Another Taxi day. c.2018

MTN Taxi Rank. Line No.9

I am doing a bad job of leaving on time. I set aside an hour for leaving which usually involves inspired makeup retouches and slapping together the lunch I’ll devour before the end of the second class I’ll be teaching that day. It’s always shocking to leave Yellow Wall to be swallowed up by the dry Joburg heat, but I’m becoming accustomed to the feeling of sweat dripping down my decolletage when I hop onto the local taxi to MTN/Wanderers Taxi Rank at the corner of Owl and Menton Road. I always hope to catch the seat at the door so I can be the window master and ensure we get good ventilation and that the sweat—now passing the three pairs of floating ribs under my breasts—stains its cooling effect on my overly moist skin instead of my clothes. 

Owl Street, left onto Annet Road, the turn off left onto Enoch Sontonga Avenue passed Sturrock Park Stadium onto a trafficked Jorissen where outsourced security guards dressed in black stand guard against students who can’t afford to pay tuition at Wits University; then right onto Bertha Street to face the Mandela Bridge—away from reminders that Fees have not fallen and that the streets remain populated with more pressing matters than higher education; and into the city we dip, as we take a final left onto Lilian Ngoyi.

I used to fear the inner city, especially the MTN/Wanderers area. I’d imagined it was like the filth Ayi Kwei Armah describes in the Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, “covered thickly with the juice of every imaginable kind of waste matter.”

Johannesburg CBD is made up of one way streets. We flow up Rissik Street and head closer to the potjie aroma of scents coming from ingredients such as counterfeit clothing, hospice and third-hand thrift costumes in piles along the streets, fast-food and street food, fruit and possibly cheap labour. Symbols of influence. Testimonies of Western modernity held over the heads of everyday people who will never reach the upper echelon that is constantly recreated to distance ‘us and them’. The city bowl, where the hope of escaping from poverty comes in the form of offering hand-to-mouth prices in the exchange of goods multiplied by their hundreds in a five kilometre stretch.

Moving along to De Villiers Street, across the back street of Park Station I remember an early morning taxi to Wanderers Taxi Rank where I saw the community of homeless folk waking up along this street that would later become peopled with travellers and vendors and municipal officials who always seemed to be in between a lunch break, smoke break or a break to catch up on the word on the street. These conveniently lasted longer than the work to be covered that day. Who could attempt to clear the streets from the toxic waste of rotting fruit and food, fermenting bodily fluids, solids and deteriorating dreams without taking a series of five minute breaks? This is an arduous task that involves deep meditation and a sense of dignity that has no roots in perception and monetary reward. I wonder what the plan of progression for the municipal workers are: most of them women, they are done up in thick, darkened eyebrows and bright lip colours adorning overly powdered faces despite the unflattering fit and colour of their blue construction overalls. One hopes that after work, being able to afford the pit of cheap clothes and makeup doesn’t equate their value. No one should be abused like this; no one when the dilapidation of the inner city is a combination of overpopulation, a misuse of funds and a possible Imposter syndrome the citizens of this old town have adopted. 

The taxi passes a young woman in an acceptably cheap wig, a white t-shirt and blue skinny jeans at the intersection of De Villiers and Joubert. She skews her head into her left armpit to block her nose. In this moving vehicle we catch the stench that continues for 200 meters before we turn down Joubert and back onto Lilian Ngoyi; the same bustle with a quieter smell. To the everyday commuter like myself, passing through social and economic distress is part of the training ground for fighting a little harder to stay another day in service to dreams that brought you here. It’s a reason to remember and never care too deeply about the pain of injustice. 

Approaching Wanderers Street where the remainder of us will be let out into the city to make pace for the  MTN and Wanderers Taxi Ranks, I consider how a single taxi ride takes me from quiet upper middle class suburbia, collides with the doors of learning, introduces me to the colour and pain of making-ends-meet and deposits me safely into the center  of the City of Gold where little on the street shines with that precious mineral except the glimmer of dying dreams in the eyes of the everyday people.