An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane
by Sarah-Leah Pimentel
“That was a good visit. It was so good to see Flo and Mario. It’s been way too long,” Toni reflected as she pulled her rental car away from the house.
She paused to negotiate her way back up the narrow driveway before the motorised gate closed again. Toni was less worried about hitting the gate or the wall. She was watching the rearview mirror for skollies, those layabouts who loitered in the suburbs during the day. You never knew who might be an “undercover criminal” watching for a chance to hijack unsuspecting motorists or sneak onto a property through an open gate.
“Eish, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in Jozi[1],” Toni thought, as she proceeded – incident-free – onto the road, and checked that the gate was now safely closed to protect the elderly couple she’d come to visit.
Twelve years of living in Cape Town had made her less aware of her surroundings, more complacent about personal security. But as soon as she landed in her hometown of Johannesburg, her sixth sense of hyperalertedness kicked in instantaneously.
Toni’s visits home had become less frequent as many of her friends moved abroad, and especially when her ageing parents also finally moved to Cape Town. Each time she came home, the degradation of the city’s infrastructure was more noticeable. This didn’t shock her. It was happening all over South Africa to varying degrees. What saddened her was that the ever-deepening morass of corruption, mismanagement and infrastructure collapse had left nothing untouched.
On the surface, this leafy suburban street in Kensington – just 20 minutes from the city centre – seemed little different from her childhood memories. Its residents continued to live as they always had behind their high walls that could hide anything from a tennis court to a luscious garden, or even a haunted house.
Behind those walls, however, families lived in fear. The walls, topped with a layer of spikes, got higher. If the spikes didn’t deter an opportune intruder, then the electric fence and burglar bars on every window and door might.
Yet none of this was on Toni’s mind as she drove down the leafy road. This is where she had grown up. She knew these streets like a palimpsest that would forever be etched into her soul. How many times had she walked from her house two blocks away to the Italian-run tennis club just up the road? The tennis club was gone now. During her visit, Flo told her that the council had converted the facility into basketball courts, more suited to today’s neighbourhood dynamics.
On these streets, she’d roller-skated and ridden her bike. Her playmates were long gone. Many had emigrated overseas. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken with any of them. Louise’s house was just at the top of this road, and the rock band she’d played in had a makeshift music studio in a converted garage around the corner. That house was now the borderland between the idyllic world of suburbia and the encroaching ghetto. The makeshift music studio was now a shebeen.[2]
These changes hadn’t come suddenly. Toni had watched them slowly envelope her childhood memories even before she moved away. Each time she returned, the changes became more pronounced, but in her mind, Toni could still see beyond the surface to another time, blurring the boundary between dream and reality.
“Yes, that was a good visit,” Toni repeated to herself as her thoughts turned inward. I’m glad I came. It’s been years since I last saw Flo and Mario. I remember meeting them for the first time when I joined the tennis club. Flo was friendly and always keen to share a tip to improve my game. Mario was the cantankerous one, swearing (in Italian) “la porca miseria” every time I missed a shot!
Toni giggled at the memory but immediately felt sad.
I’m glad I came. Mario might not be here next time, the way he was struggling with his portable oxygen tank. How old is he now? He must be in his 80s, like my parents. I can’t believe he still meets up at the Italian restaurant every month with his old tennis buddies!
It wasn’t just age that made Flo and Mario seem so fragile. It was the weight of living in that beautiful house where they’d raised their children, but knowing that given its proximity to the slums of Malvern, it would never fetch enough to buy a small place in a retirement village. And so they lived, with their memories of a different time, behind their electric fences and burglar bars, hoping that they would never become another crime statistic.
“Still,” thought Toni, as she stopped at the bottom of the hill before turning down Pandora Road, “despite everything, this street looks good. And there were no potholes!”
Toni glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 1:58 pm. She’d promised her friend Hema, who she was staying with, that she’d pick the kids up from school. It made sense for her to do this, as she was just 15 minutes away, but home was nearly 45 minutes from the school. The kids would be let out at 2:30. She needed to make a move.
Toni decided to take the highway, it would be quicker to go past Eastgate Mall and pick up the R24 and head into town that way. She indicated left and turned on the radio, leaving behind her childhood memories.
