A Good Place for no Tourists nor Locals – performance by Hector Thami Manekehla

In his performance A Good Place for no Tourists nor Locals Hector Thami Manekehla reflects himself and his environment and explores the level of crime in his hometown Johannesburg as well as in Durban and Cape Town.

From a touristic point of view, only white tourists are getting robbed their belongings and are robbed even more than the local residents. In reality Johannesburg is even more dangerous for local residents, irrespective of their skin color. You are more likely to be killed for your smart phone on the streets, you are more likely to be killed for your car at the traffic light or gate of your house, you are more likely to be killed for your clothes, you are more likely to killed for your watch or necklace and you are more likely to be killed for withdrawing your money at the ATM machine. You are also more likely to be killed for resisting to hand over your backpack to the criminals – they either stab or shoot you to death.

Since house breaking and house robbery are one of the biggest crimes committed everyday in Johannesburg, the majority of the houses have security arm respond alarm systems. But all these systems cannot guarantee your house won’t be robbed, they just exist to make people feel a little bit better about their own security. Belongings are seldomly or never found and the criminals hardly ever identified. What is left, are the many traumatised and lost lives. So much fear in society and dark streets becoming hunting grounds for criminals.

Hector Thami Manekehla is a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude in the special program Afrika in Solitude supported by the TURN Fond of Kulturstiftung des Bundes.