Journey to the top of Ponte

What the hell are we doing in this crowded elevator - noses against armpits - inching our way up to the top of Ponte, Jozi's most bizarre building, on the edge of Hillbrow, its most dangerous suburb?

"Tales of brazen crack and prostitution rings operating from its car parks, four stories of trash accumulating in its open core, snakes, ghosts and frequent suicides have all added to the building's legend", writes Michael Subotzky in Ponte City, an incredible photo essay of its days of dereliction in 2008. This brutal, whackjob of a building. Dystopian hell, the perfect panopticon.

Yeah, what the hell are we doing?

Haha, sundowners, of course.

Tourist in my own town, darling. Can you believe it's now possible to go for sundowners and snacks (R280 pp) at the top of Jozi's most infamous building, courtesy of Dlala Nje, a community organisation who are promoting Ponte Love - love and kisses for the now cleaned-up refurbished Ponte City.

We're not feeling the love so much as we Uber it in to Hillbrow past the shivering nyope addicts and whippet-thin prostitutes, but once we're inside the gate and grounds of Ponte City, it feels pretty friendly. There are ten of us and we all take selfies with the tower in the background. Then Steve the guide from Dlala Nje, meets us at reception and he nannies us through the Taking the Lift part which is most surreal.

The lifts are apparently newly installed at a cost of R5 million each, which is reassuring since they're being maxed out right now. It's five pm on payday and everyone and their auntie and their fridges, TVs and mattresses are going up and down in the lifts which seem to take an unbelievable amount of cargo. It's noisy and cheerful and we tourists are a novelty, but there are frissons of unhappiness in our party about claustrophobia and just how many people a lift should actually... when suddenly one opens and Steve herds us all in, plus a few, tight like sardines, and we are pulled hellishly upwards.....

But oh my, when we get out at the 51st floor and step into Dlala Nje 5101, this is what awaits. A shebeen chic venue with simple charming decor and the most befok views of Jozi at sunset. Never mind the lovely bar which we fall upon with great glee and starting frantically drinking and chatting and taking pics and exchanging weird stories about Ponte.

My friend Sally said she'd driven past Ponte every day for the past 25 years and couldn't believe she was actually at the top now. One of the guys in the group said he'd shagged someone who lived in Ponte when he was young. Phil confessed he'd visited when it was real dodgy. When I was a teenage delinquent I once visited a guy in Ponte and we saw a druggie throw a puppy over the edge into the pit. 

It's gritty, but it's pretty. And impossible not to get high on the views and the vibe at Dlala Nje 5101. We eat and drink and get festive. Steve give us the lowdown on Ponte - it was built in 1975 by German architects Manfred Hermer and Rodney Grosskopff, it's 173m high. In its day in the 70s it was the height of sophisticated apartment living and Hillbrow was known as Manhattan in the veld. Then when the city collapsed in the 90s it fell into despair and dereliction and became a bizarre slum filled with poor people, immigrants, gangsters and crazy fucks.

"The reality of Ponte and its many fictions", writes Subotsky, "have always integrated seamlessly into a patchwork of myths and projections that reveal as much about the psyche of the city as it does about the building itself".

When it's time, Steve takes us down again, and now, the Taking the Lift part is fine because we're all drunk and supercharged on views and stories. The final dramatic touch is a visit to the infamous pit at the bottom of Ponte, which has been completely cleaned up. We all ooh and aah about what must have been unearthed in the four-storey high trash pile - skeletons, fridges, television sets, pots and pans, beds... I think of the poor puppy.

We stagger out to our Uber trying to feel the Ponte Love and definitely feeling the weirdness of having been inside and up to the top of the city's most peculiar building.

Would I do it again?

Yes, probably, but you'd have to come with me.

For more information on the tour check out Dlala Nje on Facebook

Mystic River, Vagina Flumine

“Hippo on the left”, said my guide Kaley.

We were in canoes, paddling gently down the wild and ancient Kafue River in deepest Zambia. Kaley and I in one canoe; my friend and colleague Sally and her guide in another. 

The Kafue is big and long and flows for nearly a thousand kilometres through Zambia before joining the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. 

She – this river is definitely a she – is the lifeblood of the Kafue National Park, Zambia’s oldest and biggest.  And very far flung. It took us an hour and a half by air charter, an hour and half by road in a 4x4 and fifteen minutes by boat to get to the remote Kaingu Lodge from Lusaka. A soul spot. Deep soul. 

Now here we were, vulnerable little humans, paddling her ancient waters, trying to hug the banks, dodge the boulders, avoid the hippos. After a bit of initial canoeing in circles, you know, trying to sync paddling and steering.

“Hippo on the left”, said Kaley again, and then: “No that’s not a hippo. Come, paddle faster, let’s go see”, and we paddled furiously towards this scene…

A young male puku – think chunky version of our impala – leapt into the river on the left and started swimming. A massive crocodile leapt into the river from the right and in a few powerful strokes and one mighty snap of the jaws caught the puku and dragged it under.

Snap.

A wriggle and some splashing. Some bubbles.

We canoed over the bubbles.  Kaley and I had a moment of being mutually startled by the life and death scene we had just witnessed, aware that we just happened to be there and see a moment that existed outside of our humanity. "I feel sad for the puku", I said to Kaley, who said the puku must have been chased into the water by a predator, perhaps a lion or a cheetah. I felt happy for the croc though, so prehistorically reptilian-crocodilian, soon to be tummy-full.

And when I looked back, the She River had closed over again. Croc one; puku nought; life moves on, birth, death, life, flow...

Vagina flumine. Flowing vagina.That’s what an old friend commented on this photograph I posted this pic of the Kafue River recently; the metaphor of river as erotic, female, primal, flowing, cyclical. Birth, life, death. It got me thinking about my old friend Thecla and it got me thinking about river porn (snuff in this case) and the wild wet mysterious place I had just been.