Advertisement
Published: January 7th 2016
We saw so much today, I’m finding it hard to process. Our morning started with a drive through some of the affluent districts near our hotel. The main impression is that everyone lives behind decorative but solid walls, topped by various styles of deterrent, including razor wire. We did stop at Nelson Mandela’s house in Houghton Estates, bought in 1990 by the
ANCfor him – a large, beautiful house with lots of windows. An endearing tribute to him came from the stones around the trees outside the walls – they were all painted with messages, placed there when he was ill and after his death (2013).
A short drive away, on the top of a hill, was the
Constitutional Court. A deeply moving site. It took quite some time for me absorb conflicting feelings. After considerable confusion, I came to understand that the terrible prisons existing since Boer times were knocked down after Freedom, and the bricks were used to build a ceremonial staircase at the court. Four stairwells that had been part of the Awaiting Trial Prison were left as an almost sculptural tribute to the bad times when political prisoners were held there in inhumane conditions.
Next we
Awaiting Trial Block staircases
Deliberately all that remains of Number Four prisondrove around the old downtown of Johannesburg. What looks like a lively streetscape is actually the face of deep poverty and decline. All the storefront shops are just that – none of the floors above the street level are occupied, although in some buildings squatters live without utilities. Some building owners have bricked-up the store fronts as well, to deter further erosion – both physical and economic. Some fairly new highrises are even now being emptied as the companies follow the exodus to Sandton. Standard Bank, for example, is constructing a building in Sandton, abandoning its 2001 building because the customers are all in Sandton. Thankfully, a few corporations have renovated old buildings and are trying to re-establish a business community in the “old” downtown. Still it is obvious their customers won’t be the customers of the cheap shops that now sell to the minimally employed, many of whom are immigrants (legal and illegal) from neighbouring countries.
We drove across the Nelson Mandela Bridge to the outskirts of
Soweto – a legendary
township that is still loved by its inhabitants. Noticeable was the great distance this township is from the main city (20 km) – a deliberate tactic of
Soweto homes
Middle class comfort contrast with former single-men's hostels the apartheid government to rid themselves of the Black population.
Thabelo, who lives in Soweto, drove us through extensive streets of fine middle-class homes, some nearly as luxurious as in Houghton. He emphasized over and over again the prosperity of this part of Soweto (3 million total population). When he pointed out how well cared for and clean were the streets, he told us that even now neighbours come together to take care of their neighbourhoods. He commented that the police rarely come to Soweto and the residents have taken care of the criminal element, mainly thieves. To my horror, they have done this through the threat and execution of “necklacing”. They see three months in jail as ineffective punishment, so they use “street Justice” (his words). Hard to grasp that this relatively well-off, friendly, knowledgeable man finds this the best way to keep peace in his home town.
He then drove us past the lesser houses, mostly the free houses from a previous housing program (those with the solar panel hot water heaters) and the current program (more modern looking, plus the water heating solar panels). These were supposed to replace the “tin shacks” which are also
Percy's Matchbox
Pride and ingenuity embodied by a survivor in Soweto. Regrettably, people have been faster to repurpose the “tin shacks” than the government has been to tear them down.
Another type of house is called “matchbox”, a tiny four room house. We met Percy who has made his living for seven years showing his house to tourists. He lives there with his sister and two sons, with the help of two tiny extensions.
After our admiring his well cared-for home, Percy led us across the street to the Soweto taxi rank. Actually it is a huge “bus station” for the taxi buses. From here, people can find vans/buses that follow established routes to innumerable areas of Soweto and Johannesburg and beyond. Shops and illegal vendors abound, although the vendors had vanished before we got there, because the police had made their presence known by simply sitting in a parked marked car.
Then we drove to an area of
Kliptown, which Thabelo presumed represented our impression of Soweto from international news coverage. The dirt roads obviously receive no maintenance, and the only state-provided utilities were shared water pipe stands and chemical port-a-potties, emptied on Tuesdays and Thursdays – plus electricity stolen from the nearby high voltage
Kliptown Guide
A tiny look at desperate poverty being alleviated by committed volunteers and staff lines. This lack of everything is astonishing, especially since Kliptown has existed for decades.
