Land of dire apostrophes and disrepair
Michael Jackson, seagulls and awfulness loom large at Joburg’s Miniland, writes
ONCE a place for families to go and look at very small things, Miniland in Johannesburg is now a derelict mess you can’t believe you’ve paid money to visit.
Never mind the two tattered South African flags blowing outside the entrance, or the enormous Jan van Riebeeck overlooking the empty parking lot, the thing that truly unsettles the soul as you walk into Miniland — and hints almost immediately that you’re going to have a mighty crap time — are the many vehement signs telling you NO REFUNDS. There’s none of this Regret No Refunds, just absolutely (and painted in bloodiest red) NO EFFING REFUNDS, ALRIGHT?
You just know the reason the NO REFUNDS information boards have been put up so aggressively is that too many idiot fathers and mothers have come here with their expectant children (and memories of what Miniland used to be like when they visited in the ’80s) and, after strolling about the faeces-strewn houses and perusing the atrociously misspelt information signs, have rushed off to find some, any, semblance of management to demand their cash back. And management, they just got tired of it. So they put these signs up everywhere.
Santarama Miniland, in the south of Joburg, was opened in 1973 as a kind of fundraising machine for the South African National Tuberculosis Association. Like Joburg Zoo, it was one of those places you were bused off to on a primary school trip, and I may or may not have vague memories of visiting it as a boy.
But unlike Joburg Zoo, Miniland is in nonchalant collapse and has been for some time. It has a one-star rating on TripAdvisor. On jozikids.co.za, there are entries dating back to 2010, detailing the grand appallingness of the place. “There were dead birds lying on the grass and my youngest son got his foot caught on a rotting floor board,” says one. Another writes: “We went on the mini-train, but during the ride, right before a bridge crossing an empty river, the train derailed and crashed into a grass bank.”
On this same forum are replies from Miniland’s management, lamenting a lack of funding and promising to make improvements “in the very near future”. The lack of funding ruse is classic. Call me miserly, but paying R35 to stroll around a bleak, Cormac McCarthyesque vista of disrepair and dire apostrophes, while discarded chicken bones impede your progress on barely existent footpaths, is R35 too much. And when I visited, on a Wednesday morning, the place was pretty much pumping. A busload of at least 40 sticky children had just arrived and a little while later a seven-strong group of Eastern European tourists in shiny jeans and fantastic sunglasses came through.
I decided when I saw the Eastern Europeans that if they tried to make conversation I would put on a British or Australian accent because I would be too embarrassed to claim any kinship, however vague and wholly unrelated, to this reprehensible hole.
So if you take those 40-odd kids, the seven Eastern Europeans and me, plus the two chain-smoking teachers, that’s, say, 50 people. A quick calculation on my iPhone tells me that’s R1 750 before lunch.
Considering the snack bar is now an empty room with somebody’s ragged cap lying on one of the tables, and the grass around the displays appears never to have been cut, surely that’s R1 750 towards paint and glue and whatever the hell else one needs for the upkeep of 1/60scale buildings. Waiting for donations from the Lotto, management say. NO REFUNDS, management say.
A brief summary of what I saw: an out-of-service mini golf course with eaten felt; a version of the Atlantic Ocean afloat with patterns of cruddy water that I concede at least resembled an authentic oil spill; an old grey sock stuffed into a bush; an empty Heineken bottle; a faded quart of rich, rewarding Richelieu lying quite undisturbed on the footpath; the foil of many empty chip packets glinting in the sun; a used yoghurt container near the dry Howick Falls; cigarette stubs; the derailing mini-train (which the Eastern Europeans briefly tried to ride but then, in their language, thought better of for safety reasons); seagulls from the Wemmer Pan dam next door and their scornful droppings all over everything (admittedly the seagulls added an impressive degree of legitimacy to the rendition of the Atlantic Ocean and I initially believed they had been specially flown in for this very purpose because I had never seen seagulls in Joburg but I realised not soon after that
We went on the mini-train, but . . . right before a bridge crossing an empty river, the train derailed and crashed
their presence here is unintended); a sign saying “Zulus also leaves on rondavel” instead of “Zulus also live in rondavels” (this was the poorest of the poor signs — but they were all diabolical).
What else? Oh, rusted cruise liners, collapsed stands at Turffontein, buildings and churches in half.
I’m quite proud to say that the only thing that isn’t in too bad nick is the old Sunday Times office in the CDB.
However, the famed Prospector Hotel just beyond is now derelict and home to bloated, Lilliputian whores.
Most bizarre of all is the giant statue of Michael Jackson, King of Pop, who, instead of overseeing what could be downtown Dhaka, Bangladesh, has his back turned to it. And he’s wearing a codpiece so the whole time you’re walking through the place, every time you look in a certain direction you see Michael Jackson’s ersatz arse in a kind of black thong. His presence is inexplicable. As with everything else, nobody seems to care. BROKEN DOWN: Collapsed stands at the mini-Turffontein reflect the general state of what used to be a much-loved Johannesburg attraction