#South Africa

I often say that Joburg is a great city to live in but a difficult city to visit. It’s not like Paris or New York, where you can just pop out from the subway, basically anywhere, and entertain yourself for days (assuming you have a big load of cash). Joburg takes a bit more time and effort to get to know and it helps tremendously if you have a local to guide you.

For the past week, news headlines in South Africa have been dominated by reports of xenophobic violence – attacks perpetrated by South African citizens against South African immigrants. The attacks started in Durban and later spread to Johannesburg.

On Friday I was walking down Gwi Gwi Mrwebi Street (formerly known as Pim Street) in Newtown. Gwi Gwi Mrwebi is only two blocks long and is kind of a secret street. The only people who know about it are bird-lovers (the city’s oldest bird seed factory, D. Kingsbury, is there), graffiti artists/enthusiasts (the buildings on Gwi Gwi Mrwebi, along with the pillars under the M1 highway nearby, are plastered with graffiti), and people who live/work near the highway overpass in Newtown.