Jozi

I run uphill for some way, mostly on an easy pavement, and partially on a jarring dirt track, I resentfully enjoy a route against which I am free to struggle. The path gradually starts to flatten out, I breathe heavily with relief, strain not regretted. I think of the houses I run past, or of the squatter camps too painful to see. I think of the towering slum, once a magnificent tyrant, now usurped and left for dead by a tyrant of the restless new world not twenty miles to the north. I reach the halfway point and turn. I run downhill, back the way I came, my legs work with a lesser rebellion, the morning becomes brighter and the evening less spiteful. I enter the last straight line, more or less flat for a couple of hundred yards, I stretch my legs and open my stride, my muscles burn, achingly free, for a moment I cannot be caught. Still, running into the morning and away from the night, my ankles remain idiotically shackled and for some reason I cannot outrun Johannesburg's hard earned pain. 13th November 2018