Our destination was the
Kliptown Youth Empowerment Program that is so good the founder won an international
CNN Heroes award in 2012. The modest, clean compound hosts thirty computers, a TV room, breakfast and lunches for kids, educational support up to the end of high school for a certain number of students, and a kindergarten. Everything runs on solar power. They exist on donations alone. I left with mixed feelings: improvements could be more widespread with government involvement – why not? But, this can be said of all places.
In Soweto we ended at the apparently world-famous Zakhumzi restaurant with a buffet of modified “African dishes”. (South Africans seem to have appropriated the term “African” to mean themselves, similar to “Americans”.) The modification is to use herbs and spices, because usually people only use salt as flavouring. The dishes were tasty – most particularly the tripe, which was well-spiced and unlike any I have ever had.
After lunch we walked about a block along the street to Nelson Mandela’s house, now a
museum. It had two bedrooms, a tiny living room, a miniscule kitchen area, and a
Mandela's House
Up near the roof are stains from the bomb. tinier pantry. Hard to imagine a family of four in there, although Mandela’s activism kept him away from home increasingly until he was imprisoned. Restoration has been done, but the residue of a fire-bombing by the police was left on the brick face as part of history. Shivers down my back!
We made a brief visit to the
Hector Pieterson memorial, just up the street from Mandela’s house – I didn’t realize the incident was so close to the Mandela home. In 1976, primary school kids protesting the sudden government decision to deliver lessons only in Afrikaans (meant to oppress Blacks) were met with live fire by the police. Hector Pieterson was the first child killed, and his body was picked up by teenager. The photo by a journalist covering the protest is famous worldwide and forms the basis of the memorial. The memorial is a bit further on from the elementary school, in a park, but a portion of a wall stands in front of the school in tribute.
Finally we drove to the
Apartheid Museum. The extremely plain exterior belied the intense displays of video, spoken word, photos, reproduced artifacts, and texts that told the story of South Africa
Apartheid Museum
Dramatic, imprisoning walk to the entrance from the Black perspective. As we entered, we were arbitrarily given a ticket labeled “Black” or “White” and directed to the “appropriate” entrance, to help us feel personally the sting of racial segregation. In the displays on the mining era, I was reminded of my impressions yesterday when looking at photos in Gold Reef City showing the hostels being like prison camps – they were, in some places, as the owners thought it prudent to imprison all the workers just in case someone got ideas. Many of the historical trends of apartheid I knew, although not always in detail. The presentation was itself the feature of this museum – to make us experience a whiff of fear, despair, hope and activism. Most startling for me was the
Casspir, the armoured police vehicle. Having been on the roads in Kliptown, I wondered if the vehicle wasn’t too wide to pass in the streets without damaging houses. (Did they care?) The behemoth was at least twice as tall as I am; the tires came to my waist. Terrifying!
Two hours at the Museum was insufficient, but it closed at 5:00, and we had to move on to Pretoria. We drove in
Mandela house
Mandela set up the first Redevelopment Program to replace tin-shacks. bumper-to-bumper traffic for the first half of the 35 miles, until the Johannesburg commuter traffic turned off the National Road #1. The rest of the way was a high-speed journey through the countryside: grasses and dollops of trees with occasional hills. Driving into Pretoria (4.5 million population) was without highlight, until we reached the
Court Classique hotel, elegant with gardens and large rooms heavy with wood.
Our main tour guide, Duane, was there to greet us. We arrived half an hour before dinner-time, so there was just time to wash a bit and change shirts. Our tour expanded by five women, and we got to know each other a bit over a buffet dinner. Mine was salad, roast potatoes, fish, stir-fried vegetables, date cake, and glass of house white.
View
map of trip.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0522s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
