Johannesburg

[lovetravellingoz]

Every city has areas which are "violent and dangerous". To say that in JNB they're "on a scale beyond any Australian city" I think exaggerates the situation there..

Well we are going to have to disagree on this.

As as example, and since you are from MEL, lovetravellingoz, try driving through Dandenong after dark, or try catching a train there or if you really have a desire to see the inside of an ICU try walking anywhere around that city at night. Have you stayed or lived in JNB, lovetravellingoz? Do you have first hand experience of the place to enable you to form an informed opinion?
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Not that Dandenong is one of my favourite places. But yes not only have I driven through it after dark, but I have walked there after dark. One of my sister-in-laws unfortunately became a paraplegic at age18 several decades back and her unit is about 500m off the main street. She however does not need to live behind barb wire fences and has no need for CCTV. But yes I am more than aware that the area does have drug and other issues.

Do I have first hand experience of Johannesberg?
*Yes I was there recently.
* I spent 26 days living with 2 born and bread South Africans last year and used their advice to base my travels on. Both when at home sleep with their guns. I have no need for this in MEL or any other Australian city. Both personally knew people that had been murdered, and both kept prompting me to b abit more cautious in my explorations.
* I wasa Scout Leader for 5 years with a South African who returned to JNB every year to visit her parents and aunts who still lived there. He stories and advice told around the campfire do not match your view
* When I was in Kleinmond ( on the coast just to the west of Cape Town) I had a very friendly chat with a girl working at the Supermarket. Kleinmond does not normally attract Australians and so we were unusual. After some conversation I asked whether she grew up in Kleinmond, and with genuine fear in her eyes she said not and was from Johannsberg and then went on to discuss how much safer in was to be living in Kleinmond. She was clearly of a poorer background and would have had to have lived in one of the not so nice parts of Johannesberg.

I think if you do not know that parts of Johannesberg are extremely violent on a scale beyond what is in Australia then you have information vastly different than mine.


And I have no qualms about travelling to many places others do not.

ie

- I backpacked through Egypt, Jordan and Israel with my three daughters then aged 5, 8 and 11 for 9 weeks over the Xmas after 9/11 and we were amongst the very, very, few westerners there. That included remote places like the Wadi Rum Desert and the like as we visited many of the less visted locations.
- Spent December in Nepal despite the earthquake dame and the more devasting Indian Fuel Blockade
- When in Africa last year I spent may nights in a simple pop-up tent



Now that does not mean that one cannot visit Johannsberg. One can. But it has some very violent areas.

Comparisons to NYC of 20-30 years ago are pretty meaningless. If I travel to NYC today I simply can do many more things more safely than one could 30 years ago. I would not have let that stop me visiting NYC back then, but to be sure I would not then have jumped on the subway after midnight like I did on my last visit there.

 

[vetrade]

ATM we have the pleasure of the company of our son and future D.I.L who are visiting from JNB. As she has lived there since she was a child (she's 32 now), the discussion I had with her last night might provide some further context for this thread.

She and her family and circle of friends are very aware of the crime in JNB but none has been personally the victim of physical assault, carjacking or home robbery etc. despite their many years there. Naturally they are very aware of the risk and take precautions - as an example when entering the auto gates to their home (which many properties have) they always check the rear view mirror for cars behind and never turn into their driveway until the gates have opened. This is to ensure that no one can pull up behind them and block them from moving.

Victims of robberies and carjackings are commonly those people who flaunt their wealth e.g. those who wear obviously very expensive jewellery, drive Rollers and Porsches etc. however most of the serious crime responsible for the alarming statistics everyone quotes occurs in the townships i.e. shanty towns where many people live in very close proximity to each other in small ramshackle shelters. In these sometimes vast areas there are often only very narrow paths between shelters and roads are rare. It's impossible for even an ambulance to get to anyone who is injured or sick there. This is where most of the murders, assaults and robberies etc. and the vast majority of them are apparently racially based but not in they way we westerners might intuitively think. Over there black South Africans harbour a deep animosity towards Nigerians and Somalis etc who flee their own country for better economic opportunity and who are generally regarded as being more industrious / better work ethic than the locals - who look upon them as stealing their jobs. Sometimes large numbers of black locals go on random rampages and attack any Nigerian or Somali they find.

Most murders, assaults & robberies are therefore blacks attacking other blacks in these townships where police have virtually no hope of even getting access much less investigating or identifying those responsible. This is what can fester when people are virtually living on top of each other in poverty.

For the main part tourists would never frequent (or even get access to) these high risk areas and can generally avoid trouble provided they don't draw attention to themselves by flashing money around etc.

 

[Milboo]

We stayed in Houghton (The Residence is a lovely hotel) and had dinner in Parknorth Heights (at Cube) - so was not a big transfer but at night our driver was very careful not to stop at red lights, they were treated more like giveaway signs. We saw beggars sitting in the middle of the road at intersections. Doors were kept locked.

We had to wait for our driver after dinner and the restaurant staff would not allow us to wait outside. They did instead and came and escorted us to the car when it arrived.

 

[get me outta here]

My SonIL is going to Mbabane, Swaziland for 6 months. Anyone been to SZ? MTS airport seems to be closest to Mbabane.