We spent the majority of our 48 hour transit time between Phuket and Tanzania in Johannesburg. Before you get the idea that this was a surprise to us, let me say it was planned and we even had a tour booked to fill the most part of the time that would otherwise have been spent in the Johannesburg airport. <\/p>\n
We had seen the Apartheid Museum as part of a travel show on TV while we were still in Seattle and thought it looked like an intriguing way to spend an afternoon. We booked the other half of the tour \u2013 through the Soweto township \u2013 as a way to see a bit more of Johannesburg. I\u2019m not sure entirely what I was expecting \u2026 but I know it wasn\u2019t the crash course in South African history and healthy dose of shame and fear that we got.<\/p>\n
Soweto, as it turns out, is not nearly as awful-looking as it seems on TV. Never believe what they tell you in the movies, right? I don\u2019t want to discount the fact that the people who lived there when it was first created were moved there forcibly because the government wanted to be able to control the black people and thought they could do that better in a planned \u201ctownship\u201d outside Johannesburg city that had plumbing, etc. than in a shanty town. But now it looks mostly like suburbia \u2026 perhaps more Tukwila than Issaquah, but suburbia nonetheless. <\/p>\n
We spent our time in Soweto going through the Hector Petersen museum and Nelson Mandela\u2019s former house (now a museum). For those who aren\u2019t aware \u2013 like I wasn\u2019t \u2013 Hector Petersen was a very young black student who was killed in riots that started on June 16, 1976. Those riots were among the first violent acts in a series of events that eventually led to the end of Apartheid. The museum in his honor chronicles the events that led up to Apartheid and the riots in which he was killed. The day we went was June 20, 2006 \u2026 shortly after the 30 year anniversary of the riots, so there were lots of school children there to learn about what happened when their parents were young.<\/p>\n
The house that\u2019s the Nelson Mandela museum is where he and Winnie Mandela brought up their 3 daughters and where he stayed for 11 days after being released from Robben Island (near Cape Town). Apparently, so many people visited him at all hours of the day and night that he had to move elsewhere. It\u2019s a small 4-room house built by the Apartheid government. Honestly, I was too tired to be much impressed or not impressed by it \u2026 it just seemed like a small house. Surprising for someone of Mandela\u2019s current international status, but comfortable and livable and probably huge for the time he lived in it, bringing up his girls.<\/p>\n
The Apartheid Museum, where we spent the afternoon, is quite something. It chronicles the history of Apartheid from its early roots to the establishment of the new South African constitution in 1994. It\u2019s filled with photos and film strips and lots and lots of plaques to read about what happened when and to whom, who the major players were, etc. I think the most startling thing to me was watching films of Winnie Mandela urging black people to fight (\u201cwe don\u2019t have guns \u2026 but we have matches, and we have bottles, and we have petrol\u201d) and then of what happened in the black townships after the government established the state of emergency toward the end of Apartheid rule. The government talks about how it\u2019s the only black government to have been established without war \u2026 but the beatings in those films sure look like videos of war to me. The other thing about those state of emergency films was watching them with young black South Africans who clearly had no idea of what they were watching. <\/p>\n
Highlights of the new South African constitution are displayed at the end of the museum. It includes, among other things, the right not to be discriminated against because of age, race, sex, creed, sexual orientation, etc. as well as the recognition of 9 tribal languages plus Afrikaans and English as official languages. And then our driver talked about how lots of young people don\u2019t even vote anymore \u2026 only 12 years after the first democratic elections. I just don\u2019t know what to think\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We spent the majority of our 48 hour transit time between Phuket and Tanzania in Johannesburg. Before you get the idea that this was a surprise to us, let me say it was planned and we even had a tour booked to fill the most part of the time that would otherwise have been spent … Continue reading