When visiting Jozi, particularly Rosebank, you've gotta get an Uber, right, even if your destination is just around the corner, a barely 5-minute walk away? That's what the hotel staff will tell you. But let's hear what residents of this vibrant suburb have to say.

Joburg people really do walk around their city, and the dire warnings that hotel staff issue to their guests are not necessarily based on reality - if the voices of real, ordinary Joburgers are to be believed. And why wouldn't they be?

I asked readers of my TGIFood newsletter last Friday what they thought of the habit of reception staff in Joburg hotels - particularly in Rosebank, where I happened to stay recently - of urging hotel guests not to walk around in the streets. I had been staying at the Southern Sun Hotel in Rosebank's Sturdee Avenue, and had wanted to walk down the street and across Tyrwhitt Avenue to Kingsmead College for their annual book fair, where I was taking part.

The receptionist was emphatic: I had to take an Uber. But it was a two-minute walk away, I remonstrated. I could virtually see the place I was headed to from the street outside the hotel.

"This is Joburg," was her reply, as if that told you everything you needed to know. There would be trouble, there could be robbery, there might be assault. Or worse. Just while you were walking down a street along which was a...