South Africa: Soweto too

Concluding South Africa

I left South Africa just over two weeks ago, but there is at least one last blog I needed to write about my visit to this amazing country. Though I was there for 25 nights, I was quite busy with work-related issues that there was very little time to do anything about discovering the country.

It was my third weekend before I made it to Cape Town and then I extended my stay in South Africa to allow for me to do the needful in Johannesburg.

On my first visit in May, I had done the basic bus tour stopping at the Apartheid Museum and the Constitutional Court, the option to go to Soweto was declined because we had to change from a double-decker bus to van, giving the impression we were about to visit a rather dangerous area.

Contemplating Soweto

You form so many impressions about Soweto and it is very likely that the township idea comes across as shanty towns, slums, rundown crime-ridden inner-city chaos that would endanger the bravest of angels.

I was determined this time to visit Soweto and see things for myself, I felt I had much more to gain by joining one of the more professional tour arrangements and with that having printed out my ticket, I made for the stop where I could board the Soweto tour bus. This was at Gold Reef City which was one of the first gold mines in South Africa before it has been transformed into an amusement park, museum and dangerously, a casino with hundreds of one-armed bandits.

A place that once brought money that was the stuff of dreams now takes hold of dreams of making money from the many whose dreams are a constant suspense and excitement of almost but never getting fulfilled. Yet, I could not help but notice the ‘gun drop’, a kind of left luggage section for guns just before you enter the casino, make of that what you may.

The first sights

I boarded the first tour bus to Soweto and sat in the front with the driver Thabo, unlike the recorded playbacks of the double-decker city sightseeing bus, we had a personal guide to inform us about the tour. Our group comprised people mainly South African residents, but from countries are far away as China and Japan, the Japanese man lived in Durban.

Stopping first at Soccer City or the FNB Stadium, we took pictures and the edifice loomed as a big calabash celebrating Umqombothi beer and bringing back memories of the hit single by Yvonne Chaka Chaka.

Driving past the mine dumps which are a legacy of mining, Apartheid and toxic materials being exposed again with technological developments allowing for the dumps to be re-mined for gold. The more sinister view of the mine dumps was how it completely obscures Soweto from Johannesburg and vice versa.

A revelation

At the main road leading into Soweto which is a contraption of South Western Townships, I stood at the main sign and then learnt depending on you ask that Soweto is an agglomeration of over 85 townships, though about 34 are distinctly identified suburbs of Soweto.

Soweto is huge and vibrant, its architecture covers all strata of means, from the very upmarket parts of Diepkloof through the middle-class areas to the matchbox houses, shanty towns and shacks, and this was a revelation in itself.

The Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital which was one time the world’s largest hospital complex, now the third, scale is sometimes towards the superlative in Soweto, the Bara Taxi Park is the largest in Johannesburg, the Orlando Towers are the cooling towers of a now defunct power station, all colourful and the site of social events including bungee jumping.

The memories and memorials

On to Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, the iconic photograph that signalled the beginning of the decline of Apartheid, the Soweto Uprisings and other stories with undertones rarely voiced. Suffice it to say many children of the chief agitators that sent people onto the streets had their kids in schools abroad, but let us not sour a well-crafted narrative for point-scoring. Apartheid was rotten, it needed to end.

Vilakazi Street which spots the old residences of Nelson Mandela and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu maintains a historical significance in the work these men did towards achieving black majority rule, yet this street is a commercial haven that has lost the solemnity and seriousness of the works of these great Nobel Peace prize laureates.

Everyone is here for a quick buck, performers organised and disorganised, photographers with instant print machines, shops with kitschy tat that could in the haze of tourist awe look valuably commemorative as souvenirs and much else, you are almost jostled out of appreciation of these landmarks.

I cry too for change

Yet, one cannot fail to see how what has been bequeathed is being squandered by the political heirs who now hold power. As we left Soweto, I prayed a little prayer that the promise that South Africa offered to those who suffered and still suffer soon become their reality. My fear of Soweto, put to one side, yet palpable from the obvious gaps between the have-yachts, the haves and the have-nots.