The traffic report came on: “…massive pile-up on Gillooly’s Interchange. All lanes closed to traffic. Please make way for emergency vehicles. Expect a 30-40 minute delay. Motorists, plan your routes accordingly. And now, for the news at 2….”
“O kak,” thought Toni. The accident at Gillooly’s wasn’t surprising. Just a regular afternoon on one of the worst designed interchanges. Three highways merged into one. Motorists on the far right who needed to exit at the Van Buuren off-ramp had only 400m to cross seven lanes of traffic to the left to reach the off-ramp. Those coming off the R21 on the left wanting to get onto N3 on the far right to merge with the M2 going into town similarly had to cross seven lanes of traffic in a few short metres. Toni had read somewhere that Gillooly’s was the busiest interchange in the Southern Hemisphere and in its heyday, was an engineering feat.
“Whoever designed that should be shot,” Toni mused, certain that the original engineers 40 years ago couldn’t have imagined the volume of traffic on the main highway linking the north of the city with the city centre. They certainly hadn’t planned for daily multi-car crashes.
Her internal dialogue started again. None of this is going to help me now. If I get on the highway at Eastgate, I’ll never make it in time.
I could go through the suburbs of Kensington, Bez Valley, Berea, Yeoville, Hillbrow and reach town that way.
No way, that’s probably the least safe way to get there! Berea and Yeoville are totally crime-ridden. I’m asking for a smash-and-grab and I doubt this dinky rental has protective window film.[3] Then in Hillbrow, the taxis will bring everything to a dead stop. And I need to cross Bree Street to get to Braamfontein. Isn’t that still closed due to the gas pipeline explosion two years ago? When are they ever going to fix that?
No, going through the city isn’t an option. You could pick up the M2 at Cleveland Road.
Yes, yes. That’s a better idea. Instead of trying to get to the M2 via the Gillooly’s chaos, I could just go through Malvern. It’ll take me five minutes.
Feeling chuffed with herself, Toni quickly checked where she was. Still in time to cut through Kensington and back into Malvern. She indicated left and turned up one of the little side streets and wound her way back through leafy ones.
“Let me go past the old tennis club,’ Toni thought, “see if anything is left standing.”
Heading up Mullins Road, Toni thought again of all the friends who had lived there but were now gone. Some had emigrated to Australia, Portugal, England. Others had moved to the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, to Sandton, Randburg and Rivonia. Only one of her childhood circle had moved to Cape Town. But yet, Cape Tonians complained constantly about all the “semigrants” from Johannesburg!
Turning right into St Frusquin Road, Toni remembered that only two friends remained in the area. One was Janet, who had lived on St. Frusquin but moved away to lecture at a university in a different province. A few years later she returned to care for her ailing mother. After her mom died, she isolated herself in the house during Covid and never left it. Despite several trips home, Janet always made excuses.
Janet’s house was sandwiched between two criminal holdouts. One house with grimy windows and tattered curtains sold drugs of every variety. The police apparently knew but turned a blind eye. The house on the other side had been transformed into what appeared to be a car repair shop. Janet said it was a “chop shop” that cannibalized stolen cars and sold them for parts.
Toni passed by Janet’s house. “If only I had time, I’d pop in to say hello.” But then she’d have to leave the boys waiting outside their school. Instead of slowing, Toni sped up a little. She drove past the drug den, the chop shop, and her old friend’s holdout, feeling sad for her classmate who had left, came back, and now, could never leave, surrounded by memories of a past that would never return and imprisoned by a house that nobody would buy.
Toni had reached the top of the hill. The old tennis club used to be tucked behind a grove of trees. Not only were the tennis courts gone, Toni noticed with a slight shock. The trees were too – cut for firewood, no doubt. Flo had also told her that the club house had burnt down after squatters invaded the property. Tin shacks filled the space where the club house once stood.
The ghosts of the past spoke again. Do you remember how after tennis every Saturday, the Italians would bring out the vino, formaggio and salami, always accompanied by fresh bread? They would reminisce nostalgically about their Italian childhoods in faraway villages, their lives as immigrants in South Africa, the factories they’d worked in, the businesses they’d started, the families they’d raised. Do you remember how proud they were of their kids, the first in their family to go to university? All that was left now, was an elderly man gasping for air and railing at the state of the country, while his wife prayed rosaries for the safety of her daughters.
