Hiking Spots

South Africa is a truly stunning country, with a wide array of landscapes and its natural beauty is something to make the most of while you're here.

I really enjoy hiking, so I've made a few day trips to go for hikes within a 2hr radius of Johannesburg and I've never been disappointed by the views yet. All of these trails are easy in terms of difficulty. I wouldn't consider myself particularly fit and I did just fine at all.

• Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve, Johannesburg - hiking trails right in the city, clearly marked trails, from the top of the ridge you get a nice view over the Southside of Jozi, you'll see loads of Dassies everywhere (cute fat little animals, kind of like groundhogs), downside is that there is a sewage pipe in the middle of the reserve so we did encounter a particularly stinky part of the trail at the end of our hike.

• Wonderboom Nature Reserve, Pretoria - Another well parked trail, in the heart of Pretoria, gives you nice views over the city. There is a waterfall you can go see, but it must not be anything too impressive because when I went in the winter it was dried up. There is a small fee to get into the park.

• Cradle of Humankind - Really picturesque landscape with tall grasses, rolling hills and lots of open space to explore. If you're out here anyways for the fresh air and a nice walk, you may as well start with walking through the caves to see where the oldest humanoid fossils in the world were found. Unfortunately, all the actual artifacts are in a museum in Pretoria and the actual dig site is barricaded, but any time you can walk through caves is always pretty cool.

• Magaliesburg Mountain Sanctuary, Rustenberg - You'll feel straight out of the movie 124 Hours, when you're here. It's all dry red rock and absolutely no markings to help you find your way. You will be provided with a crude map when you enter where there is a small fee to get into the park, but the guidance offered is weak at best. I personally was very frustrated by this and wouldn't go back to the park for that reason, we got lost and just stumbled our way around most of the day. If we didn't have a good sense of direction someone could really get turned around out there. I have to give the place credit though, the scenery is cool and we ended our hike at these natural swimming pools where we went for a cool dip and that was really nice, but seriously, finding these pools was a mission.
 

Finding safe places to walk outside and explore can be tricky sometimes, especially if you're on your own. One, unfortunately fairly boring, way to get your exercise is to suck it up and get a gym membership.

It feels like a waste of money, but when you can't safely go for a run at night or can't do hiking trails alone and you spend so much more time driving around than you're used to - you'll want to have someone to go and keep healthy and active. I've actually started enjoying hitting the gym a couple days a week - who would have imagined?!

Local Tips

I feel more and more like a local every day here and I've decided to put together a few random tips based on things I've learned while navigating life here in Jozi:

