Johannesburg - Day 4

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I apologize for how long it has taken me to get back to work on this blog. My time in Johannesburg was filled with long days and sleep was necessary. Emotionally, the days were also difficult to process, and my heart was often not willing to reexamine all that I saw each day. I hope I will be able to now share my experiences with you in an authentic way.

On the morning of July 23^rd, we left Cape Town and caught a flight to Johannesburg, since it’s over 850 miles between the two cities. The first few pictures were taken from the plane. When we landed in Johannesburg, we stopped for lunch in a downtown area that is trying to reinvent itself as an artistic and eclectic area, and we had a few places to choose from. Luckily, right across the street was an Italian restaurant, and I enjoyed an Hawaiian pizza with a couple friends.

After lunch, we made our way to the Apartheid Museum. We were only allowed to take pictures outside, so I will focus a lot of what I write about based on these pictures, but please allow me to quickly explain what apartheid was. Apartheid was a form of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Trevor Noah compares apartheid to these three distinct American periods of time. First, take the forceful removal of all Native American Indians off their lands, then take slavery, and finally take the Jim Crow laws and put all three periods together, and that was apartheid in South Africa for over forty years. Clearly, nothing about apartheid was ever about justice, fairness or equality, and yet every day for over forty years, black and mixed raced South Africans had to endure this atrocity.

The Apartheid Museum illustrates the rise and fall of apartheid, but Nelson Mandela was one of the most important leaders during this time, as he and his colleagues tried to gain freedom for all black South Africans by trying to convince the government, which was ruled by the minority, of South Africa to do away with apartheid. Mandela spent 27 years in prison while trying to lead this movement, and most of my pictures will include him.

After the Apartheid Museum, we checked into our hotel and went for dinner. During dinner, we were honored to meet Antoinette Sithole, whose brother was one of the first students shot and killed by police during the Soweto Upraising on June 16, 1976. This moment was captured in a photo that became the symbol for the Soweto Uprising all around the world. The Soweto Uprising took place because high school students were protesting a new law stating that the Afrikaans language was suddenly going to replace English as the medium of language, thus forcing blacks to focus on understanding the language instead of subject material. Just one more injustice being forced upon the non-white community.

On June 16, 1976, there were several schools, over 10,000 students, in Soweto that left their schools in protest, to come together in Orlando Stadium to express themselves and bring their voice to this issue. However, the police blocked several routes to the stadium and at some point, shooting started. Hector Pieterson, who was 12 years old, was one of the first students to die that day. When he fell to the ground, an older boy picked him up to get help for him, and that is when the picture was taken. Antoinette was running along side her brother crying out in anguish. Forty-two years later, Antoinette came to meet us and to share with us her story. It was incredible to meet her and to listen and learn from her. Thank you to the NEA Foundation for organizing all of this.

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