I used to find their storytelling to be both romantic and deeply sad, as if they wanted to go back to that perfect place of their childhood, but knew it was gone forever. Now, I feel as if I’m them. Looking through a grove of imaginary trees for something that has long been erased from memory. Does there come an age when we stop looking forward towards an expectant future, and return to the womb of our childhoods, sanitizing it of all the uncertainty we felt then and repainting it in nostalgia and misplaced perfection?
Jules Street stood at the bottom of the hill. Busy as always. Cars hooting, ancient trucks spewing noxious fumes as they carried their goods to and from the nearby warehouses.
“Ah,” thought Toni, finally Jules Street, always same same.[4] Chaotic. Filled with people and cars. Large supermarkets and little spaza shops side by side. What stories this street could tell. A street almost as old as the city of Johannesburg itself.
Over 120 years ago, when Jozi was nothing more than a mining town that attracted only adventurers and mad men, the dirt track that became Jules Street connected the mines to the trading hub. The old tram station, converted a dozen times to serve the changing needs of each new generation, proudly announces her age from her date stone: 1911. Jules Street watched Johannesburg become a city. It is also the longest perfectly straight street in the city, running over three kilometres from Malvern, through Kensington, Belgravia, and Jeppestown, before turning into downtown Johannesburg. Over the years, bakeries and eateries gave way to spaza shops, hair braiding salons, and any collection of legitimate and illegitimate businesses. The neat row of second-hand car dealerships became panel beaters.
But one thing remains true. Jules Street is still a buzzing, dynamic, happening street where chancers and dreamers become small business owners or gamble away their life savings on a good idea that went bad. Their grit and tenacity can end in success or failure. But these are the hardworking men and women of Joburg, who for over a century have built their homes, fed their families and educated their children, often in the most trying circumstances. This Jules Street never was and never will be the street of the rich and powerful. It’ll never be filled with the soft money made in corporate offices in Sandton. Jules Street is the everyday person’s street. It is sparse of beauty but rich in human ingenuity. Its buildings are worn, tired and buckling under the need of long overdue maintenance. But still they stand. These paint-peeled walls, just like the people who work and live in them, are the foundations upon which this entire city is built.
Toni smiled as she turned into Jules Street. The people of Jules Street are tough, they have grit. Don’t mess with them or you’ll be sorry. But if you’re down on your luck, you’ll not find more generous people than the ones of Jules Street. These are my people. Their blood runs in my veins today, even though I live far way.
“Sjoe,[5] but this nostalgia is hitting you deep today,” Toni told herself as she felt tears prick at the edges of her eyes. She thought of the many times she’d walked this street on her way to the Malvern Library (which was still there) or to grab the best burger at The Clan (now under the management of its gazillionth owner). Looking at the crowded streets, filled with pedestrians and hawkers, she wondered if she’d still have the guts to walk down here alone, possibly the only white face on the entire street. There certainly were all kinds here – good people going about their business, bad ones looking for an opportunity to steal a phone or a handbag, and everyone else in between.
Toni rolled to a gentle stop in front of a non-functioning robot[6] that was treated like a four-way stop. As she took in the scene directly in front of her. And her heart turned cold. A deep shiver ran down her spine. “Girl, what the hell have you got yourself into now?”
Right in front of her were two white bakkies,[7] each with about five men on the open back of the vehicles, holding AK-47s at the ready, each pointing their weapon in a different direction in a 360˚ array. The two bakkies were positioned across the intersection to prevent any vehicles from moving down the lane that Toni was in, or the lane on the far side of the road for oncoming traffic.
“Who are these guys? What’s going on?” Toni asked herself, as her heart started to beat a little faster. She glanced in the rearview mirror. There was a car right behind her. To her right, another car had tried to overtake her, only to realize, as she had, that there was no thoroughfare. She was blocked on the right. On the left, several vehicles were parked in front of the curb. There was no way out, and no way to U-turn anywhere.
Was this a hold up? Or were these protective services? Toni peered through the line of armed men and could see that there were another two vehicles at the opposite side of the intersection, similarly carrying men with assault rifles. Then she saw it. The white, unmarked, armoured vehicle parked in front of the Spar supermarket on the opposite side of the road. This was a cash collection operation.
