Welcome to Johannesburg

It’s truly a shame that my trips home to South Africa usually start and end at OR Tambo International Airport. For all the days and weeks of marvellousness and positivity that (mostly) characterise visits to my homeland, OR Tambo International Airport almost never fails to provide a sour first or last impression.

While I should mention that I got a heartwarming 'welcome home!' from the lady at passport control on my latest visit, the fact remains that in general this is a place of confrontation, nastiness and unpleasantness. That’s not all the airport’s fault, of course. It is this terminal’s misfortune to serve Johannesburg, which is, after all, a city of confrontation, nastiness and unpleasantness. Joburg manages to cram a disproportionate share of South Africa's bad stuff within its city limits, which is why I tend to give it a wide berth. Given its status as a flight hub, though, the metropolis’s airport is hard to avoid entirely.

I’m thinking here of the fistfight I witnessed three years ago, moments after stepping out of the terminal and onto South African concrete for the first time in a couple of years. The set-to in the drop-off area had begun back in town, and was born of another feature of Joburg life: road rage.

I’m thinking of the time my mate’s sister was ‘accidentally’ injected with something (thankfully harmless) by a needle-wielding fiend as she walked between domestic and international (now brilliantly renamed, in a marvellous example of mankind's regression when it comes to communicating real meaning, to the ever-so-helpful 'A' and 'B'). This was around the turn of the century, when I was in university. Which tells you just how long this airport has been a nucleus of awfulness.

I’m thinking of the nice chat I had with the Metro Police just last month. They had been kind enough to set up a highly dubious and cynical roadblock right outside the exit to the multi-storey car park from which hire cars emerged. Hire cars containing tourists with cash but without a clue. I’ll spare you the details, but it suffices to say that were I a fresh foreign arrival, the experience would have made a perfect introduction to the uniformed corruption for which Gauteng is known as an industry leader.

I’m thinking of the times I’ve waited for the passport control line to shuffle along. Not unusual at an airport, you may think, until I tell you that this is a regular feature of customs in departures at OR Tambo. Now that's not so normal, is it? More than once, though, I have feared missing a flight because of a workforce that would rather go on a mass tea break than stamp us out of the country.

I’m thinking of today, when I saw a highly aggressive official shouting louder and louder at some lady with a passport in her hand, even as she was speaking more and more calmly. I’m not sure what the issue was, but the man did not look willing to deal with it reasonably. A true son of OR Tambo.

Don’t be fooled by the gleaming shops and highly-developed feeling of peace that blankets the airport at first glance. Often it feels like a citadel of calm in the madness that lies beyond its doors. But rest assured that the airport is a child of its city, and that here, too, the fury always bubbles under.

I've written about air travel quite frequently, for example this article published by The Western Australian in Perth.