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Joburg has a great opportunity to wow tourists during the World Cup, and quite a bit of work needs to be done to make sure visitors have a great time in the city of gold.
 I TOOK a small group of folk on a tour of the inner city last Saturday, 31 January - must say that they were all tremendously impressed by the changes that have taken place over the past five years or so.
However, they kept asking me why there were still what clearly were "sinkholes" (really bad buildings) that were allowed to exist in many places in the city, the proliferation of signs and giant billboards on buildings mostly advertising liquor, the chaotic conditions around Joubert Park (we went to look at the Rea Vaya station prototype), the blatant law-breaking by taxis and the complete absence of the Johannesburg metropolitan police department, the JMPD (this was before the metro police strike had started!).
It's actually good for me to see the city through other people's eyes from time to time - one gets so used to certain unacceptable issues that, after a long while, they tend to blend into the background, and you start accepting that this is the normal standard!
However, as our vehicle tried to force its way via one of the link roads from Claim into Troye streets to see the pilot Rea Vaya station, I started to wonder what this area would look like in the now less than 500 days to the big event.
Troye Street is a solid column of frenzy and chaos as minibus-taxis dodge, wriggle and shove their way noisily northwards trying to miss the intersecting traffic and the constant stream of pedestrians dodging around and through the traffic. The street has some buildings in awful shape on its eastern edge and the pavements are crowded confusingly with hawkers. It is excitingly chaotic on the one hand and thoroughly depressing, and somewhat intimidating, on the other.
The same applies to the southward traffic down King George Street on the western side of Joubert Park. The railway embankments on the south of the Johannesburg Art Gallery look like permanent tip sites.
A drive through central Hillbrow added to my concern regarding the city and its residents' readiness for the hordes that apparently will descend on us for the World Cup. The new pavements are gritty from a million feet a day and should be pressure washed once a week at least.
The new street lights are already being covered in posters. The Centre City upgraded areas in the central, southwestern, mining and financial, and Newtown areas, ie the central, west and southwestern sections of the city, are in good shape (except for their pavements and lack of signage) and, provided they are adequately and visibly policed, will handle the onslaught. I do trust that we are going to have every street adequately signposted.
Football tourists
I was interviewed during the week by a journalist who wants to do a series of articles for his Irish newspaper on what their football followers should be going to see when they are here and not watching the game. We discussed a variety of options but I started wondering if we are going to have more integrated offerings and "special deals".
For instance, if you decide to watch a game on the big screen on Mary Fitzgerald Square, will the local restaurants, which are many and varied, be selling their wares around the edge of the square? Will there be organised entertainment, maybe some decent flea markets so that the visitor or "watcher-on-the-square" can get a "holistic" (hate that word!) day or half-a-day entertainment? Will there be special entry prices and packages for visitors to Museum Africa, the Workers' Library and Museum, maybe Sci-Bono, the art gallery (back to Joubert Park), the Constitutional Court, et cetera?
Are we training articulate guides to walk people around Newtown, up Main Street to Gandhi Square with all its side streets to show off the Rand Club (will they be allowing visitors to come into their famous bar for an ale?), the Guildhall and Gandhi Square - each with their own unique history? Are we producing maps that are visitor-friendly, showing coffee shops, restaurants and more important watering holes (and toilets!) and maybe night clubs where you can or shouldn't go?
Are we producing maps that provide information on some of our more important political buildings with short histories? Can they walk through parts of the legislature? Is there going to be someone charged with training the folk at Kwa Mai Mai and Faraday muti market that visitors are important to us and to put up with being photographed instead of swearing and chasing away tourists? After all, what a market for their homebrewed Viagra!
I really hope someone is masterminding what I would call "Inner City 2010". If this is all happening, great! If it isn't we have surely got a great deal to do - I fear it is the latter as I have seen or heard absolutely nothing in the media. In fact, I phoned one obvious target for the soccer visitor to find out if it was having special entry fees, and they laughed.
Because they sell a product in opposition to one of the major sponsors, they are still trying to find out if they will be allowed to even be open! They've been asking for over a year! If they aren't, then the city will lose one of its big attractions.
