Two decades ago, if you were to hop into a kayak and paddle down the Jukskei River to where it meets the Crocodile in the folds below Lanseria airport, and then voyage on to Hartbeespoort Dam, there were fish eagles calling from the emerald strip of jungle along its banks, and it was always a jolt to remember that the shiniest, most prosperous city in Africa was just there, behind the trees.
Now the embattled, polluted stream is a metaphor for Joburg itself — except that the water flows in the river every day, which cannot be said for the water in Jozi’s pipes.
Helen Zille has decamped from Cape Town to this shining city on the hill and planted her battle flag as she begins her campaign to be its next mayor.
There is no politicking or hyperbole in saying that Joburg is broken, and that the biggest of its many problems is its erratic, and for many, absent water supply.
Zille’s walk through Fordsburg to Fietas made international headlines. Yet her very presence in Joburg has already polarised people and whether she can surf to City Hall on a flood of pure, high pressure, drinkable water is as uncertain as if the traffic lights at Witkoppen and Malibongwe will be working tomorrow.
The long road to the polling booths is lined with all manner of possible missteps, careless whispers, machinations, vague promises, undertakings and delusions, otherwise known as campaign trail politics.
Not forgetting, either, that the Lucky Country is now firmly — and apparently irrevocably — in an era of rule by coalition government and that those are less stable than the nitroglycerine miners once used to blast the gold out of these hills.
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