I have just returned to Johannesburg from Cape Town where I stayed for a few days, then drove up the coast along the highway from Hermanus. Family and friends stuff.

Over the hundreds of kilometres I drove, I did not encounter a single pothole. Not even a small one! I encountered one non-functioning traffic light, on Rhodes Drive. I didn’t see a taxi drive through a red light, not even once.

I saw virtually no litter and no garbage pickers and no impromptu garbage dumps around the suburbs or downtown...any downtown. I didn’t see any of the usual post car accident detritus anywhere like we do in this city where every intersection has remnants of plastic bumpers and wind screens and car body parts. This is all cleaned up in the Mother City pretty promptly.

I didn’t see verges overgrown with grass and jungle. The street curbs were all clean and swept. It looked like someone cared about their city. No one seems to give a hoot about the so-called City of Gold. We might now call ourselves the "City of Rust".

We saw a few street corner panhandlers but nothing like the garbage bag totters at every traffic light in Johannesburg. I didn’t see one stormwater drain which was broken, nor signs that they were blocked as are most in Johannesburg.

While we did see some advertising on some streetlight poles, it is obviously strictly controlled and regulated. We have become inured to this visual pollution in Jo’burg.

While Johannesburg does have some stunning areas…like downtown Sandton, we are devolving into just another dirty, litter strewn and dysfunctional African city.

I hope that we can turn this around before someone shuts out the lights at Eskom.

Dr Peter Baker
 Parktown North, Johannesburg