The Big Trip-Paris, Africa, London: Soweto and the Apartheid Museum

The Weather today is a much better than yesterday. The sun is shining and it is beginning to warm up. At 8:00 AM, we met our guide, Phineas, who was taking us for a tour of Soweto. Soweto actually means South West Township. I always thought it was an African name.

We began our tour by going through Johannesburg. Phineas wanted to show us that Johannesburg was a safe place except for the neighborhood of Hillsborough. This was a pretty rough place. Many apartments had broken windows and most of the people are immigrants from other African nations. There was garbage everywhere and the streets were teaming with people. He also took us through the neighborhood of Houghton. This is where the real money lives. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have homes here. We also saw the DeBiers (diamonds) family home. The area was stunning. Phineas said that many of the very wealthy blacks own homes here but still maintain homes in Soweto to stay in during the day.

From here we made our way to Soweto. When we first approached it, it looked like many homes were very middle class. The Mandela home and that of his former wife, Winnie, were very upscale. We saw homes belonging to business men and lawyers. It was really quite nice. Then, it hit us. We were now taken to what we would describe as the project. Electricity was provided by stealing off of make shift lines from electrical poles. There was a pump at the end of each row of houses where people got their water and washed their clothes. The toilets were outhouses. It appeared pretty grim but people seemed to be happy. They smiled and waved at us and children gathered around to get treats and small coins. In a way it was pretty uplifting.

Our next stop was the Hector Pietersen Museum. Hector Pietersen was a 13 year old student who was the first person killed in the student protests of June 16, 1976. The students were protesting the government making Afrikaans the official language of instruction in schools. There were 600 students killed and even more hurt over a 2 day period by the police. There is a famous photo of a another student running with hector in his arms. It was a very moving experience.

After the museum, we had a traditional African lunch. It was chicken, mutton, acorn squash, corn, tomato sauce, beets and rice. We were then on our way to the Apartheid Museum. Although it was a very confusing layout, the museum gave us great insight into the history of South Africa, the gold mines and apartheid. Apartheid was declared but the ruling Dutch or Afrikaans government in the early 20^th Century. It separated Blacks, Whites and Coloureds. They had originally set out to categorize the different backgrounds of the population but, the leadership finally said that it was a waste of resources and time. So they just put people in the 3 categories. Townships were set up to house blacks and coloureds and a class system was created which included salary and job classification. This was maintained until 1994 when the African National Congress (ANC- Nelson Mandela) and the South African Government (F.W. deKlerk) reached agreement to end apartheid and hold open democratic elections. This ended 20 year of fighting, bombing and killing. Thousands of people had lost their lives to stop apartheid. It was finally world pressure and boycotts of South African businesses that finally brought the government to the table. This was also a very moving experience with lots of video footage of actual events.

This was a very good day. We said goodbye to Phineas and we got ready for dinner. Tomorrow we head for Kruger National Park.