29. Recent history shouldn't be this horrifying

Thursday 2 May
A tour of Johannesburg (finally!) & Soweto

Very early Thursday morning we had breakfast and then boarded our bus for Constitutional Hill. To be honest, by this point in the trip, I didn't want to have to look at another bus. Ever again. (It wasn't that bad, I had just been sitting in vehicles for so much time that I thought I couldn't take it anymore. And I just like complaining about it.)

Constitutional Court in the Eleven Official Languages of ZA

When we arrived at Constitutional Hill, we went inside the courthouse, which has the remnants of a wall of an old prison in it, and we looked at all the artwork in there. The artwork was really cool. Lots of interesting stores. Lots of great blends of western and African art. Lots of interesting stories intricately and passionately woven into the medium of art. It was beautiful. It was moving. It was paralyzing. It was inspiring.

An apartheid victim was captured and stripped of her clothes and tortured for information which she refused to give. She found a blue plastic bag and made herself panties out of it. Her captors disgustingly shot her but did not rape her or remove the plastic bag from her body because her courage and bravery had shamed them. An artist made this blue dress out of plastic bags and it hangs in the Constitutional Court in her honor. 

Each tick mark on these panels represents a day Mandela spent in jail.
"It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.
 But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
 - Mandela 

The court is part of the Constitutional Hill complex which is built on the site/ in some of the buildings of a former apartheid-era prison. The men's and women's prison are still standing. There is an eternal flame that was lit on the anniversary of the constitution being signed and has been burning ever since.

Eternal Flame 

AIDS victim's portrayal of the disease

We went on the tour of the men's prison and it was so rushed. It was really sad and surprising how quickly they rushed us through everything. The guide would give her brief speech on each area of the prison and then tell us we had a few minutes to look around and read all the tens of plaques of lengthy information and then tell us it was time to move on to the next section about 2 minutes later. It was intense! There was an entire exhibit on Ghandi since he was imprisoned there. Also on Mandela and other political prisoners. The tour was fascinating but just a bit too quick.

The tour ended in the Supreme Court Chambers where we learned about how their court operates (no jury...11 judges) and learned the symbolism behind the architectural features of the room - the passers-by-eye-height glass around the whole room for transparency, the treetop shadows painted on the floor and tree branches painted on the ceiling representing the system of "justice under a tree" of pre-colonial African history, etc etc etc. It was really cool.

"Justice under a tree" artwork in the Court. 

"The struggle continues" in neon lighting hanging on the wall of the old prison. 

Constitutional Court Room

After this, we went over to the women's prison which is not part of the traditional tour, but which also happens to house South Africa's Gender Commission's offices. So since my professor works there, we got to see that prison/museum of too. There was a whole display on the constitution. I also found a row of solitary cells where black women would be thrown if they were seen walking on the streets with a white man. There were video interviews of the actual women who had ben thrown in those cells playing in each cell. It was really eerie and very moving. There was also an art gallery with lots of art on the women's movement, especially anti-rape movements in South Africa. Some of it was very depressing. But much of it was also uplifting and empowering. I wanted to spend the whole day in there, but alas! We had to dash off to our next to-do item on our list. Since they waited until Thursday to show us Joburg, we only had one day to get to everything.

Driving through Joburg... 

We drove over to Gold Reef City, an area that was the location of the original mines during the nineteenth century Gold Rush. Now the area has large mounds of dirt that actyally contain gold because refining processes used to be pretty inadequate back in the day so they didn't get all the gold out of the dirt. And there is a very built-up fancy area in that part of the city as well. It didn't make any sense at all, but there was a massive complex with a theme park, fancy hotels and restaurants and a casino (noticing a trend...) and, seeming very out-of-place in this environment, the Apartheid Museum. This museum's location and set-up bothered me, but in a way, a very non-deliberate way I'm sure, it serves as a perfect example of the dichotomy that is South Africa. That South Africa can just shove it's Apartheid Museum off in some random weird part of the city between a theme/adventure park and a casino just blew my mind. It was so bizarre.

Our tour guide gave us two hours in the apartheid museum. I could have used a whole day. There was so much to see and read and do. I was scared going over to the museum, I thought it was going to be a gut-wrenching, day-ruining experience like visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. Yet it turned out to be not very like that. One aspect of the experience was similar, we were each handed a random identity card at the entrance to the museum complex and then we had to walk over to the door of the museum, and there were two entrances - "Net Blankes" and "Net Nie-Blankes" ("Whites Only" and "Non-whites only"). My card said I was not white, so I had to enter through the relevant entrance and scan my museum pass there. It was a darkish hallway with bars on one side so you could see through to the hallway on the other side, the one for the "whites." That side had lots of pictures with words. I have no idea what the words said and it bothered me. I couldn't read the plaques in that part of the museum, and I still - reflecting back on it - feel like it's not fair and I missed something. But I guess that's the whole point. For the first time, I experienced "racial" discrimination. Because a piece of paper said something about me, I had to go a certain way and miss out on something. It is disgustingly simplified to compare my experience with apartheid and its injustices, and that is not what I am doing. But it made me realize on the teeniest, tiniest scale, what racial discrimination and separation can do to a person. How they might make a person feel. How they might eventually become "normal" and second nature to victim and oppressor. How the oppressed might feel.

Apartheid South Africa was transformed into a "Land of Signs"

The rest of the experience was just a ton of reading and some videos and pictures. There weren't many artifacts - probably because what are the artifacts of apartheid if not the living, breathing, vibrant yet horrifically poor townships and settlements, the migrant labor system and the world's highest HIV/AIDS prevalence?