To the outsider that I am, there is much about this great land that leaves one with the story of Cry, the Beloved Country.

South Africa: Tom Moses' Robben Island experience

Robben Island

Having gotten Table Mountain out of the way on Friday afternoon, I had the whole of Saturday to do Robben Island for many reasons, most especially to get a good idea of what Apartheid was to the people the system considered criminal, inferior, undesirable, radical or reactionary.

I had decided on making out for the first possible journey on Saturday and once again, it was possible to book a tour of the island online and print out the ticket to avoid long queues.

The UberBlack taxi I ordered took me to the other side of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and note it is Alfred the second son of Queen Victoria and not Alfred the consort.

After taken directions to the Nelson Mandela Gateway on the V&A Waterfront, I went through security and found myself boarding the slowest of the ferries (The Jester) to Robben Island.

A preamble

I knew that because Thandi appeared to be the fastest which passed us on the way out and on its return and Thembikile which I boarded on my way back, left Jester in its wake even though Jester left a good 15 minutes before. The Sea Princess was in the dock, but not in service on that day, or probably it was there to service VIPs.

Robben Island has at one time or the other been a war garrison, a prison, a leper colony and now it is a nature reserve, a World Heritage Site and a very popular tourist attraction which for its use as a prison in the Apartheid times gives it prominence in the history and the stories told during the tour.

They served an abhorrent system

On arrival at the Robben Island harbour and getting off the boat to board the bus that would first take us on a tour of the island before we went to view the prisons, I could not help but notice the obviously pretentious Auschwitz-like sign at the entrance. At Auschwitz, it was Arbeit Macht Frei, here at Robben Island, it was We Serve With Pride, also in Afrikaans.

They served the Apartheid System with Pride.

Of the stories I heard of man’s inhumanity to man coloured by race, prejudice and injustice, the fear authorities have of alternative thought that refused to be subjugated to inhumane and atrociously cruel and evil law, there was no service to humanity nor pride to be had in the what happened on Robben Island.

However, Robben Island and the experience of being incarcerated there created some amazingly remarkable men who took from that episode in their lives something that exemplifies the human spirit in forgiveness, reconciliation and leadership – prominent amongst such men is Nelson Mandela who died exactly two years before on the day of my visit to Robben Island.

Through the experience of Tom Moses

People were segregated on Robben Island according to race and the black race was treated the least favourably in incarceration, they were treated lower than dogs, issued with shorts rather and trousers, had no shoes, slept on mats on the floor rather than on beds and they did the most labour intensive work of quarrying by hand and building the prison blocks in which they were housed.

The bus driver and tour guide had relationships with Robben Island as relations of people who had been imprisoned on the island. I was sad beside an Australian lady and it was poignant as an Englishman visiting the old penal colony of Robben Island to remember there that the British once used Australia as a penal colony.

However, it was the story of Tom Moses, an inmate of Robben Island who was sent there at the age of 19, from the 3^rd December 1976 to the 31^st May 1985, for all sorts of contrived offences as terrorism, insurrection, anti-nationalist crimes and opposing Apartheid that left us numb with shock and a feeling of helplessness at what people might have experienced when Robben Island got its rotten reputation.

One of the buildings on the island was a church which is under the care of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu family, one could not help but notice the irony of it being named The Church of the Good Shepherd it was built by lepers in 1895.

Tom Moses, a personification of the greatness of the human spirit.

One of the buildings on the island was a church which is under the care of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu family, one could not help but notice the irony of it being named The Church of the Good Shepherd it was built by lepers in 1895.

The story endures

However, the most enduring experience of visiting Robben Island was not the non-venomous snakes, the big guns installed to protect the island in WWII, the penguins that nest on the shores of the island, the dog kennels I first thought were cells for human being, the captivating pictures we were privileged to take, Nelson Mandela’s old cell, but the human story told in the voice, the person and the eyes of Tom Moses.

