Window of opportunity for Joburg

ICAME back from New York recently with a T-shirt, not any T-shirt, mind, an NYPD T-shirt. Can you imagine a tourist to Joburg getting a SAPS T-shirt?And what about a JMPD T-shirt?

In the bad old days, the SAPS were the foot soldiers for an oppressive regime. In “the brave new world” – after Marikana, Mido Macia and Andries Tatane and now Rhodes University on Wednesday afternoon – some people will tell you nothing’s changed.

As for the JMPD, it seems to be a case of either “R20 for a cooldrink” bribe after pulling you over on suspicion of an offence or disappearing altogether during gridlock.

But here’s the thing, the NYPD wasn’t always the Big Apple’s greatest export – and it certainly hasn’t escaped the backlash of the US-wide #BlacklivesMatter campaign where unarmed African-Americans are shot by cops.

It’s also the department that gave us Frank Serpico, perhaps the most famous police whistle-blower in history who blew the lid off what was once a byword for systemic police corruption, the NYPD.

The Big Apple too was fairly vrot a couple of years back, and some of its neighbourhoods were downright feral.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani of 9/11 fame put a stop to that. There aren’t broken windows in mid-town Manhattan any longer and there isn’t any litter either. Cynics might say there aren’t broken windows in Sandton or litter. The question is whether you would leave your hotel for an evening stroll.

You wouldn’t in the CBD, which is terribly sad because as someone who has worked in central Joburg for 13 years I can tell you that it is the most incredible place.

The buildings, the skyscrapers that form the concrete canyons running east and west and north and south create a feel that is very close to Manhattan. Joubert Park isn’t Central Park, but just like it, it has an art gallery.

We’ve got everything from the sports precinct of Ellis Park to the artists’ district of Newtown, the banking/mining enclave of Marshalltown and the high-density flatlands of Hillbrow.

Some of it is truly dodgy, bordering on terrifying – Commissioner Street just before the gentrified Maboneng is one area, Siveright Avenue in New Doornfontein is another and Hillbrow is not called the Bronx for nothing.

Ah yes, the Bronx, one of New York’s five boroughs, used to be a slum, a byword for lawlessness. It’s been cleaned up though. Hell’s Kitchen is home to bars catering for all tastes and persuasions, interspersed with alleys of upmarket tenements, not the den of iniquity it once was.

And of course, this is entirely the point, New York – the capital of the world with the UN General Assembly and so much more – was once teetering on the edge of anarchy. It isn’t any more, and that’s so far in the past that people have actually forgotten about it.

It’s not perfect; nothing is. The poverty is real, the homeless are ubiquitous, some even have dogs and they blithely lay out their cardboard shelters and bedding on the pavement every night, or doss down in the grounds of the public library.

But the traffic lights work and there are thousands of police officers, literally (the NYPD has 34 500), either on the street corners or clad in reflective vests directing traffic, overriding the traffic lights during rush hour to make sure everything moves. Even then the gridlock can be ferocious.

There’s a perception, though, that it works, visible by the fact that after the little figurines of King Kong swinging off the Empire Building or the ever-present Statues of Liberty in even more sizes than you’ll find the Eiffel Tower at China Mall in Elandslaagte, the next big hit is NYPD-branded apparel from hoodies to tracksuit bottoms, T-shirts and caps as well as cups, plates and wall hangings.

The range and extent is matched probably only by FDNY (New York City Fire Department) branded curios, understandable perhaps given the heroics in the aftermath of 9/11, but the NYPD, really?

Joburg has started its own revitalisation. Marshalltown is a beacon of hope from a Western finance-house perspective, Newtown does it for the arts, Wits and the city are doing incredible things with Braamfontein, the trendies and twitterati have jumped on to Maboneng, the movement is there.

There are still major issues, like the slums in the CBD that were exposed in full technicolour in The Star this week, but there is a real energy to try to address them and to reclaim our city, bit by bit, just as New York did.

And here’s the thing – New York has potholes too, admittedly not in Manhattan, but on the freeway of all places through Queens out to JFK International and that’s one thing we don’t have on the way to OR Tambo International – our potholes are all in the suburbs.

So, the will is there, the promise too, but perhaps we will have only conquered this summit when we can start stocking JMPD-branded souvenirs in the inter national departures terminal.

The question remains, though: Would you buy a T-shirt and wear it?