FIFA World Cup Stadium

When we left the museum, we drove by soccer city, where many of the World Cup games had been played and the stadium seemed so out of place in the middle of a no man's land. I tried to imagine it bustling with crowds of people, visitors from all over the world. But the emptiness seemed sad and hollow. An event that had perhaps tried to restore some life into this country's economy, but one that had failed.






We then drove to Soweto, the largest township in the world, located on the SOuth WEst side of Joburg. It is home to an official 4 million people and an unofficial 5 million. It is more populated than Johannesburg proper! It seemed really different than the townships of Cape Town. There were big freeways with plenty of cars on them. There were stop lights and permanent houses and businesses, not only the shacks and scattered RDP (reconstruction & development program) housing developments. Many of the black South Africans who went on to become very successful in their professions or in politics after the fall of apartheid were from Soweto, and many of them chose to remain there, so they live in sometimes even fancy homes in the midst of this unique township.

Soweto

Neighborhood in Soweto

We ate lunch on Vilakazi Street, a place that proudly boasts being the only street in the world to be home to two Nobel Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. The restaurant we went to was a buffet that served tripe and pap and other local dishes. I avoided the tripe at all costs, but everything else was good.

After lunch, we had a few minutes of free time, and I wandered with some friends and found a convenience store (called a Tuck Shop) - you don't even walk into these shops, you ask for what you want, and the cashier hands you your purchase through a grate on the counter. Things we take for granted in the US. I needed to replace my minutes on my prepaid phone. I had tried calling my mom the night before from my phone and said 'hello' and she responded and then beep beep, my phone was out of rand.

All good people like dogs. 

We then walked to Mandela's house and did the brief tour there. The house was tiny - just a few very small rooms, probably smaller than my apartment in Evanston, so the tour wasn't long. The house was cool, it was neat thinking of Mandela living there before his Robben Island years, but honestly, it was too commercialized for me to have a profound experience. The twenty of us barely fit in the house, so it was crowded and difficult to hear/move about.

Not a great pic, but just to illustrate the size of Mandela's house

Then we drove to the Hector Peterson Museum not very far away. This museum was built not far from the site where Hector Peterson, a twelve year old school boy, accidentally got in between the police and the marching lines of secondary school students during the Soweto Uprising of 1976 (kids were forced to be taught in Afrikaans in school, and they refused to study it so they staged a peaceful march on June 16 of 1976). During the peaceful march, the police opened fire and little Hector was shot and killed. An older boy picked him up and carried him, making one of the most famous newspaper headline pictures of all time, and Hector's sister marched next to them. Hector's sister actually works at the museum today. That made a profound impact on me.


Being in this museum was striking. Again, we had to hurry because we still weren't done with our day's touring, but I wanted to read everything in the museum. It was heavy and depressing. The shooting was horrific, the spot where he was killed is marked on the ground outside the museum. It really made the horrors of apartheid seem real, staring at the spot where a little school boy lost his life because the government of his country hated him because he was black.

After this sobering experience, we drove to an orphanage in Soweto where we literally held and fed and played with babies for an hour. I walked in and locked eyes with a little guy who was probably about 8 months old. He sat up in his crib and made babbling noises at me and smiled the cutest smile in the world. So obviously I picked him up and held him for the next hour. Even changed his diaper for him and helped him hold his apple slice as he tried to gnaw on it. He was teething majorly and wanted to chew on everything. At one point, my elbow made a great chew toy. I couldn't protest. The kids there didn't really have any toys, so the poor guy was breaking in those teeth freestyle. I don't envy him.

I'm not sure why our group went to this orphanage to play with babies in Soweto. But we did. There was a little guy there with severe burn wounds all over his face. You could barely see his facial structures at all. But he was so friendly and outgoing. He had been trapped inside when a shack fire broke out and burned down a lot of homes. This is a common occurrence in South African townships.

After our orphanage time, we drove back to the Ginnegap and I had to shower all the baby slobber off me, and then I decided to bail on our fancy three hour three course dinner. I didn't really want to deal with it. I was tired. It seemed so out of place with the rest of the day. So I went with just a few friends from my program and the Medill program to an indoor/outdoor market with local artists and cooks sharing their talents in a very low-key, casual, inexpensive forum. It is operated by the people in the community who convert a local warehouse into a market the first Thursday evening of each month. I guess I really lucked out! I also got to drive through the downtown part of the city to get there, so I finally had a chance to see the CBD and it was all lit up at night. It was beautiful! There is also a bridge there, called the Nelson Mandela Bridge that is lit up at night like a rainbow, representing this rainbow nation.

I think it was a more culturally immersive experience of Johannesburg than eating at a restaurant in Melville. I got a taste of the relaxed evening atmosphere of a little downtown Johannesburg neighborhood with regular people buying, eating and selling. For once, I wasn't surrounded by tourists (except for the 4 people I was wandering with), and it put a lovely endnote on my Joburg experience.

At the end of the evening, I was sitting at a table waiting for our ride home with a girl who is from Northwestern working for the Johannesburg Star this quarter. Just making small talk, I asked her where she had lived last year...and she responded with Sherman & Colfax. Nobody ever says Sherman & Colfax so I got really excited and found out she lived in the same building as I do! I've never met anyone from my building...figures I would meet someone from my building not in the stairwell or at the mailbox or in the front door, but in Johannesburg, South Africa!