Lost in the Translation By Todd Pitock Special to The Washington Post Sunday, March 15, 1998; Page E01

"What's he saying?" I ask my African companions. It's disconcerting to miss the punch line, let alone the entire routine.

"Well," one of my friends explains, "he's just saying that no matter if you are black or if you are white, we all have one God."

Something, clearly, is getting lost in the translation.

Unfortunately, it's a regional problem in metropolitan Johannesburg, this inability to transmit the spirit, if not the words, of an experience. Which may explain why, when the country and its capital city are buzzing, and the social and cultural life are flourishing, the tourist industry leaves Johannesburg off the itinerary completely. The ostensible reason visitors avoid Jo'burg, as it is known, is that it can be dangerous. The murder rate competes yearly for the dubious distinction of highest in the world, and carjacking is so common that the parking lots where police hold recovered stolen vehicles look like mall car parks.

That said, for anyone who comes here with a mind to understanding South Africa, skipping Johannesburg is like going out to dinner and forgoing the main course. This is where the energy of South Africa is centered.

"You're not going to understand South Africa unless you spend a couple of days in Jo'burg," observes Alan Mabin, associate professor of town planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. "You can, of course, just go to Cape Town or hang out in the Kruger Park [a popular wild animal preserve], but you won't get a real sense of South Africa that way."

I was here for a year before I got a handle on the place. I came to get married in 1990, a few months after national hero, and later president, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. I wound up staying for three years during what South African intellectuals dubbed the "interregnum" -- the period when one era, namely apartheid, was ending, but the next hadn't yet begun. Back then, apart from politics, Jo'burg was staid, spiritless, dull. Despite the magnificent weather, you couldn't find an outdoor cafe. At night there was a feeling of so-what-do-we-do-now. Fear and uncertainty suppressed the willingness to socialize among strangers, so people entertained in their homes. In 1993, I moved back to the United States, but I have returned almost annually as a tourist and reporter, allowing me to glimpse and gauge the changes, a bit like snapping time-lapse photographs.

The May 1994 elections brought in a black-majority government and an energized Johannesburg. Outdoor cafes and restaurants opened, local markets sprang up and the music scene was suddenly in ascendance. Even the hermetically sealed malls of the notoriously sterile, overwhelmingly white northern suburbs added grand extensions for people to come outside and enjoy themselves.

Civic segregation didn't end; it simply changed from racial to financial. In the new South Africa, people are measured less by the color of their skin than by the contents of their wallets. It just so happened that, thanks to years of apartheid, white people had more money than dark people. In general, the less expensive an area or activity, the more racially integrated it now is -- until you get to the lowest end of the money spectrum. Take Soweto, for instance; few whites, except for tourists, ever venture there even now. Tourists tend to stay in the city's northern suburbs, where the hotels are.

Johannesburg is a young city, and if its youth was marred by cruelty, greed and racism, it remains, culturally speaking, a work in progress. It was founded in 1886 in response to a gold rush, and not unlike America's gold towns, it attracted fortune-hunters and others looking to restart their lives. Brits, Irish, Scots, Greeks and Italians came; so did large numbers of East Europeans, including masses of Jews from Lithuania and Latvia. Later, when Portugal surrendered its colonies of Mozambique and Angola, there was a huge influx of Portuguese. Even African arrivees, many of whom came desperately seeking work, quickly shed their tribal identity for Jo'burg's cosmopolitan one.

Though white and black Jo'burgers tended and continue to live separately, they fit into the Jo'burg style; the city is so homogenous that you can drive from one end to the other without realizing how many ethnic enclaves you've passed through. Blacks who got a foothold in the middle and upper middle class moved into the northern suburbs, and here the integration has been surprisingly complete: There is a clear trend of African children who speak English, not an indigenous African language, among themselves.

The size and nature of the population, including that of Soweto, is much debated, with estimates ranging from 3 to 5 million. Whatever the figure, Jo'burg is South Africa's largest city, and arguably the most important commercial hub on the continent. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is one of the largest in the world, and though wealth remains concentrated in a few, mostly white hands, living standards are high.

American influence is prominent. In the 1920s, African intellectuals, for example, were inspired by and emulated the Harlem Renaissance. Now, the rhythmic township music called Kwaito is a reinterpreted, Africanized version of U.S. hip-hop.

Johannesburg's setting, though far less dramatic than Cape Town's rocky bluffs and white sand beaches, is nevertheless striking. Perched atop the high veld in the northeastern part of South Africa and sprawling over a fertile landscape, it is at an elevation higher than Denver's. It is full of colorful gardens and panoramic vistas of undulating hills. Because of the crime rate, affluent homes throughout Jo'burg and Soweto have security walls and electric fencing. Even the most naive of visitors can tell that all is not quite right here.

Still, a visitor should spend a couple of days in Jo'burg. Now is a particularly good time. The exchange rate is favorable -- an excellent meal of Mozambiquen peri-peri prawns with a Cape wine runs about $20 a person; service is personal and meticulous; and hotels, especially given their high quality, are inexpensive. And while there has been a steady increase in North American visitors, it's far from overrun.

