A new South African day

We strolled out in a bright Joburg morning, warmer than it should be, sipping Seattle cappuccinos from a garage which have become something of a tradition.

Wits is grey-brown dirty classical, a Teutonic pillared presence. In the winter sun, corners are sharper, edges brighter, brown palletted, Vaal beautiful.

We joined a collection of society to protest the Secrecy Act, grannies in twin sets and pearls from Hyde Park sat next to grannies in polyester skirts and head scarves, not from Hyde Park. A mixed gathering it was indeed, several mentions of ANC credentials though with a noted absence of an ANC rent-a-crowd. The leader of COSATU but none of his followers. Nadine Gordimer, who announced she and Andre Brink had written personally to President Jacob Zuma in July, but received no response.

We toyi-toyi-ed through downtown Johannesburg and up to the Constitutional Court, raising posters to passing vehicles and singing snatches of half learned songs and learning new ones quickly:

"My mother, my mother was a kitchen girl, and

My father, my father was a garden boy, and that,

That is why I'm a socialist, a socialist, a socialist."

Coming home, we walked through the inner city. Buildings towered above us, seemingly a monument to the 1970s with little windows concealing big secrets. More browns, more winter beautiful. Down Jan Smuts, we paused to look at rock seams in the roadside embankment and found a placard explaining their importance which we would have missed but for being on foot.

We stopped and asked for help with taxi signals down toward Emmerentia. "After robot!" landed us at a Bollywood Men's Hairdresser where R30 and 10mins will get Lionel a haircut and a head massage and me an opportunity to observe Bollywood music videos shot in snow.

We had to change taxis in Randburg to redirect to Rosebank. Sitting on the back seat, we encountered an everyday South African marvel which I love; everyone passes their monies forward, asking for change, which is passed back by other passengers. The traveller at the front ultimately collects everyone's fares on behalf of the driver. The transactions are done entirely on a system of trust. Woe betide the whitey who doesn't pay attention to the R8.50s and gets it wrong.

We stopped for beer (South Africa's anti-alcohol legislation requiring us to stockpile in order to drink on Sunday) and got into an emptier taxi to continue on home. Here, no one passed their money forward, presumably because they were all travelling to Alex or further and had much more time to pay. Yet a "short right!" took us only 3 or 4kms down the road to Rosebank where we hopped out and, to our consternation, were roundly shat on by the taxi driver for violating the trust and not paying.

Embarrassed at ourselves, tired and holding our beer, we strolled between the high walls and electric gates of Rosebank-inner. We passed two black women, walking their dogs along the pavement. The dogs suddenly began barking at us furiously. What the new South Africa looks like, with us in it.