• When you first arrive in the country, get certified copies of your passport made and also get yourself a stack of passport photos. You will need these many times throughout your journey; when purchasing a car, getting travel visas, a bank account, etc. 
• Also good to memorize your passport #. In South Africa, you'll be asked for your ID # on any form you fill out, literally all the time. As an expat, your passport # stands in for your South African ID #.
• Traffic in this city is hectic. It can be caused by congestion (particularly during rush hour [8-10am & 4-6pm]), road work or power outages so leave yourself extra time wherever you're going, you never know when your travel time will double.
• Be wary of the taxis (mini-buses with a yellow strip painted on the side) - these are constantly navigating from one end of the city to the other and they pick up and drop people off at any point along the way. They tend to stop suddenly, weave in and out of traffic and even push ahead on road shoulders, making their own lanes as they see fit. If you're not careful one of these guys could cause an accident for you and don't be surprised when they aren't willing to swap information for insurance, if they even stop.
• As mentioned in a previous post of mine, power outages are very common because the local infrastructure is not able to manage the strain on the system, so load shedding is implemented to alleviate the burden - check the Eskom load shedding schedule daily so you can plan accordingly; the worst is losing power in the middle of cooking dinner.
• Everything closes early in this city and many places won't open on Sundays either so be aware of the time, if you need to grab groceries to make your dinner, be sure to leave the office in time (taking into consideration traffic times also) - my grocery store stays open til 8pm, which is considered late. But if you're in a real bind, there are little Woolworths markets open 24 hrs in some Engen gas stations.
• If you swear by Advil Cold & Sinus the way I do, you will be shocked when you search amongst the various pain relief meds on the shelf and don't find it. Same goes for Imodium. But not to fear, South Africa does have these meds, but you have to get them from over the counter at the pharmacy. You don't need a prescription, you just have ask the pharmacist. 
• Almost any time you park on a city street you will encounter parking attendants in bright vests. These people are not city employees, but are local entrepreneurs basically. They take it upon themselves to cover an area, helping people navigate parking in tight spots and watching the cars against break-ins while you're off shopping or eating. In exchange, you should give them a tip, I always keep 5 Rand coins in my car console for just this occasion.
• At gas stations, there is no self-service option, all the pumps are full-service. The attendants will fill your tank and generally also offer to check your oil, clean the windows or fill the tires. You should give them a tip for their services. I generally give between 5-10 Rand.
• If you are insured by Discovery and are a part of the Vitality program - make sure you sign up for a Ster-Kinekor Theatres membershp card. You get a discount on the price of movies, which are already significantly cheaper than in North America. Although, movie release dates are sometimes delayed here, the movies are a great cheap entertainment option in Joburg.
• There are no residential mailboxes. If you have a 24hr security guard at your home they may be willing to accept packages and letters that happen to show up for you, but locals don't at all find it strange not to have a mailbox. They can't understand why you would, "no one sends letters anymore." The other issue with receiving mail is that the postal system is very unreliable. Generally the mail I do receive takes about a month to arrive from Canada, if it ever arrives at all. I am still waiting on two packages that were sent months ago...not sure they'll ever turn up.
• If you need to take a cab somewhere, use the Uber app to call a car. That's the safest way to catch a ride in the city. The random cab companies in the city have been associated with crime, but Uber has become the more safe and reliable option. The only thing to be wary of now is that the cab drivers are upset with Uber taking over the market and they have started attacking Uber drivers so you shouldn't get picked up anywhere near clusters of parked cabs, such as at the main entrance to Sandton City Mall or at OR Tambo Airport arrivals; if you need an Uber from the airport, the driver will likely ask you to walk to departures to be picked up so the cab drivers aren't close by.
• Along the same vein, if you go out for drinks, you should highly consider always Ubering and not driving, even if you only have one or two drinks. The legal blood alcohol limit to drive here is quite low and especially on the weekends, you'll find yourself driving through quite a few road blocks around the city. If you blow over you will find yourself in jail and if you blew over on a weekend, you'll be in jail until Monday when the courts open - yikes!

Soweto

I had a couple of final tourist destinations to check off my to-do list while here Joburg and I finally ticked them off this weekend.

I went with two friends to Soweto for the afternoon on Saturday, where we stopped by the Hector Pieterson Museum, Vilakazi Street and Chaf Pozi Restaurant under Orlando Towers.

I had been to Soweto previously to go to the Soweto Derby, a big match between the two rivals teams from the Premier Football League, both based in Soweto. Following the match we went out for braii and dancing at Chaf Pozi where I some of the best dancing in my life. A trio got up to perform in the middle of the crowd, in a style called Pantsula. I could have watched them for hours, it's seriously the best.

But on this Saturday, there was no dancing, but a good look into some important historical figures. Hector Pieterson was a young man who became a symbol of the student uprising against Apartheid and unfair educational policies for black students. He was shot by police during a student protest against the mandatory use of Afrikaans in all classrooms.

Unfortunately, there was load shedding on Saturday in Orlando West, the neighbourhood we were in, so the video displays in the museum weren't working, but the photo and text displays we good and the museum gave a very real and accurate depiction of what happened during these events, much of which was hard to read. What I also found sad was to read about the societal issues that flared up during the Bantu education system and how those same issues are still very much present today.

This display board discusses the issues rising in 1976, but this could easily describe the current atmosphere of 2015. (click on the photo to enlarge)

 
We next head for Vilakazi street, which is the only street in the world where two Nobel Prize Winners have lived; Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Seems strange, I've now seen two of Mandela's very different beds; the one in his cell on Robben Island and the one in his home in Soweto.