The key, of course, is knowing where -- and where not -- to go. Your best bet is to hire a guide. If you're on your own, use taxis from hotels or rent a car and get good directions from the hotel concierge.

If you're in town on a weekend, the outdoor markets are a good place to start. Throughout Johannesburg you'll find a spontaneous mix of people -- again, the more upscale, the more white the crowd -- and nifty items on the cheap: wood, stone and wire sculptures, African jewelry, Ndebele dolls, sculpted Swazi candles, brightly dyed cloth. A few years ago, we bought hand-carved mahogany Malawi chairs for $20 apiece. We later saw the same style chairs in Bloomingdale's for $250.

The People's Market in Newtown, a neighborhood a stone's throw from the downtown business district, has long been a gathering spot for all Jo'burgers. Then there are the upscale flea markets in the north, at Rivonia, Bruma and on the roof of the Rosebank Mall; and in Sandton, Jo'burg's little sister city to the north, the Organic Market aims for wholesomeness with organic cheeses, fresh flowers and cottage crafts.

Cafe life is healthy, too, and morning and afternoon tea is a tradition held over from the English colonial period. My favorite section of the city is Melville, a refurbished artsy neighborhood in the south of mostly one-story buildings with boutiques, restaurants and a pair of little book shops that stock Africana you won't find in North American super-stores. Lower Rosebank in the northern suburbs also has a nice little strip of cafes. For a real view of the leisure class, the lounge at the Michelangelo hotel in Sandton Square looks down on the piazza -- which itself bustles with the cafe set. The jet set has recently been spending time at the Westcliff, a way-upscale hotel that opened in October across from the Johannesburg Zoo.

The music scene is enjoying a golden age. Starting in 1995, radio stations have been required to broadcast at least 5 percent local music, and the policy has served to encourage young talent. In the city's clubs, you can find South African live music being played almost any night of the week. The styles range from township-style hip-hop to jazz to African gospel to white urban rock.

Kippie's in Newtown's Market Theatre area puts you in the heart of it, and all the African music legends -- Hugh Masekela, Dollar Brand, Lucky Dube -- have performed here for small but enthused crowds. Nearby is Rave, where dancing starts Saturday night and goes well into Sunday morning. In Braamfontein, alongside the University of Witwatersrand, Wings is considered leading edge, Melville boasts Roxies and the Baseline, and Lower Rosebank adds a more charged sexual element -- openly gay and straight -- at its numerous hot spots.

Soweto should, of course, be part of a visit. You can arrange tours through hotels for about $25, but don't go on the standard itinerary, which invariably winds up at the less-than-interesting Mandela mansion and the newly opened Mandela house museum, recently converted into a shrine by and to the president's ex-wife, Winnie. Among other relics, you can buy soil from the property for $11 with a certificate authenticating its origin. It's wiser to spend a few extra dollars for a more intimate, inside view. On a recent visit, for example, I hired a guide to arrange a tour of shebeens and a township soccer match.

Soweto (a reduction of South Western Townships) was established in 1904 as a separate, African-only district within the segregated capital. Eventually it became synonymous with the cruelty and injustice of the country's history of racial oppression, and "Soweto" evoked images of riots and embattled, blazing shantytowns. And it does indeed remain grossly under-serviced. Uncollected trash seems strewn in every field. Unemployment, overcrowding and crime are just a few of its problems.

But Soweto's image remains much worse than its reality. It is not just a sum of fragile tin shanties ruled by gangs and warlords. It is a city -- estimates vary from 1 to 4 million people -- with better and worse parts, with middle-class neighborhoods, wide, paved roads, one of the largest hospitals in the world, schools and a liberal arts university. There is even an 18-hole golf course, sorry-looking though it may be. Most Soweto homes have electricity and running water, and if the massive sprawl suffers in comparison with Jo'burg's affluent suburbs, it is hardly just a massive African slum.

"Soweto is not the hellhole [foreigners] think," insists Gabriel Mataboge, a tour operator whose U.S. visitors are often African Americans who, he says, are more interested in the reality than the romance of South Africa. "I have to disabuse them of a lot of preconceived ideas because they're surprised to see we have infrastructure, that there are good things about life here."

In fact, Jo'burgers are not always their city's best ambassadors.

"If you say anything good about Johannesburg, I'll never speak to you again," said my friend Joseph Sherman, a lifelong resident who translated I.B. Singer's last posthumous novel, "Shadows on the Hudson." We met in a cafe where we meet whenever I visit; we start at lunch and usually spend the afternoon. I insisted there was much to praise here, and he shook his head a moment, then reconsidered: "You could write about this place. Yes, this is a very nice cafe. You can say something good about it."

"I can't write a whole piece about De La Creme."

"Why not?"

Typical, I thought. My friend, a world-class translator, a distinguished academic, sounds almost like an alien in his own city.

Yes indeed, this town needs an interpreter.

For more information on travel to Johannesburg, contact the South Africa Tourism Board (500 Fifth Ave., 20th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10110, 1-800-822-5368).

Todd Pitock is a writer in Villanova, Pa.