and public personal behaviour is as free as one would expect in Europe. We could make out that most of the young crowd were high-school and college kids, generally having fun. Shop attendants are a mixture of black and white, but blacks were generally in the helper category. But all seemed fairly friendly and they have a habit of smiling at each other (white-to-white) when passing each other.

In spite of all this bonhomie, we are told that Jo'burg is not a safe city. It is better not to walk on the streets alone, especially after dark. There is a lot of night life, but for visitors like us, it is safer to stick to the Sandton City, which, to be honest, is much more than we can handle in terms of window-shopping.

Johannesburg: 4.03.2000

We had a "power breakfast" today with a prospective buyer (a white of course), after which we pushed off to Pretoria to meet a client. Pretoria is around 50 km from Jo'burg. The highways are 3-lane and high-speed (100-120 kmph). Today being Saturday, a weekend, the traffic was light and we reached Pretoria in less than an hour. The client had sent a car on request and the white driver was full of interesting information on South Africa.

The breakfast guy in the morning, Peter, was saying that wherever in Africa whites had developed a country, be it the French, the Portuguese or the British, they had "f___ed up" the basic economy of the place. Most of the countries now have very strong polarities between the rich and the poor. In South Africa, since governing remained in white hands till recently, ending with Clark, the blacks were very poor of course. South Africa used to be a heavenly place, extremely beautiful naturally, with mountains, sea, rivers, gorges, forests, wildlife, safaris, you name it. To top it all, the climate is also temperate.

However, in the last 10 years, the criminal elements in the black ranks have grown so much that people (read whites) do not walk in ill-lit areas, do not stop on the road or get into shops if 2-3 blacks are nearby. Maybe earlier generations used to hate (or disparage) blacks for their colour alone. Now they hate (or are scared of) the locals for having made their paradise so very unsafe to live in. With the black government coming to power led by Mandela, the "freedom fighters" of his time are now in positions of power and are busy criminalising politics. Organised crime is on the rise, especially break-ins and car-thefts.

The driver taking us to Pretoria was telling us stories of organised car-thefts. It's practically a cops-and-robbers game. Car owners started with basic devices. They put sturdy steering locks. Thieves would remove the steering, fix another and drive away. The owner would fix a gear-handle lock or shackle. The thieves would coat it with a compound that made it very cold and brittle and one hammer blow would crack it open. The owner would paint the registration number on the roof, so that even if stolen, cops can locate the car from the air immediately. The thieves would drive the stolen car into a closed van and drive off. The owner would fix GPS in his car (costly equipment, but a BMW owner can afford it). In one case, such a car was stolen here and reported to the police after 30 mins. They police checked through GPS and found that the car was in Mozambique! The thieves had driven the car into a cargo plane and flown off (costly transport, but a BMW thief can afford it). Some owners have even tried keeping poisoned booze in the car.

The localities in both Jo'burg and Pretoria are clearly divided into the upper classes, upper-middle, and lower classes (blacks). Most of the house break-ins are naturally in the first category. Companies providing security do roaring business here. There is one very big locality called Sweto outside Jo'burg where most of the blacks (including Winnie Mandela) live. Most of the organised crime groups operate from there and maintain a strict code of silence over the blacks.

Saturday is a half day here, so we had decided to generally go around the shopping plaza. Some shops close early (they also need their weekend, see?). The whites here, although mostly Afrikaaners of Dutch extraction, are firmly committed to Brit culture and lifestyle. They are very serious about leisure and pukka about timings. And they are absolutely gaga over golf! There are 3-4 good golf courses here but the recent rains have converted a lot of them into muddy fields. So as per Peter: "The chaps are having some stressed out weekend at home maan!". Hearing we are from Dubai, they immediately exclaim: "Oh, great golf courses!" Dubai generally has good standing here. I was taking a snap of an open cafe where a few people were sitting outside, so out of courtesy Manihar went to ask them if it was okay. One lady said, depends on where the photo is going. On hearing 'Dubai', she asked whether she could come with the photo!

Coming back to the shopping plaza, we both kept on wishing that our wives could see this place. There was 30-50% discount sale on in some places too. We bought a few ties on sale, some small articles of clothing etc. We browsed through beautiful bookshops. The bookshops have a coffee bar and reading tables. so it's practically a library. Lot of people simply sit and browse through books - may even finish one at a sitting. We had decided to watch a movie tonight in one of the 16 halls. All the hits were going on and the Saturday rush was also high. Three films sold out before we reached the counter (Bone Collector, Double Jeopardy, American Beauty), so we chose another action movie - The Boondock Saints. Nice movie, though the halls are small.
..........

.The crowd was mostly teenagers, having a night out maybe. But real progressive, mind you. The movie halls are mostly coochie-cooing (and more) spots. Discipline and morality is not very enforced perhaps. Adult movies are also shown in these theatres. In the hotel room as well, there is a 'movie-on-demand' concept where you can choose a movie from a list on screen add a charge will be added to the room bill. The list includes adult movies as well.

I wish I had recording walkman. In my next tour I shall carry one, so that the writing can be done after I return home.

Sun City: 5.03.2000

Today we went to the Sun City. We took a coach from the hotel run by Rand Express. There are good systems here for ticket-booking. There is a service called 'Compu-ticket', who has an outlet in the Sandton City. They do a variety of ticket bookings through the computer (not only travel-related). So we had bought the tickets and simply boarded the coach at 9.30 am and we were off.

Manihar had been to the Sun City once earlier, so he knew the routine, in terms of things to do and see.

