Joburg I Love You… But You’re Bringing Me Down

I have wanted to write something a little more serious for a while now. I was going to write about how we value rotten dinosaurs more than all human life on the planet. That didn’t quite work out. I kinda figured Randall Munroe had the ridiculousness of that situation covered. With illustrations to boot.

Looks like I did not have to wait long for inspiration to literally come knocking at my (car) window in the form of a Sudanese refugee.

This moment happened in the heart of Braamfontein, an area that is meant to be the flag flying high for the new integrated South Africa. I have often told so many people that the number of fucks people give about who you are, or where you’re from, amounts to pretty much zero. Everyone is just there to have a good time. That is until you’re poor and desperate, and I’m not talking about getting your next hit of Nyope, Bath Salts, Krokodil, or whatever fucked up shit people are resorting to for that brief moment of sweet oblivion.

In front of me was the look of hopelessness and abject terror. Terror of having to face another day. Terror of dying cold, alone and unwanted in a foreign city that is actively and systematically geared to making your life as difficult as possible.

I don’t know his name. It never crossed my mind to ask it.

He tells me how he came here from Sudan, from a refugee camp. Doing whatever it took to get to Johannesburg (the only name beyond his brother’s that he knows in South Africa), clutching nothing but a worn piece of paper with an address for his brother and a small bag of clothes. Little did he know upon arrival that the address he was looking for was still another thousand kilometers away, and they may as well have been a million to him. Johannesburg is not the place of his salvation. It is a concrete cage of callous cynics, and hardened hearts.

He implores me to listen. Tears well up in his eyes, running down his cheeks and dripping onto my hand as he refuses to let go of me. They leave glistening lines down his weathered cheeks, now the only part of him not covered in grime. He needs money for a bus to find his brother. When he arrived the police beat him, took his clothes and passport, and threw him back out on the street. He tells me how he feels like a dog. He hasn’t been able to wash in over a week. He is starving. He says even the refugee camp was better than this. He sleeps in the station.

“”Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!” Frightened! Frightened!
Now they were beginning to be afraid of me….
“Look at the nigger! … Mama, a Negro! … Hell, he’s getting mad….””
(Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks)

All you need to do is replace “Negro” with “foreigner/beggar/poor person”.

As he talks, all around us drunk revelers pass. Absolutely oblivious. He has approached them all, and been turned away by all.

So the boring collect
I mean all disrespect

In the neighborhood bars
I’d once dreamt I would drink

New York, I Love You
But you’re freaking me out

There’s a ton of the twist
But we’re fresh out of shout

Like a death in the hall
That you hear through your wall

New York, I Love You
But you’re freaking me out

New York, I Love You
But you’re bringing me down

New York, I Love You
But you’re bringing me down

Like a death of the heart
Jesus, where do I start?

But you’re still the one pool
Where I’d happily drown

I have always made the claim New York and Johannesburg have a lot in common. Given the above extract from LCD Soundsystem’s New York I love you but you’re bringing me down, it would seem they have more in common than I would like. Boring people trying to be interesting all huddle together desperately praying that if they drink enough or pretend long enough it will go away.

He has not once asked for money. Only for work, for food, a place to clean himself. I take him in my car to BP, buy him something to eat and drink, and some soap to clean himself. I take him back to De Beer Street. He says he will keep trying until everyone is gone. I give him the rest of my cash money. It is all I can do… and disappear into the crowds.