 

Very proud to see this on the wall of Mandela's bedroom

You are able to go in and walk around the quaint Mandela home, but the Tutu home is just marked discretely with a plaque. The Mandela home really is more about Winnie Mandela than Nelson though, because for most of the time that the family lived at this location, Nelson was in exile or in prison.

To cap off our afternoon we head to Chaf Pozi under the beautifully painted Orlando Towers (old cooling towers which are covered in murals representing the area and now sit as a famous landmark for Soweto), for some delicious braii - lots of meat, pap and chakalaka; very traditional South African food and oh so yummy.

The Talent Issue

As someone who works in the field of recruiting, the issue of finding talent in South Africa is something I encounter on a daily basis.

South Africa is a country rich in resources, with some of the best infrastructure and one of the highest GDPs in Africa, and yet, unemployment is sitting at a staggering 25% (unofficially this stat is said to be as high as 40%).

It's gotten to the point that some of the beggars on the street corners in Sandton are not asking for change but are holding out their resume, asking for a job.

There is a huge population of South Africans looking for gainful employment, but the issue with this workforce is that they aren't necessarily employable.

As more and more international organizations bring their business to the continent, often their largest untapped market, they tend to touch down in Johannesburg, which appears as a relatively developed and stable hub for them to service Southern Africa (the main hubs being Joburg, Nairobi and Lagos).

This sounds like good news, a growing economy, a young workforce ready to fill those positions locally, but herein lies the rub, race still plays a role in the daily life of South Africa.

It's key to remember here that it was only 20 years ago that Apartheid fell and non-white South Africans were given the liberties they should always have been afforded. And while great strides have been made to bring equality for all, there are still lasting effects of that era which can be seen today.

Black South Africans, while the largest population in the country, remain the most marginalized, many living in townships where schools are not up to standard, teachers are not effective and dropout rates (due to various external barriers also) are unacceptable. South Africa's math and science scores were ranked very last in a study comparing 144 countries' student test scores. On the flip side, every white South African I have met attended a private school.

In order to try to bring equality into the workforce, the ANC (South Africa's ruling party since 1994) came up with a plan to ensure non-white South Africans were being hired as a way to tackle the staggering unemployment levels, which are heavily skewed towards Black South Africans, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) policy was put in place.

B-BBEE regulation measures any enterprise based in South Africa with more than 50 employees, on a set of criteria, including percentage of black ownership, employees, vendors used, skills development offered, etc. Based on this criteria, each organization is given a score (1 being the best) and if you have a poor score, it is very difficult to do business in South Africa. As an example, one liquor company was threatened to have their government-issued liquor license taken away if they did not improve their score - that's a dealbreaker.

Essentially what has happened, is the government is trying to battle the symptoms without understanding the root cause. The government has implemented this policy to force companies into hiring non-white South Africans, but they aren't properly educating their students to build them into candidates that meet that standards of the organizations in the market.

Are there smart, talented, highly-skilled non-white South Africans? ABSOLUTELY! But many of these candidates are still behind in terms of resume & cv writing, interview preparation, and presentation skills (don't get me wrong, South Africa as a whole needs improvement in these areas, but the student's from privileged backgrounds certainly have a leg-up). The high-achieving candidates who have learned these skills are highly sought after and it becomes extremely competitive to hire them locally. Or they decide to take advantage of international opportunities, and as an expat myself, I can't blame them!

We work tirelessly to combat these issues and hire non-white South Africans into our firm, not just for our B-BBEE score, but also because having a diverse staff brings great value, unique perspectives and a positive culture. But it's tough, we can only take a candidate so far with resume writing workshops and interview prep sessions. Without the foundation of a solid education, these candidates will not have the skills needed for the job.

At one point, the solution seemed to be bringing in foreign workers to help train the local staff and work off an apprenticeship model to get new hires upskilled quickly, hence why I am here, but under more strict regulations from the government, it is now becoming more and more difficult to get work visas for South Africa.

Unfortunately, unless some major educational reform (teacher assessments, math and science curriculum improvements, etc.) is put in place soon, I see this talent drain being the biggest pitfall of the South African economy.