Johannesburg - A section of the wall surrounding the German cultural institute in Johannesburg came tumbling down on Monday as Germany used the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to try to break down barriers in South Africa. Germany's ambassador to South Africa Dieter W Haller used a digger to knock down part of the high wall that surrounds the Goethe- Institut in front of an approving audience of around 300 people.
Visitors arriving for an evening of music and exhibitions picked their way across the rubble through a gaping hole in the wall spanning about five metres.
After the demolition, the crowd joined a choir in a German- language rendition of Beethoven's Ode To Joy.
Haller, in a speech, drew a line between the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release from prison three months later of South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and the country's first democratic elections in 1994.
Johannesburg is notorious for the high walls that have sprung up around homes, businesses and social centres in response to the country's high crime rates dividing cities along class lines.
"Here the walls are not imposed by political will but reflect the way in which people construct and maintain isolation from each other," Germany's cultural instituteR noted in a statement.