In most instances, cash-in-transit vehicles travelled in twos in closed armoured vans to collect money from banks, malls, and large stores. Toni had read that in dangerous neighbourhoods, which were vulnerable to ambushes, cash collectors carried a mini battalion to prevent a cash-in-transit heist. She hadn’t realized that Malvern had become so dangerous. Opportunist crime was one thing, but this was next level.
Toni had seen guns before, but she’d never been this close to ones this large. And at least one of them was pointing straight at her. It was more than just a little unnerving. It was absolutely terrifying. She began to look all around her. She was truly boxed in. If the men in the bakkie saw a threat or got spooked, she was first in the line of fire. She felt her palms get sweaty and her nervousness bordered on mild panic.
If things go south, what are my options? Should I try to squeeze my way into the space between the front and back seats? I’m not sure I’d fit! This rental car is tiny! Should I throw open the car door and crawl underneath the vehicle, or run across the street and try and duck into one of the nearby shops? Is this how I die?
She prayed this wasn’t a choice she’d need to make. All she could do was wait it out and stare down the barrel of a gun, quite literally. She tried to control her breathing.
After about ten minutes that felt like an interminable hour, the gun-toting security guards jumped from the bakkie and surrounded the cash-in transit van while the bakkies positioned themselves strategically in front and behind the van. Once in position, the whole convoy sped off down the road.
Traffic began to move again. Toni breathed a sigh of relief, and with trembling hands put the car into first gear, inching forward. One block down, she indicated to turn right into Cleveland Road. “Finally,” she thought, “two more minutes and I’ll be on the highway.”
Too soon, she realized she’d got herself into another jam. Cleveland Road was bottle-necked. Traffic wasn’t moving in either direction. The road was mostly blocked by large trucks carrying heavy loads. They were inching forward slowly but seemed to lurch wildly from side to side as they tried to make progress, aiming to get to the many factories and warehouses further down the road by the train station. The rail system had collapsed, so goods now needed to be moved by road.
“What on earth is going on now?” Toni asked herself. Again, she peered through the windscreen, trying to understand what might be holding up the traffic. She realized that the asphalted street had been reduced to a collection of potholes of varying sizes, making the trucks tilt at precarious angles as they rode over them.
Potholes were endemic to Johannesburg. The City Council claimed to have no money to maintain roads and fix robots, but everyone knew that funds earmarked for maintenance and infrastructure had made their way into the pockets of politicians and their friends. Meanwhile, Joburgers made jokes about their infamous potholes. A comedian produced a David Attenborough-style video about the “urban safari” of dodging potholes.[8] The main opposition party threw a “birthday party” to commemorate the first anniversary of “Kenny’s hole” – a hole on one of Johannesburg’s busiest thoroughfares that is allegedly two storeys deep![9]
Toni gripped the wheel tighter as an articulated truck headed straight for her to avoid a large pothole in the oncoming lane. She hugged the curb, hoping the driver would see her as he negotiated the mangled road in front of him. As she pulled over, she realized that she’d stopped directly outside Malvern Swimming Pool … or at least the building that used to be the swimming pool.
As a child, she’d spent many a summer with her friends swimming in the Olympic-size pool or tanning on the green lawns while reading a book. The entrance to the pool was completely shuttered up now. Most of the windows were broken. Some had been covered up with cardboard or wood, while others were gaping holes into a dark interior.
The paving in front of the building had also been torn up and it looked as if electrical cables had been ripped out of the ground. Toni knew that copper cables fetched a lot of money on the black market, and the media regularly reported on the constant battle between the electricity provider to repair electrical cables that had been vandalized by copper thieves. Clearly, they’d been here too.
As Toni took in the scene before her, she felt, yet again, that although the landmarks were as familiar as her own skin, she’d been transported into an alternate reality that more closely resembled a warzone – maybe in the Congo or Mogadishu – than the bustling working-class neighbourhood of her childhood.
Suddenly and without warning, Toni was overwhelmed by emotion. She felt the tears welling up. It was the relief of having escaped a possible shootout, anger over the destruction of her childhood home, and a deep, deep sadness for the general state of the city she loved and still missed. How could it have come to this? How do you even fix this? Could it get any worse?
