You Can Go to the Top of Africa, But You’re Not Getting a Cocktail
You Can Go to the Top of Africa, But You’re Not Getting a Cocktail
Nothing to Drink in Johannesburg
The first thing we notice as we get out of the lift at the top of the tallest building in Africa is the bullet hole in the window. Fired from the outside of the building, the bullet never made it all the way through the glass, but shattered it and bounced off. We wonder about the back story. Who would be shooting windows from such a height? And why?
We’ve paid our R15 (slightly more than one dollar) to get to the Top of Africa bar and we’re fifty floors up at the top of the Carlton Centre, a skyscraper and shopping centre located in downtown Jozi, as Johannesburg is known. It’s been the tallest office building in Africa since 1973—it’s roughly 730 feet tall—and once featured a famously luxurious hotel which hosted Henry Kissinger, Francois Mitterrand, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Whitney Houston, and Mick Jagger.
The hotel closed its doors in the early 90s due to urban decay, and in 1999 the Carlton Centre was bought by the state-owned freight company Transnet and is now part office block, part shopping centre. It’s easy to spot the tourists heading for the Top of Africa bar, look for the cluster of white folk embarking on a guided tour in this largely black neighborhood.
My drinking buddy Steven and I both grew up in Jozi, so we came along on our own steam, full of memories of the days when the top of the Carlton Centre featured an ice rink called the Sky Rink. It was in the late 70s, the height of apartheid. Surreally, to the strains of English and American disco, we white children learned to ice skate fifty floors up on the southern tip of Africa. The only black people allowed there were cleaners. Now here we are some thirty years later, feeling like tourists ourselves caught in the Saturday afternoon bustle of hip and happening African youth who view us with a mixture of disdain, bemusement, and curiosity.
The 50th floor of the centre is a circular and glass, with 360 degree views of the city. We wander along the north and western sides, looking out towards the sunset and the first spring storm gathering in the distance. Lightning flashes over a dusty city that started out with the discovery of gold in 1886 and still retains a singularly Wild West flavor.
We head for the Top of Africa bar and are devastated to learn it is closed. A five-star restaurant is apparently in the offing, although the ticket seller failed to tell us and I have seen nothing in the news nor can find anything online. The bar is empty, the signage gone. Fifty floors up and thirsty, we wander disconsolately around, gazing out at the views of the city and remembering our bizarre childhood days in a strange time.