Johannesburg Quotes

“Scopolamine never asks for permission”
― Edward Williams, Framed & Hunted: A True Story of Occult Persecution

“Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam.”
― Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

“Never argue with a fool, people might not notice the difference”
― Nicholas Mhlongo

“Though I drive in the valley of the shadow of death I fear no hijackers, but another fuel increase.”
― Nicholas Mhlongo

“The white neighborhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear—fear of black crime, fear of black uprisings and reprisals—and as a result virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall, and on top of that wall is electric wire. Everyone lives in a plush, fancy maximum-security prison. There is no sitting on the front porch, no saying hi to the neighbors, no kids running back and forth between houses. I’d ride my bike around the neighborhood for hours without seeing a single kid. I’d hear them, though. They were all meeting up behind brick walls for playdates I wasn’t invited to. I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike and creep up and peek over the wall and see a bunch of white kids splashing around in someone’s swimming pool. I was like a Peeping Tom, but for friendship. It was only after a year or so that I figured out the key to making black friends in the suburbs: the children of domestics." (from "Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah)”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Why are you always filming people?”
“I’m busy documenting a thousand stories about Johannesburg.”
“Oral histories?”
“No, stories. People don’t always speak the truth.”
― Harry Kalmer, 'n Duisend stories oor Johannesburg: 'n stadsroman

“He thought how easy it would be to write an entire book on Johannesburg violence. The strike leader Pickaxe Mary, after whom Mary Fitzgerald Square was named, who attacked her enemies with a pickaxe handle. The trenches dug into the streets of Fordsburg during the 1922 miners’ strike. The cannons of the government aimed at the poor whites of Vrededorp. The murdered woman in the 1960s whose head was found in the Zoo Lake and whose torso was discovered in a suitcase in Wemmer Pan. Jan Smuts, who wanted to bomb striking workers with aeroplanes. The countless schoolchildren shot during the 1976 uprising. The fifty-three supporters who were shot down in the street outside Shell House, the ANC headquarters. The huge bomb that went off shortly before the first democratic election and made a whole row of shops kneel down on the pavements of Bree Street. The commuters, in the early 1990s, killed by pangas or who jumped to their deaths from moving trains to escape their Portuguese-speaking attackers. The murderess Daisy de Melker, whose third husband survived only because she was caught in time. The violent home invasions, rapes and hijackings he read about in the newspapers every day.”
― Harry Kalmer, 'n Duisend stories oor Johannesburg: 'n stadsroman

“When survival is a reflex:
Frying eggs with Vaseline petroleum jelly
Mixing porridge with a gun
Cooking soup in a Koo Baked Beans can
Putting fake coins inside the cup of a homeless beggar in the corner
There is war in my mind
Jo’burg stinks of pain, money, sex and drugs.
I am flesh to this city of bones
But yet my soul wants to be consumed by the spirits of the midnight
dust”
― Ayanda Ngema, They Raped Me: So, Now What?

“Blood and guts everywhere. Who would have thought one old woman could make so much mess?
Mick tippy-toed through the gore, planning each step to avoid getting any on his Docs. Christ, he’d just polished them a couple of hours ago.
What if he slipped and ended up back in hospital? Some people had no consideration for others, sure enough.”
― John West, Dancing in Valhalla

“Ancient Ninevah and Babylon have been revived. Johannesburg is their twentieth century prototype. It is a city of unbridled squander and unfathomable squalor. Living is more costly than one's wildest dreams. All the necessities of life are impudently dear.”
― Ambrose Pratt, The Real South Africa

“- there were class photos of each year that Cora attended the private all-girls school in Johannesburg, which Cora loathed. It was a prison, she told Freya. It smelled of cabbage and despair.”
― Margie Orford, The Eye of the Beholder

“Your first mistake is trying to find love in Johannesburg, Johannesburg is for business.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“We emerge from a city of shattered landscapes and fragmented families, yet within these fractures lie stories of resilience and the forging of unbreakable bonds.”
― Jordan Hoechlin