On one World Heritage site looking onto another captivating World Heritage site.

In fact, it was the story told in the living experience of Tom Moses, I was both honoured and privileged to have the opportunity to hear his story, a story told without bitterness, full of forgiveness and more so, a willingness to show that the human spirit might travail in the worst possible circumstances and yet triumph in ways that will humble the most haughty of men.

On leaving the prison cells, I took my own short walk to freedom and reflected on what the day was, it left me full of admiration of those who took lessons from their Robben Island experience to make the world a better place and saddened at the thought that Jacob Zuma, the current President of South Africa, seems to have forgotten what that experience imparted to greater, more reflecting and more considerate men than himself.

South Africa: The terrible history lessons we must know of Apartheid

Not on for a role reversal

I do try when I visit places even for work to get a feel of the place, the people, the culture, the architecture and the history.

However, on this sometimes hectic business visit, I have not been opportuned to do much, however, I got out on Saturday and then on Sunday where I did get to see some interesting parts of Johannesburg and what made this city,

The initial plan included a visit to Lion Park, where you can see lions roam free. It probably would have been interesting, but pictures of people in caged trucks thrilled at watching nature was a role-reversal I would better watch on National Geographic than participate in – I declined the offer of doing that.

Now, wildlife conservation is more than commendable, it is necessary and essential to ensuring that the footprints we leave in the sands of time are one of the record that we left this earth a better place than we found it. There is no doubt that parks like Lion Park need custom and will trade on our fascination to continue doing the exemplary work they do.

A differentiator on colour

My history and somewhat cultural lesson came from a ride with my hostess on the Johannesburg Red City Tour bus, between history, story, anecdote, fact and legend, a city built on the discovery of gold and diamonds could have dazzled with the glimmer and glitter of gemstones blinding us to a deeper reality that still defines a lot of what South Africa still is.

There was no better place to scratch beneath the gleam than at the Apartheid Museum where to give an idea of the colour bar in the Apartheid times I was given a ‘random’ classification of “Nie-Blankes” or “Non-Whites” and was by that designation supposed to enter the museum complex through the gate meant for non-Whites.

 

At the non-Whites entrance of the Apartheid Museum.

The absurdity of this whole arrangement became evident when you realise that whilst I am non-White, I am definitely European. To think there were times in Africa where people not historically indigenous to Africa treated Africans as sub-human on African soil, just cuts to heart with great pain.

Chameleons of discalm

The fact that this Apartheid regime was put in place by seemingly enlightened, educated and intelligent people just goes to show that certain elements of basic human instinct are defined by the utterly irrational to the point of risible ridiculousness. Yet, fellow human-beings were subjugated, denigrated, oppressed and dehumanised in ways too unimaginable to countenance.

At the stroke of a pen, within the Apartheid framework, you could be racially reclassified for purposes of convenience except the extreme of white becoming black or black becoming white. People who changed race in this many were known as chameleons.

The Star of the 21^st of March 1986 published a piece that now appears with on a poster in the museum – the news piece started thus: 1985 had at least 1000 “chameleons”. More than 1000 people officially changed colour last year. [Google]

 

The Chameleons of South Africa at the Apartheid Museum.

The example of people

Prominent within the museum were exhibitions of people who transcended this vile aberration of humanity, whose lives we must study as examples of the graciousness and accommodating qualities of the human spirit. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu – there are few people who can stand in stature and meaning close to these men in humility, reasonableness and compassion.

We must be careful never to lose the reality of history and the lessons thereof for the easy talk and ignorance of dismissing the significance of history to our present and future. I still see the scars left by Apartheid in contemporary South African society and I am afraid, I see no men in leadership doing much to lift the majority from the mental enslavement that remains the in the wake of the Apartheid rule that was abolished 21 years ago.