Joburg, my broken home

Jozi is failing and the rot isn’t confined to the inner city.

- Ryk van Niekerk

My morning commute from Melville to the Moneyweb office in Houghton Estate takes about 10 minutes. The route winds through the leafy suburbs of Parkview, past the zoo and Saxonwold, before crossing Oxford Road into Houghton Estate. It's a short drive that always leaves me angry when I open the office door.

There are eight notable potholes along the route. I say "notable" because they're large enough to have their own GPS coordinates. There are also four traffic lights, only two of which worked on Friday. The other two were broken, one being off for nearly two months. An unemployed man has assumed the role of traffic officer and does more than a half-decent job regulating the traffic. There is no traffic officer in sight.

We've had running water at home for a few weeks now—which, in Joburg terms, qualifies as a winning streak. My solar system has also held up well, shielding us from the increasingly frequent power cuts caused by ageing and overburdened infrastructure.

Yesterday, I rode my mountain bike along the Braamfontein Spruit. For those non-Joburgers, it is a 30km long green strip running through Johannesburg along the river, offering some of the best mountain biking in Gauteng.