Ask anyone what they know of Johannesburg (or Joburg to us locals) and they will usually tell you one of two things– gold and crime and sometimes an innovative combination of the two, ie: that we don’t wear much gold in public because of the crime. All true and yet, it’s really not so bad. 

It’s true that we don’t like to stop at traffic lights, especially late at night, or early mornings and most days. Our entrepreneurs (aka criminals) invented what is commonly known as “smash and grabs”, ie while someone stops at a traffic light another man uses a spark plug (or a like equivalent) to smash a window. Man in car goes into shock. Man outside steals the opportunity to take bag on seat, cellphone, wallet etc. Thus smash and grab. Sadly, sometimes this is also smash and point a gun or smash and “give me a lift to the nearest ATM to withdraw all your money”. It changes with the seasons and reasons, I guess.

Growing up in a small town in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, I remember learning the catchy traffic safety tune of ” Green means go, Yellow means slow and red means STOP.”

Of course, by the mid 80s our little beach paradise had only  two traffic lights but they were a source of great pride for our community, a sign that we were “progressive” and “modern” … admittedly, our jeans may have been 80s stonewashed but our thinking was completely whitewashed.

The thing is that, more often than not, our two traffic lights were on the blink. Literally. they would flash random red lights at us all the time. The more genetically challenged of the locals believed this was a form of  code signalling the much-feared “communist infiltration”.   To be fair and to give  context, it wasn’t so much a lack of genetic variety in the locals as it was an excess of finger-wagging in our prime minster’s propagandist speeches. (Hitler had his silly moustache, PW Botha had his shaky index finger). It  was the Cold War and emergency 80s after all. Everything was black, white or RED…. that dreaded tide of communism just waiting to wipe out our strict, moral, God-fearing folk. And this time, there would be no Moses to part the Red Sea. God had forsaken our cause in favour of nationalism. We were doomed.