Wall Street No Walls

Wall Street Subway Station. Photo Credit: online pic.

Wall Street New York City. Like any good newcomer to N.Y., I took the train to the famous city-within-the city where they trade pork bellies, wheat, oil and even water. Famous or notorious? It depends on who’s talking.

Let me be up-front about it. Like all outsiders, I knew Wall Street from movies, the great Americana that brainwashed them that U.S. streets are paved with gold. Britain had the royal family as the colonizing weapon. America had Hollywood.

I got off the subway and got to Wall Street. Strange. No walls. Walked around, people bumped into me until I realized I was walking slowly, compared to them. I saw a hot dog stand and I had to buy one. They always have hot dog scenes in movies, so I had to play the part.

It was only when I took out U.S. dollars from my bag that I realized Wall Street does have walls. It was money. There are walls, secrets around money that even Business Studies graduates can never understand. There are no books about why I had to change British pounds to dollars because I was going to study in America.

There are no physical walls on Wall Street but there’s a shroud around the reason why gold, diamonds and platinum are mined in Africa, but the continent’s money is inferior to the euro and the dollar. It reminds me of the walls around De Beers Consolidated Mines that was based in South Africa under the protection of the apartheid regime. It left in 1994 and moved to the U.K.

It controlled the secret society that marketed diamonds. No walk-ins. Select men went to London to buy packets. Venues were secret and the number of diamonds in a packet was secret. The wall around those diamonds is the same reason why Wall Street has no walls, but decide why a dollar is no longer enough for a cup of coffee.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.