Well, time is short, we're on the wrong side of 500 days and it doesn't take five minutes to train city guides and plan a welcoming and organised inner city.
By-laws
Going back to my group of last Saturday, so much of what they asked about related to the complete lack of by-law enforcement. "Well," they said, "if the by-laws are clearly not being implemented, why don't you take the matter further - somewhere up the line?"
The problem, of course, is that there is no reaction when one goes up the line! One of the participants wrote me a thank you note and included the following comment:
"It is a great pity that all the hard work that has been put into the area is being constantly hindered and undermined by the Johannesburg metro police not coming to the table and pulling their weight. The lack of law enforcement and visible policing is clearly noticeable as during the four-hour tour, we did not encounter any foot patrols or metro police vehicles at all.
"Although you explained briefly what the current situation is with the metro police department, I still believe this can be addressed through greater pressure from the public, businesses and from those who have invested a large amount of time and effort to fight urban decay and revitalise the CBD."
Well, I wish that this was the case, but the situation has been allowed to get out of hand to the extent that I really wonder if it is salvageable. How is it possible for a vital service such as the metro police to get into such a deplorable mess? Last year, there was the "shootout" between the South African Police Service and the JMPD and we still haven't heard the results of the investigation.
Now we have a strike of JMPD officers who, for the first time in their lives, seem to be applying zero-tolerance, not at the application of the law, but at their chief!
Inefficient service
As part of the run-up to the Inner City Summit, now a couple of years back, we were asked to do a perception survey on a number of issues and the JMPD proved to be seen as the most ineffective service in the council. But nothing happens! We hear of training courses but attitudes don't change; we hear of zero tolerance but it appears focused on drivers using cellphones and even then ...!
For me, the worst example of their "I'm alright Jack" attitude came late last year. There have been many, many complaints for years now about the lack of on-the-spot traffic control in the city which allows taxis, in particular, to jump traffic lights and block the traffic in the other direction, which becomes even worse when the traffic lights are down.
In the northern suburbs, the JMPD has condescended to allow a private company to provide traffic wardens to work at busy intersections at peak hours or to take over when traffic lights fail. They do a great job and are friendly, smiling and efficient.
I was approached by a person who wanted to do the same for the inner city - he could do exactly the same service that was being provided in the northern suburbs but throughout the inner city - provide as many as a thousand folk who could be trained by the JMPD and it would cost the service nothing. The answer was, "No thanks, we don't have a problem in the inner city."
When I was at school, admittedly a long, long time ago, I distinctly remember that at every assembly the headmaster would talk about the perception of the school resting on just one boy. That boy would inevitably be someone in school uniform who had not offered his seat to an adult on the bus or train. If that happened, he thundered every week, the name of the school would be damned!
The reverse of that story unfortunately doesn't work. The perception that most people have of the JMPD is that it is generally useless - yes, once in a while someone writes to the media giving thanks to an officer who has provided assistance beyond the call of duty, or we hear of some special heroism that we all laud and are thankful for, but these rare and intermittent shining examples do not have the effect of covering the entire force with glory!
The inner city, in particular, has suffered from years of lack of adequate enforcement; maybe, just maybe, someone is going to investigate the current complaints of corruption, nepotism, favouritism, et cetera, and start building a force that citizens can be proud of and who are proud of their own achievements. A great city shouldn't settle for less!
Moving
My other bit of news is that my wife and I have decided, after months of debating, to move to the little town of Montagu for our "twilight years". It is a big wrench because Johannesburg has become so much part of me over the last quarter of a century, but I will be hitting my three-score-years-and-ten shortly and want the time and peace to be able to do some serious writing about my favourite city, Johannesburg, warts and all, and about some of our great companies and buildings.
So, I am not retiring (I'm not the "retiring type" and believe that even the word "retirement" is of colonial origin!) nor putting my feet up. I will be retaining my business interest and will be visiting Jozi on a monthly basis. After next week, Citichat will come out on a monthly basis, the first "monthly" being in March.
All the best, Neil
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