The Joburg believers on a mission to save their city
Almost every day, on a bustling Johannesburg intersection studded with jacaranda trees, the three silver men appear. They drift through the roaring traffic in various guises. Sometimes they are polished office workers with wire-rimmed glasses and ties frozen on a gust of wind. Occasionally, they are shimmering jesters. But most often they wear heavy work boots and miners’ helmets and carry pickaxes, ghostly reincarnations of the multitude of indentured workers who toiled in Johannesburg during the world’s biggest Gold Rush.
The men wear fixed grins, even when the summer heat edges towards the high 30s or winter temperatures plunge to freezing. They move only when a vehicle window rolls down and an arm emerges holding a coin or note. Then, with unexpected grace, they collect the money before folding back into a new pose.
