South Africa’s Tower Of Trouble

In the heart of Johannesburg, there is probably no building more notorious than Ponte City. The cylindrical tower with a hollow core was built in the 1970s as luxury apartments only for whites. In the ensuing decades, as whites decamped to the suburbs, Ponte became a symbol of urban decay, overrun by drug dealers and gangs and dubbed “suicide central“ because of the number of people who chose to end their lives by hurling themselves off the tower. Today, Ponte is undergoing a renaissance. The building has