The most dangerous place in Johannesburg

We went out to Orange Farm yesterday to meet with some community organisers. C has promised to blog about our experience there though, so I'm going to just put up a short post about Bree Street in the Newtown district of Jo'burg.



Newtown is the "cultural precinct" of the city and is full of galleries and museums. Just up the road, further along Bree Street (which runs through the heart of Newtown) is the Metro Taxi Stand and Market - known as Bree station by the locals.







Bree station is a pretty intense place. It's a two story car park that has been converted in to a mini-bus taxi station (no picture, sorry). From here you can get taxis to pretty much anywhere in the city and surrounds. We know the place quite well as we've passed through several times most days since we arrived. Our guide book, whose praises I'm not about to sing, tells you to avoid the place like the proverbial plague as you're bound to get mugged. Not only have we both felt quite at ease there (though some of the underground stretches were a little intimidating until we found a way to avoid them), we've found that nearly everyone in the station, drivers and passengers, have been incredibly helpful without fail. Chalk up another paranoia notch on the Lonely Planet belt.





Anyway, yesterday we were being picked up from an open area adjacent to the station to be taken to Orange Farm. We were a little early and so were standing on the corner trying to remain as visible as possible so our lift would have a better chance of spotting us in the crowd. As we waited and watched the foot traffic pass us by a middle aged white man walked right up to us and said "Oh my god! Where are you from?" We barely had time to answer before he launched into a tirade.

"What are you doing here? This is the most dangerous place in Johannesburg! You shouldn't be here."

When we told him we were waiting for a lift he pointed in two vague directions, mentioned two names and said that they were his friends who owned businesses in the area and if we got into trouble to ask them for help.

He ambled off shaking his head before we had time to let him know he hadn't actually told us which businesses and where, or that there were at least 6 police officers in our field of vision right at that moment.

Perhaps we should get a couple of souvenir t-shirts printed:

I survived the most dangerous part of Jo'burg and all I got was this lousy t-shirt...