A city says goodbye to Ufrieda Ho
· Citizen
It takes a special person to stay in a relationship when the clever money is on leaving.
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Some can’t afford to leave and grin and bear it, despite the domestic abuse, but those who can pack up, move – even if it’s a midnight flit into the unknown.
Johannesburg is a lot like that; a capricious lover that threatens like a Highveld storm, makes false promises like a dab of lipstick on the lips of an ageing sex worker and then beguiles as only the city can, when the rain falls and the sun comes out.
The potholes shake the dentures out of the unwary, the early morning and late night security alarms compete with the hadedas in the suburbs, the pungent piss stains in the doorways overwhelm the smell of street chisa nyama in the CBD.
The beggars on the street corners are a truer reflection of the brave new South Africa than any breweries advertisement on TV, and the police are little more than clerks for insurance companies issuing docket numbers for claims for break-ins and burglaries.
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But that’s only part of the story.
Like an onion, there are layers to the reality that often bely the comfortable horror story of dysfunction.
The job of telling those stories, identifying the heroes, changing the narrative from despair to renewal, rests with journalists.
There is a small cohort dedicated to finding the rays of hope and amplifying them, galvanising the rest of us to help forge not just the much-vaunted and much-derided world-class South African city, but a city which can let us all make an honest living, raise a family and walk the streets in safety.
Last week, the city lost one of its staunchest ambassadors and finest chroniclers. Ufrieda Ho knew the vagaries of the city, but she also appreciated its richness and understood the promise of its potential.
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She was a great journalist, a living embodiment of Finley Peter Dunne’s famous injunction to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Ufrieda was a person with a great capacity to love and care. She also had a core of steel, unyielding as she upheld the principles she held so dear. She represented the very best of all of us.
May she continue to inspire us beyond the grave; whether as writers, residents, or both, to do better and to be better, especially when it comes to Johannesburg.