Now that I live in the Cape, I don’t have much cause to visit Johannesburg very often. The last time I was there was in November last year for a re-union lunch with people I worked with over 30 years ago. One old friend had contacted me from his home in Switzerland, telling me he was visiting family but wouldn’t make it to the Cape. Might I be in Joburg, he wondered?
I hadn’t intended to be, but I decided to book a cheap flight to Joburg (something we will no doubt cherish in the future), book into the Hyde Park Tsogo Sun and arrange a catch-up lunch. I contacted another ex-colleague of ours with an invitation to join us and he contacted another ex-colleague plus our original mentor in London, who flew out specially for the lunch.
As it happened, his flight was delayed, so we pushed the lunch out to a dinner at our favourite Italian restaurant. Thinking back, it was a wonderful evening of reminiscing and how we took for granted back then our rights to travel the world, shake hands or man-hug, drink alcohol, laugh at old jokes and make plans for the future.
While I was in Joburg catching up with old friends and colleagues and walking through crowded shopping areas, I couldn’t help noticing the new developments along Oxford Road in Rosebank.
When I first arrived in South Africa in 1981, Rosebank almost had a village atmosphere about it. There was a great restaurant called The Courier on the site opposite the Park Hyatt hotel, which is now occupied by dense office space. There was the Arena theatre and a great restaurant/night-club in Oxford Road called The Palace, which was very popular with trendies like Jani Allen, the star act of the Sunday Times in those days. Oxford Road was a pleasant tree-lined avenue on the way from the fading Joburg CBD to the brave new world of Sandton’s emerging business hub.
Visual cacophony
Rosebank is now a visual cacophony of ugly glass buildings which don’t seem to have very many tenants. At least, that was the case last November and I doubt if things will get any better in the next few years. My well-informed Jewish friends told me last year that there were already 130 000 square metres of unlet office space in Sandton that landlords were prepared to admit to. The real figure could well have been much higher and it didn’t take into account the new glass monstrosities that had sprung up along Oxford Road. The figure for unlet office space all over the country is about to soar and I can’t see things improving, if they ever do, for many years to come.
One of my great delights as a retiree is to listen to the radio reports of horrific traffic tailbacks, morning and evening, and thank my lucky starts that I don’t have to sit in a slow-moving car for two hours at either end of the working day. In the digital age, it seems absurd that anybody should have to commute to an office in heavy traffic just to catch up on emails that they would have just as easily been able to read at home. But that’s the corporate world for you, and one lasting effect of the Covid-19 virus will be to change all that.
Because there has been no alternative under lockdown, many people have been encouraged to work from home; something that should have happened years ago. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, many of us who are fortunate enough to be connected can buy things, sell things, keep up with the news, watch videos, post banal comments on social media, email friends, do our banking, stay in touch with family and lead a reasonably satisfactory life despite being under virtual house arrest.
Only for the privileged
Private schools have been quick to take advantage of the internet to continue with the school curriculum and, while a Zoom class may not offer the same advantages as a real live classroom, it is surely a sensible interim measure. For those who can afford to be connected, that is. At the time of writing over 400 schools across the country had been burgled or vandalized, so, even if the African National Congress (ANC) had delivered those promised tablets to every pupil, they wouldn’t have lasted very long. Online education is only for the privileged minority, it seems.
Many of our talk show hosts have been getting very excited about the brave new digital world of business, saying that we needed a catalyst like Covid-19 to push us into the new era of business savvy. But, while many may be congratulating themselves on having the internet and thumbing their nose at the virus, surely we should be very wary of putting our eggs in one basket.
Not so long ago there was a cable fault down the west coast of Africa which slowed down the internet considerably for a while. Cable faults may be repairable, but what would happen if our beloved leaders, already drunk on power as some of them seem to be, decided to disconnect the internet for a while to stop the spread of coronavirus? Obviously for our own good.
Invasions of privacy
Or worse, what if our new best friend, China, decided to impose on South African citizens the sorts of invasions of privacy now taken for granted in China? Any memes insulting or mocking the ruling party would be seen as treason and that would carry a death sentence. Who would decide if it was insulting? Why, the ruling party, of course, with powers passed on to the police. Bye bye, Constitutional Court.
Exaggerated? No, I don’t think so, and based on some ministers’ behaviour over the past few weeks I think public surveillance and stiff punishments for ‘contraventions’ demonstrating a lack of respect would be many an ANC politician’s equivalent of a wet dream. Even worse than selling atchar without a licence.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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