JOUBERT PARK

 Christmastime in Hillbrow was always full of joy and festivity for young kids living in the flats in the city blocks surrounding Joubert Park. A highlight in the annual calendar was the installation of a fairy-tale wonderland in November and a relatively quiet tree-lined park with the Johannesburg Art Gallery at one end and a busy Wolmarans Street at the other, was transformed into a glittering array of lights and depictions of well known fairy tales.

The apartment blocks tended to be crepuscular with tenants scurrying out at dawn to their places of employment and returning at dusk to slink into their insular flats. This all changed over the festive Christmas and New Year season. After sunset, the dour figures who had wearily gone to ground, once more emerged with refreshing and refreshed glee to make their merry way to Joubert Park, lit for the enjoyment of city residents.

Normally the daytime hangout and night-time sleeping quarters of Johannesburg’s hobos, their year round abode trans mutated into a hive of activity for a spell. The city “bums” would temporarily make way for parents accompanying awe-struck children taking in the themes and tales which no-doubt had to be recounted nightly by their adult travel guides into the world of make-believe. Usually the scene of drunken mendicants in their stupor, the sights and sounds of cheerful kids and bright darting lights and fairy-tale scenes drove out the sullen mood for a moment in time.

The old lady who lived in a shoe, replaced the tattered sandals of the drunks. Old Mother Hubbard’s bare cupboard produced a bone for her poor doggy, whilst Hansel and Gretel cunningly use a chicken bone to escape the cannibalistic witch to live another day. Snow White is saved by little people and Sleeping Beauty is roused by her handsome prince. And so for a brief time the humdrum of city life is replaced as urban feet traverse Joubert Park which assumes its temporary role as an escape hatch from the daily drudgery.

Sadly Neverland spews out Peter Pan into the bowels of the city at the end of its brief transformation into its imaginary faraway place of joy and happiness. The city returns to being an urban sprawl. Humanity returns to tedium. 

Cheer is ephemeral.

©Paul Haupt