SOUTHGATE, JOHANNESBURG, NOVEMBER 2002

At dawn, a white jogger ran along a side road

beyond the budget hotel’s high, spiked railings.

So the neighbourhood was safe. But for whom?

Later, beneath the barbed wire topped wall

of the dentist’s opposite – a notice warned

of armed response – half a dozen or so black men gathered

in ones and twos. Some had crude boards announcing

their crafts:  brick layer, gardener. Sometimes a pick-up stopped.

The men moved forward. There was talk with the baas.

Sometimes one of them got in the back.

I could not imagine such

determination.

On the corner itself, entrepreneurs set up impromptu stalls:

fruit and vegetables stacked symmetrically;

a hairdresser; a couple of guys changing car

exhausts; a man in rags selling a toilet seat.

All would have walked, I learned, carrying their gear,

daily up the road from Soweto, miles over the brow.

 

 

 

barbed wirebassbrick layerbudget hotelcar exhaustsentrepreneurgardenerhairdresserjoggerSowetostallstoilet seatwhite