On this side of Johannesburg, the streets are lined with giant trees, chestnuts, oaks and jacarandas, that shelter from the late summer showers. Instead, their leaves and petals rain down on to the asphalt.
In the silence of Houghton and Saxon Wold, the streets are lined with walls that hide the villas and palaces behind, crowned with electric wire. Their sliding gates, made from steal or iron, open like mouths to swallow the shiny BMWs and Jaguars, and close right behind, affording but a glimpse of the meticulous lawns inside, the pools, the children’s swings and bicycles.
Tall and insurmountable, they barricade the view on those who wander outside, in silence: The domestics in white shirts and blue aprons, and the men from security who sit and wait outside, 24/7.
Tendani Mukololi lives on the other side of Johannesburg, in the crowded, squatted Vodacom-tower, without electricity or garbage collection. But every day for the past twelve years he has been sitting in his little hut in Houghton, guarding, surveilling, protecting what he cannot see.
“Aren’t you afraid of me? I am a black man!” He asks, as I stop to for a chat.
“No,” I answer. “You are from security.”