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World Summit - We're Ready! By Lucille Davie JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, August 15, 2002 (ENS) - Johannesburg, World Summit city, is ready for you. We've spruced up the town, widened the roads, planted thousands of trees, checked and double-checked the hotels you'll be staying in, bought hundreds of buses for you, and erected the world's biggest tent. But first things first. Before you come to Johannesburg, you'll have to learn our slang so you can really talk to us. So when we say "oke" or "ou" you'll know we mean "person". Or if we say "bru" or "china" we're saying the same thing but being extra friendly. "Howzit" means "how are you?" - just us being friendly again.
Joubert Park in Johannesburg (Photo courtesy U. Birmingham CWAS)Or if you hear someone say they are going for a "jol", they mean they are going out to have a good time, what we want you to do here for the Summit. You may be invited to go for a "dop," that's a drink, but make sure you don't have too much or you'll end up with a "babbelas" or hangover. For most of your time in Jo'burg or Joeys or Jozi you'll be more comfortable if you wear your "takkies" when walking around. That one you can work out for yourself.Right, china, let's get on with it. We've got some lekker tourist attractions for you here. You can jol down to Gold Reef City and go down an old gold mine and have a drink down there in an old donkey stable, if you like. When you're back on the surface you can buy some of our great Kruger Rand coins, 92% gold. Or you can see a gold pour, 88% real gold. But to get serious, across the road is one of our newest museums, the Apartheid Museum, and world-class it is. Don't rush it, it's serious stuff, and deserves several hours. While you're down south, check out Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve, a big piece of veld that has traces of Jo'burg's history of early indigenous peoples, going back 500 years. There's great hikes there, so don't forget your takkies. Also down south is Soweto, famous for the wrong reasons but getting its act together these days. Take a tour of the township - we have two Nobel Peace prize winners' houses in the same street, and just up the road is the Hector Pieterson Museum, commemorating his death and many others on 16 June, 1976, when the world stopped for us. He is buried in Avalon Cemetery; so are Helen Joseph and Joe Slovo and others involved in the apartheid struggle. We've got more great open green spaces. Melville Koppies is just five kilometres from the city, and has an iron age furnace dating back to 1400AD, as well as great views of the city and suburbs. Just down the road is Emmarentia Dam, a big open green space, with a botanical garden, with thousands of succulents, if you're a fan.
Cycad Garden in the Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden (Photo courtesy National Botanical Institute)Talking of succulents, you shouldn't miss our other botanical garden, the Witwatersrand Botanical Garden, about 30 kilometres west of the city. It's planted with just indigenous plants and trees. You can hike up a mountain, look over a waterfall into a black eagle's nest, or just picnic next to the river, checking out the birds. Don't forget your takkies.Back in the city we've got lots of great jols for you. You can take a topless bus (that's the bus not you) tour of the city, which includes great shopping, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, a muti (traditional medicine) market, and some of our historical sites around the city. When you drive around the city, you'll notice several enlarged art works on the buildings. Up to 30 works are going up on 12 buildings, 15 chosen from entries submitted in a competition, and 15 from corporate collections, never publicly seen before. We've been working hard on various showcase projects we want to show you. They range from recycling paper waste and litter in a sprawling township north of Jo'burg called Eco City; to buy back centres, buying waste paper from the poor, thus creating jobs; to creating gardens for people living with Aids. At Zoo Lake, the city's oldest park and green space, we've got a great project going. Schoolchildren will be throwing bacteria balls into the Lake to clean the water and restore the ecosystem. Just across the road at the Johannesburg Zoo, Africa's largest snake, the African python, is being studied as part of an international Flagship Species study.
Jacaranda trees bloom in Johannesburg
And, by the way, did you know that Jo'burg is an urban forest with around six million trees, and that from a satellite, our city looks like a rain forest. This is pretty good when you consider that in 1886, when gold was discovered here, there was not a tree in sight. Not all those trees are indigenous but most of the trees planted for the summit are.
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