The journey took around 2.5 hours, over pleasantly rolling lands. We crossed a lot of cyclists in cycling gear puffing away. There were people in open-top cars enjoying the breeze. Chaps on 500cc motorbikes vrooomed past. Cars were turning in to golf courses along the way. At the Rand depot, as we passed, we saw a couple of guys with remote-controlled cars getting ready to race on tracks drawn on the ground. These guys are serious about their leisure, I tell you.

The Sun City is a big and beautiful resort. All the building architecture is in the lines of ancient Inca cities -- big broken stones, arches and statues. But it is very consistent and the overall effect is good since the structures stick out from jungles and look a bit like an Inca city. There is, in fact,a portion called 'The Lost City' which looks absolutely that way. There are also three hotels with various price tags and the top one (The Palace) is where the Miss World competition was held (Aishwariya Rai's time)...........

There is the facility of a small guided tour inside the Sun City which we could not take this time because of lack of space in the bus. We anyway managed to cover most of the worthwhile spots. We walked through a very big casino with mostly the jackpot machines, but Bingo was also in progress. There is also a games arcade for kids. We passed out of the casino and stopped at a sort of 'volcano point', where there is a fire burning in a cave and at long intervals smoke is emitted with deep rumbling sounds. In fact, they even make the ground shake like an earthquake. We could not wait for the shakes but carried on to the wave pool...........

The wave pool (or Vally of the Waves) is quite big, together with a sandy beach. Like a real beach on a sunny day, people were lying on mats in swimwear, sunning themselves. We had brought our trunks and went into the water. The pool is closed on three sides and the waves come out of the depth of the 'U'. It is quite deep at that end. The waves were good -- high ones at long intervals at first, changing over to a continuous criss-cross later (Lassi-bananewali, as per Manihar).Many families had come and the children were enjoying themselves hugely. So were the young couples who took this opportunity to remain continuously wrapped around each other! Most of the whites have very well-maintained figures...........

After the waves, Manihar took a couple of slides down Slide Hill. We changed and walked up to The Lost City. This area has a deep blue still pool which is extremely beautiful. People were swimming and lying around here too, but in lesser numbers. We climbed up a flight of steps to The Palace, where we could not enter though...........

By this time we were jolly hungry and walked back to the casino area which had some food joints, and had -- guess what -- pizza! I had a Bengali Pizza, which tasted like bhel puri. We took a shuttle bus to the lake side where they do para-sailing, that is, a parachute is pulled along by a speed-boat and the chap who is tied to the parachute rises in the air. Manihar had done this earlier and I did not feel like it -- but we watched a few people take off. (I did this later at Canary Islands)..........

We left the place by six, pleasantly tired. The same bus took us back to the hotel. Incidentally, in the bus we met a couple who were from Mauritius and it turned out that the lady was from Lucknow, Manihar's birthplace! So we could get some useful information on Mauritius. They've lived there for 10 years and were into the business of 'bridal fabrics' -- what a line!

So Sun City was a good trip overall. Incidentally, till a few years ago, such places were not open to blacks at all. Even now, black visitors are quite few. Food for thought ...

Johannesburg: 6.03.2000

Today we were occupied by our work in Jo'burg till around 2.00 pm. We had a working lunch with a customer after that.

The working lunch scenario was interesting. We had arranged to meet him at Carlton Centre, which is a commercial complex at the heart of the city. The place was suggested by the client himself, who was once an Indian from Surat -- Mr. Shabir...........

As one customer's car dropped us at the entrance to Carlton Centre, we asked the driver if it was safe inside (we knew very well the streets were not safe). The driver thought a bit and said: "Should be!". We entered and found a big complex of shops, quite empty, with a few blacks loitering and eyeing our suits and ties. We walked very fast into a communication centre and called Shabir to come and meet us at McDonald's in the same complex downstairs, because we thought that should be safe. Shabir also said: "Be very careful!". We went downstairs to find McDonald's and there was quite a lot of people there. But, whereas in Sandton City almost all were whites, here almost all were blacks. On a working Monday, the number of male blacks loitering around was very high, a clear indication of the poor employment position of the blacks. Anyway, partly because of all the crime stories we were hearing, we were quite scared of groups of blacks generally whiling away time. (Incidentally, it never struck us that we were not white to start with).

We wanted to go to the loo. We both went in, and while in action, 2-3 blacks came and stood near us and one of then joined us. We were so nervous that we practically escaped with the activity half-finished. In a lot of English movies, we have seen fanciful murders done in empty public toilets!

In the afternoon we went to an area where they sell wooden artifacts on the streets. Their bead work is especially fine and we bought a few specimens of dolls.

We were entertaining our biggest customer in the evening, whose origins are from India. He has been in South Africa from birth, right through the apartheid days to these days of so-called independence of blacks. Apartheid was bad, he says, as they were even forced to live in separate colonies of Asians, coloured and blacks. Although Asians maintained their status and educational developments to some extent, the blacks were deliberately kept uneducated by not providing educational opportunities. However, the trade blockade from other countries have made South Africa very self-reliant and industrialised. Only the black community (which is 33 million out of the 50 million in SA) have remained third world.

The other reason for such rampant black crime , he said, was that the legal system is now based on the American legal system, whose punishments are too mild for Africa. Murder is now bailable, which is fun for the criminal-minded black.

There is another major characteristic of the South African -- gambling. Casinos abound in Jo'burg, although mostly frequented by whites. There used to be a State-run lottery earlier (or "Lotto" as they say) which was discontinued five years ago. Now again it has been announced -- weekly draws starting 11th March, 2.50 Rand per ticket, with a jackpot of 3 million Rand!! South Africa has gone crazy about it - 70% of the population is expected to buy tickets.

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