Perhaps I read too much into Johannesburg’s lack of life on my return to the city.
It could just be the traditional slowdown as people, having exhausted their financial and physical resources, take a break to get themselves ready for the challenges ahead. But I can’t shake off the feeling that there’s more to it than that, or the unease about what it might say about the year ahead.
While there is clamour for the government to lift the state of disaster — more for the insult to our democratic principles than any remaining inconvenience for ordinary people — being back in the city of gold felt like the citizenry had decided to impose a lockdown on themselves regardless.
On Friday I did something I had done only occasionally since before the days in March 2020 when the government imposed the first lockdown. I went to watch a film. A good one to be fair. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, starring the legendary SA actor Mary Twala, is set in a village in Lesotho that is about to be flooded in the name of progress, presumably to build one of the dam projects that supply water to Johannesburg.
It’s a powerful piece of work that deserved an audience of more than just two people. Having moved from its home in the Maboneng precinct, an area of the city that once lived up to its “place of light” meaning in Sesotho, The Bioscope Independent Cinema is now situated at 44 Stanley in Auckland Park. By 10pm that Friday, the precinct was not the lively place one could have expected.
It was in complete darkness and all the restaurants and bars were closed. The only sign of life was the security people waiting for the few remaining people who were still to make their way home. As I had a few days earlier in Parktown North, I wondered if someone had forgotten to tell Johannesburg’s residents that there was no longer a curfew. Not even a midnight one, let alone one for 10pm that existed not that long ago.
If the sorry state of Johannesburg’s nightlife is a sign of things to come, it points to a bleak future for hospitality and the people who work in it, who are normally among the lower paid in society. Many had pointed out during the various lockdowns that the government’s alcohol bans were widening inequality and hurting the most vulnerable workers.
On a smaller scale, I had observed similar stress with hospitality industries during a visit to the UK. Like Johannesburg, people were deserting their traditional festivities, which tend to involve going to the pub. The mass cancellation of bookings wasn’t due to lockdown regulations but people taking matters into their own hands as Omicron infections surged.
Still, UK finance minister Rishi Sunak came under sufficient political pressure to announce £1bn in financial support for the hospitality and leisure sectors to shield them during what is traditionally their busiest period. The pubs’ crisis was seen to be so serious that Sunak, who has ambitions of replacing Boris Johnson as prime minister, was mocked for spending time in California, forcing him to rush home.
Even at the height of the lockdowns that forced them to close completely, or shut early, or do without the margins they get from selling alcohol, SA’s restaurant owners had to make do with minimal patronage and not support from the state, which is itself not in the healthiest fiscal position. On the margins, the government can help by delivering an economy that generates wealth and in which the middle class feels confident enough to spend at restaurants and movie theatres.
And what does Lindiwe Sisulu, the minister of tourism, have to do with any of this? Almost everything, but not in a way that is good or productive. I'm tempted to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she did go out and fight for our hospitality and travel industry when SA found itself subjected to unjustified travel bans after the Omicron discovery in December.
Well, this week she has dominated the news cycle for completely different reasons. Everyone from chief justice Raymond Zondo to legal non-governmental organisations have had their say on her comments on the constitution, and there’s no need to regurgitate the whole thing here. But it is something to have one of the politicians who have sworn to uphold the constitution lay all the country’s problems at it.
As Zondo said, her articles have no substance and one can repudiate them by simply looking at judgments by SA’s judges, including one that defended the poor’s rights to adequate housing, that have entrenched socioeconomic rights. It was ironically ANC officials and ministers who were on the wrong side of the argument. Makes you wonder who is “mentally colonised”.
The real damage in the Sisulu debacle is that it will ensure that 2022 will be another wasted year. Rather than being dominated by how we get the economy going, it’ll all be about ANC factions and their fight for supremacy into the elective conference later in the year. President Cyril Ramaphosa will still make the right noises about economic reform but in reality managing ANC fights and ensuring his re-election will leave no room for meaningful action on the economy.
All of which makes it hard to see Johannesburg rediscovering its energy any time soon.
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