My first city was Johannesburg (from now on referred to as Joburg out of affection and convenience). I arrived in town with my social schedule pretty much planned out as I had contacted Megan, a friend that I made three years ago at a travel conference in Cartagena, Colombia when I was with Elderhostel. She's from Joburg and still lives there. So I was quite relaxed as I started the trip, knowing that I had a friend in town. And I really enjoyed Joburg *because* of Megan, getting to know her better and realizing just how much we have in common. On Sunday, after going to the Lion Park and the Apartheid Museum (which I'll cover in a minute), we went to her family's place for dinner. Sitting in the living room with the heat on (August is the end of South Africa's winter) and a purring cat on my lap, I wished that Joburg was in the middle of my trip, as I knew that this was exactly the relaxing and cozy kind of evening I would need in a few weeks' time... and oh god was I right!
Anyhow, the work was easy enough -- surveying South Africa is like surveying Europe with regards to ease of information, consistency and accessibility, clarity, etc. I spent all of my working time in Sandton, north of central Johannesburg. Most of the businesses have migrated to the northern suburbs, making Sandton the new CBD (Central Business District). It's where the wealth is, and the nice hotels and homes and malls... it seemed like there was a (strip) mall every 3 or 4 blocks, I kid you not. We joked about counting them but forgot, or lost track, I'm not sure which... once you leave the Sandton Business District, it's just miles and miles of suburban sprawl. You can't live here without a car.
About 40 minutes outside of Joburg, there's a Lion Park/game reserve. For the Lion Park, it's basically a petting zoo with a lion cub enclosure, and then an area to feed the giraffes (they gently wrap their tongue around your hand and take the pellets with their fuzzy lips) and ostriches (they peck your open palm rather violently, coming down like a pointed sledgehammer and knocking half of the pellets out of your hand in the process).
Yummy.For the lion cubs, it seems to be the luck of timing as to how old/big the cubs are as to what you are able to do in the enclosure. I've seen pictures of people holding the cubs, but in our case we were allowed 2 minutes in the enclosure of rather big sleeping cubs that I tentatively petted. The one cub who was awake was pacing and muttering and I kept a respectful distance.
In the lion's den... literally.
Don't you just wanna snuggle into that neck and play with those paws...?The other section of the park is a drive-through enclosure. It was a mini-safari in Megan's compact car, with anti-smash & grab film on the windows. We saw zebras, and an antelope of sorts... shoot... I've forgotten the specific names. I want to say springbok but I'm not sure if that's accurate, or if I'm just thinking of the Clover butter 500gr that I priced in all 5 cities this survey. Anyhow, the main attraction was the lion enclosure. We drove through several sections (one pride per section) with the windows all closed and got the closest I've ever been to a lion. Like cows, you don't appreciate how big they actually are until you're next to them.
Lion and car.
A little mohawk and sniffing action.After our brush with nature, we totally changed paces with a visit to the Apartheid Museum. They recommend that you budget 2 hours to visit. We were there for 3 and only got 60% of the way through, having to hustle through the last 40% as they were going to close. It's an impressive museum, just chock-a-block full of information -- photos, personal accounts, videos. It's a real living archive and a bit overwhelming. It's organized chronologically and I found the 80's decade the hardest. That's when I entered the world, blissfully ignorant. So to see video footage of the protests and violence and to think that I was living a sheltered childhood in Europe was disorienting. If it happened before my lifetime, there's not really anything I could do about it so we can leave it at that. But now that I'm on this earth, in theory I can play some kind of a role, be that of action or inaction. I am indirectly accountable... and if I apply that reasoning to today's events then there are so many events where I'm being extremely inactive. How will I respond to future museums that cover this decade?
But the funny thing is, despite the horrible-ness of Apartheid, South Africa has one of the most positive and hopeful vibes I've ever sensed in my travels. OK, in that statement we're ignoring Joburg's awful reputation for violence (car jackings, muggings, house robberies, where the potential for injury/death to the victim is high as the criminals do not value life) and we're forgetting that I only had a superficial mall-filled 2.5 weeks in the country... but the majority of the people that I spoke with were friendly and positive, be they black, white, colored, Indian... and that was the terminology that everyone around me was using. It was refreshing to be able to have a conversation about skin color and politics and not have to worry about political correctness the way you would in the USA. Because skin color is at the root of so many US tensions, but no one talks about it there, at least not directly and not without hub-bub. Maybe it was just because I was really interested in the topic and on a self-created condensed Apartheid tour, but I found people very open about race in a way that you would never find in the USA.
I was able to finish the survey early enough to take a half day tour into Soweto, as in SO (South) WE (Western) TO (Townships).
Indeed!
The townships were formed during Apartheid to keep the blacks separate but conveniently close enough to work in the cities or in the gold mines. Soweto was the heart of the black uprising against Apartheid and is where Mandela and Desmond Tutu had/have their homes -- two Nobel Peace Prize winners on the same block! Before visiting, I assumed that South African townships would be on a parallel with slums or Brazilian favelas, but I was totally wrong. Yes, there are appallingly poor sections with makeshift housing and no running water or electricity, but there are other perfectly middle-class areas that could be a suburban street in any town. And Soweto is massive -- it's a city within the city of Joburg. We only saw a portion of it.
Our tour focused on landmarks from the uprising, like Freedom Square where the ANC's Freedom Charter was first read out:
Different statues represent the different tenets of the charter. The flags are left-over from the World Cup.We also visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial, commemorating Pieterson's death (he was just a child) in June 1976 during a student demonstration. Students were protesting the new requirement that all schooling be taught and tested in Afrikaans. The demonstration was a key point (or even the real start?) of the Uprising. Although many died, Hector's death is so prominent because of the photo that you can see displayed in the memorial. It circulated in the media at the time and showed the international community what was going on in South Africa under Apartheid. I felt a bit out of the loop, as I didn't recognize the image.
The Hector Pieterson Memorial
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