“How can you leave Joburg forever?”

It’s a question that many have pondered but few have found exact answers. How can the jungle, that is this crackpot city oscillating between an adrenaline frenzy and force feeding a washed out hangover with painkillers and regmaakers, retain any semblance of a hold on any sane ex-citizen?

Personally my feelings bounce backwards and forwards between Positively 4th Street* by Dylan and the nth remake of the moth and the flame. Problem is with Jozi it’s difficult to tell for sure which is which, who is the hunter and who is the hunted.

Intensity and focus are prerequisites in maintaining any sort of composure even if it’s false, just a façade to keep the wolf away from the inner sanctuary.

It has some crucial, even wonderful moments, Mandela Bridge, jazz, sunsets, beggars with the nous of a Wall Street broker and crazy, competitive news headlines out of all proportion to the actual news they actually refer to.

As a city it can haunt, those sleepless, insomnia fuelled nights that never seem to end. The upside of this image is the slide sequence of art galleries of which Jozi has more than its fair share.

I’ve heard many people leave and swear they ain’t coming back, ever. I left for a while and stayed down the coast but the big city vibe and momentum never leaves one feeling safe. Driving back on the N3 and spotting the smoky silhouettes can be rejuvenating, depressing, mind altering and a form of relief that it’s all still there.

It’s a crazy kind of place, a place that is a myriad of different things to a myriad of different people all at once. It can swallow you whole with no digestion problems and not even miss you.

It’s a moment in time where you grab a tiger by the tail when you kid yourself that you can handle anything she’s got to throw at you.

However, there’s an old saying that warns the reckless to rather grab a tiger by the tail than shatter a woman’s illusions.

It’s a magnet, plenty people who should know better and others who probably never will believe the streets are paved with gold. There is money to be made at the epicentre of South Africa’s financial bubble but there’s also ill gotten gains, tempting the overzealous, just waiting for annexation here in Jozimental.

Visitors from overseas are in awe and abject fear but I reassure them and say that there’s things to see and people to meet just get yourself a local who knows the way the lure is tied. Locals on the make can spot an outsider at a 1000 yards and will make moves, not out of malice or anything personal, just the way it is.

Through all of this tirade of split personalities and multiple disorders Jozi shines through as not just a dysfunctional kid with insecurities and repressed anger, it’s got an edge that keeps people moving and that’s where the addiction lies carefully and cunningly, although brazenly, concealed.

Fear and Loathing in Jozimental.

* You gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend, when I was down you just stood there grinning. You gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend, you just want to be on the side that’s winning.