A 9 hour car tour of Johanessburg

*Disclaimer- I am not a historian nor have I researched what I am writing about. A self proclaimed ignoramus on the history of South Africa, there are probably many historical mistakes in the following post.

Yesterday I was a tourist. I did a 9 hour driving tour around Johannesburg. I'm not sure why I did it other than the fact that I figured if I just hung around the lodge, I would just sleep and that wouldn't help the jet lag in any way. So, off I went on a 9 hour tour.

The mode of transportation was a very small Chevrolet which was meant to house a very large tour guide and three passengers. I was luck enough to be sitting shotgun which was great from looking out the window and seeing the sights, but it also meant that every gear shift and lane change I would receive a gentle nudge in the leg or arm. Pastor was a lovely guide but perhaps had been doing this a little too long. I was the first to be picked up which meant that I had the pleasure of being in the car as we drove to pick up the other two passengers. This gave me lots of time to chit-chat with Pastor and really get to know him...it was a long day.

Our first stop was to drive through Hillbrow which is the area of town with the highest crime rate. Apparently last year there were over 2500 crimes in that one area alone including rape, human trafficking, drug dealing, prostitution and murder, and those were only the crimes that the police know about. It was once an area where white people lived but after the end of apartheid all the white people moved out because it became a popular area for “foreigners” meaning Nigerians, Zambians, Zimbabweans... It seems that racism exists all over the world. Nigerians are definitely seen as the lowest of the low- according to the tour guide anyway. Now the area is just a haven for crime, poverty and illegal activity. However, “the crime only happens at night so, we were perfectly safe driving through the area during the day.” Interesting.

Next was a quick jaunt past two of the soccer stadiums used for the world cup and a drive over the Mandella bridge into Newtown. It looks very much like old town. It is home to the Market theatre and Mary Fitzgerald square named after a famous woman labour leader. She helped to bring better working conditions to the coal mines in the 1920s.

From there we drove through downtown Joburg which is very similar to any other city in a developing country. Definitely not pretty and almost empty because it was Sunday. There was the usual assortment of KFCs and Macdonald's but most of the stores were closed so I couldn't really tell what else there was behind the metal grating. Many of the buildings downtown have been abandoned because of crime and the dangers of the city. Most businesses have moved to the suburbs or shopping malls where people aren't afraid to come. What were once beautiful old buildings are now falling apart because no one is interested in investing the money for upkeep.

We left the city proper and visited Soccer City, home to the opening and closing game of the world cup. A stunning stadium in the shape of a calabash, the outside panelled with rectangles of red, brown and white. The outside of the stadium was impressive but apparently inside it was the same stadium that was built in 1989 they just wrapped it up pretty for the world cup.

Next we headed to the “township.” This was a new concept for me. I wasn't exactly sure what was meant by this term that was being thrown around so casually. A township is where the black people were sent to live and is the equivalent of a slum. The most famous township is Soweto. It's divided into three distinct classes. The upper class people live in houses very much like any other suburb. Made of cement blocks and stuccoed, most of these houses had large walls surrounding them and security systems installed. The middle class is divided between old style “hostels” and the newer government provided housing. The hostels were made for the miners a long time ago and do not have electricity or running water. They are rows upon rows of basic block buildings with tin roofs. The government supplies port-a-potties for bathroom facilities and they are emptied every couple of days. The newer developments, which are built surrounding the old hostels, because that is the only land they have to develop, are made of brick, have electricity and running water and house 4 families each. The problem is that these newer houses are not being built very quickly and while you wait for one to be built you have to live in the slums and even then, the house that was meant to be for you, may be given to someone who “has friends.”

The slums are exactly that. On the outskirts of the township there are people who live in tin shacks stacked up against each other. Again there are port-a-potties provided but it doesn't seem as though there are nearly enough. The people collect scrap metal and recycling to earn any money that they can. They use communal water taps and have to carry the water in whatever containers they can find and if there's a fire, the whole little shanty town goes up in flames.

After Apartheid, the human rights declaration states that everyone shall have a home. They way that they have done this is once you are in government housing, you own the house and the land that they've given you. That means that even when you have a job and earn good money, you don't need to pay for the land or the house and you can do whatever you want with it. So, you have people who have built beautiful homes beside the relative simplicity of their neighbours house or, you see people living in a single room house but who drive extremely expensive cars or where designer clothes or both.

We left the Soweto to go and see the street where both Desmund Tutu and Nelson Mandela lived. It is amazing that two Nobel Peace Prize winner both lived on the same street.

That amazing street is also very close to where the 1976 school protests took place. I was really quite ignorant about all the things that happened in South Africa so really didn't understand what it was all about. Through a series of events, the language of instruction in black schools was changed from English to Afrikaans. From what I understand, Afrikaans was a language created by the Dutch because they wanted to control what happened in SA. They wanted to show dominance over the black people. As a result, the students were taught in the their own language in elementary school (one of 9 dialects), then in their first years of high school were taught in English and then for their final years were expected to switch to Afrikaans. This meant that the students were not succeeding which may have been the intention all along. The students tried to talk to their parents, teachers, principals and they all agreed that the system wasn't working but there was nothing they could do. The politicians wouldn't be told what to do by a bunch of students so they arranged a peaceful protest. Three high schools coordinated together and the students took to the streets to walk in protest. It didn't take long for the police to start shooting rubber bullets, then tear gas and finally real bullets. Students died and it was enough to get the attention of the international media which eventually lead to the end of apartheid. So, we saw the street where the students were killed and the Eric Pieterson museum. It very nicely summarized the events leading up to the killings and the actions that resulted.

From the museum we headed around the corner for lunch. We ate at a typical South African corner restaurant which served BBQ beef or chicken, papa(a corn products with the same consistency as cream of wheat cereal), mashed potatoes, gravy, beet salad and cow's head stew. All sounds pretty good, doesn't it, until you get to the stew. There were parts in that stew that I recognized and parts that I didn't- it was the parts that I didn't recognize which caused the greatest concern. All in all, pretty delicious.

We quickly drove past a church where policmen opened fire on a group of people who were holding a meeting to protest against the ruling party and arrived at the Apartheid museum. I had high hopes. Having been at the museums at places like Hiroshima Japan where the nuclear bomb hit, seeing the high school and killing fields in Cambodia, and touring the Viet Nam war museum, I had expected to be moved and emotional. Instead, I got bombarded with political facts and information. The layout of the museum was confusing and it weaved back and forth a lot making it hard to figure out which direction to go in. I found that it was too specific in its details and didn't contain enough emotion and personal histories. After the first hour I was tired of reading and was only half way through the museum. There were pictures but they weren't well captioned. I left knowing more about Apartheid but it didn't create any feeling in me. I should have left feeling outraged at what the white people had done and feeling compassion for the black people. Instead I just felt tired and my head hurt. However, if you are person who enjoys reading long descriptions about political happenings, this would be a great museum for you. For people who know me, and anyone who's travelled with me, you know I appreciate the visual part of a museum more than the written and I just found that this museum was lacking.

So, after that long day (and don't forget that I'm dealing with jet lag because there's a seven hour time difference between SA and Canada) I got to sit in the car as we dropped off the other two girls and then we finally headed home (or back to the lodge- at this point home is where ever my backpack happens to be) Beyond exhaustion I have some dinner at the lodge and try to get to bed early to be ready for another travel day.