To accompany Ivan Vladislavić as he makes his way through the streets of Johannesburg is to be filled at once with delight and an overwhelming saudade for a city that has undergone staggering changes. Taking on multiple identities for the diverse populations that call it home, our once-thriving metropolis is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic infrastructure crisis.
Vladislavić’s concerns are with art and architecture, with the places where people choose to live and the things they seek to create. Portrait with Keys (2007), a predecessor to The Near North, was in effect an archive of 138 numbered texts on Kensington and surrounds, an area of Johannesburg that he walked, observed and reflected on over a number of years.
US writer Rebecca Solnit posits that if walking a city can be compared to speaking a language, then when parts of old Paris disappear, a language dies and, along with it, colloquialisms, jokes and curses. Were only formal grammar to remain, and the act of walking to be eroded, the city as a collection of stories may become unreadable.
In The Near North, Vladislavić reprises his role of the modern-day flâneur, wandering the streets and musing on incidences of decay and rebirth. In a series of six chapters, each containing a number of evocative sketches, he painstakingly documents the transitions Johannesburg has gone through, and the changes that continue to impact the city and the lives of those who inhabit it.
Our mad, bad Joburg is notoriously difficult to live in, yet many people love it. This enigmatic affection permeates Vladislavić’s writing. Some years ago, he and his wife, Minky, sold their house in Kensington and moved to Riviera in the north. Situated between the historic suburbs of Houghton Estate and Saxonwold, it’s an area where most residents live in apartments.
Will the move to a safer neighbourhood make the city less interesting? he ponders.
On the contrary, he finds new views, new streets to explore, new routes to follow and a different sense of Johannesburg. The Near North chronicles his discoveries, recording the spirit of his new neighbourhood and the connections that people have established with it.
On the demolition of homes by property developers, Vladislavić writes: “It’s a Johannesburg construction principle. Before a sod is turned, you erect a wall with an immense gate in it, perhaps also a guard hut with thick, mirrored glass behind which a man may be glimpsed or imagined, keeping watch at all hours.”
When he sees men arrive to take away window frames and mantelpieces, he likes the idea of a grand fireplace or fancy window being spirited away to the edge of the city and installed in an RDP house. He just wishes that the windows could take their view of lawns and shrubbery with them.
He is horrified by the hacking of trees mutilated to clear space for visibility or felled, groaning and twisting, because their leaves are messy — an entrenched Joburg tradition. Ripping out trees that provided shade and privacy for Minky’s office reduces her to tears.
On Covid-19 he writes: “The pandemic makes our metaphors literal. The virus goes viral. The public space is toxic. We are sick to death of one another.” Minky returns from shopping for essentials at the mall, noticeably shaken. The stores are crowded, resembling the holiday rush, with very full shopping carts and half-empty shelves.
Whether it’s the lush private gardens of Houghton or the rough and ready public garden which my Kensington friends made on Langerman Kop, what interests me is how people root themselves in a place and how they come to feel at home.
She couldn’t find milk or potatoes and learnt from a cashier that people are buying in bulk. Oddly, it seems like the shoppers are enjoying themselves, not too concerned about keeping their distance. Minky feels like they’re excited to participate in the panic buying they’ve seen on TV, wanting to be involved in the catastrophe and avoid missing out. “What will become of the people who cannot panic-buy and stockpile?” they wonder.
Capturing the essence of place, Vladislavić describes how shopping malls sprang up like mushrooms between 2002 and 2016, as people had less and less money to spend; how the nails he sees in the tar are holding the city together; why a man is planting an orchard on municipal land to make it useful; how Uber drivers stick to Google maps even if you know a better route; how cemeteries have fallen into disrepair; how glittering new office buildings are required by law to include a pavement cafe “to enhance connectivity”.
“Whether it’s the lush private gardens of Houghton or the rough and ready public garden which my Kensington friends made on Langerman Kop, what interests me is how people root themselves in a place and how they come to feel at home,” he says.
“Johannesburg is an unpredictable and sometimes unforgiving city and part of a larger world that feels precarious, that’s full of conflict and even catastrophe. My book is also about those unforeseen events that come along to displace you when you least expect it. I hope that readers ... will find something of their own life in its pages, that they will find things that are familiar and things that are surprising and strange and that reading the book will cast my city and perhaps their own in a slightly different light.”
The Near North is a masterwork of profound insight and quiet strength. Both deeply personal and broadly sweeping, moving between household crises and public spectacles, it is playfully funny and ironic, yet intensely earnest in detailing the brokenness of Vladislavić’s beloved city.
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