Get a grip on yourself. You’re freaking out. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in Joburg. You’re shocked because Cape Town has managed to avoid this degradation, for now, at least. You’ve become soft, living in South Africa’s tourism capital. But this is what 10 million people deal with every day.
I’ve not forgotten. I just didn’t want to see. I didn’t choose to come this way today. Because I knew instinctively what lies here. I just didn’t expect it to be THIS bad. I need to get out of here now. I’m over this.
But there was no easy way out. A massive truck ahead prevented her from seeing how far down the congestion ran. So, she slowly inched her way in its shadow. Her thoughts wandered again as a phrase formed in her mind. Cry. The. Beloved. Country.
This was the title of a 1948 novel by Alan Paton. It was the story of an elderly black pastor who makes his way from the rural mountain kingdom of Natal to the bustle of Johannesburg to look for his son who had lost his way while seeking fortune in the city of Gold. The novel became a timeless admonition against the then new apartheid government and the policies that separated people by race. In the novel, the city of Johannesburg, with its characteristic mine dumps, is a metaphor for moral decay. Most of Joburg’s mine dumps were gone now, but Paton’s message became far more prophetic than he could possibly have imagined. Truly, at the heart of all its problems, thought Toni, was the moral decay of the people entrusted to maintaining and leading this city.
Indeed, I do cry for you, my beloved country.
Finally, she saw the highway bridge. “Just one more block,” she heard herself saying out loud, as she mentally encouraged the truck in front of her to move. Just a few short metres stood between her and freedom. Freedom from the crawling traffic and exhaust fumes, and freedom from her internal dialogue.
The truck in front of her careened wildly from side to side as it negotiated a massive pothole. Toni didn’t realise just how large it was until it was her turn to navigate it. She didn’t drive into the pothole. She fell into it. A massive crater in the middle of the road. It must have been at least 50-60cm deep and was probably the main reason for the congestion. She hoped she’d not damaged the wheels of her rental car. She came to a dead stop in the middle of the crater and slowly inched her way out on the other side.
Another sigh of relief. Only one more obstacle before entering the free-flowing highway: a very large intersection with four lanes in each direction and not a single working robot! It felt a little like a game of chicken. Who was brave enough to drive into the middle of the intersection and dodge the cars doing the same in the other three directions?
At first Toni did nothing, unsure which of the 15 or so cars had arrived first. But nobody seemed to care. A car behind her hooted angrily. The driver wanted her to move. Taking a deep breath, Toni put the vehicle into first gear and shot across the intersection, narrowly missing a couple of cars before finally driving onto the highway on-ramp. Finally, she’d made it.
Only when she’d merged into the traffic and was able to get into fifth gear, did she relax. She knew she’d drive on autopilot into the city, not needing to think about where to go on a highway she’d travelled on daily for seven years. She looked at the dashboard clock. 2:45.
She was so late. But she was safe. She couldn’t believe that the whole ordeal had only taken 45 minutes. She felt as if she’d aged 10 years in that time. She turned up the radio and sang along to the tune, feeling a lot more at ease. Some twenty minutes later, she pulled up outside the school and the two boys excitedly told her about their day, chattering easily as she drove them home.
In no time, they arrived. The boys went to their room. Toni collapsed on the couch. Hema’s husband popped his head into the lounge to say hello. He looked at her and commented: “You look a little pale. Are you alright?”
Toni smiled ruefully and said, “Make us a pot of coffee and I’ll tell you about my day.”
Footnotes
[1] Jozi or Jozi-town is an informal and affectionate name for Johannesburg.
[2] In South Africa, shebeens are unlicensed pubs that sell alcohol, often on the back of someone’s home.
[3] A smash-and-grab is when thieves smash the window of a stationary vehicle that is stuck in traffic and proceed to steal anything they can grab in less than a minute before running away through the traffic. The term was apparently coined in South Africa in the early 2000s when a company developed special smash-and-grab film that could be applied to car windows to prevent criminals from properly smashing the window.
[4] Same same is a South African expression to indicate things that are unchanging or have identical qualities.
[5] Afrikaans interjection that can express many different emotions, from surprise to relief or even exhaustion.
[6] Typical South African word for traffic lights.
[7] South African term for an open-back pickup truck.