26 Hours Across the Sea

Twenty six hours door to door from our home in Surprise to our hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa - the melody to "26 Miles Across the Sea" keeps swimming through my head...  Whatever, it was a LONG flight and a modicum of jet lag still muddles my thinking.
We're in Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa.  We arrived at a gleaming clean airport, met by a modern bus, wide streets and what appears to be a cosmopolitan city.  Our hotel is lovely, nestled among the rugby, soccer, lawn bowls and cricket fields.  Joburg is a new city, founded  in 1886 when gold was discovered here.  It was a rough and tumble town then and still is.  Though some areas are fairly safe, the yards are surrounded by high walls with razor wire at the top.  We're discouraged from leaving the hotel at night - no problem as we're early to bed catching up on our sleep.  We're not in Kansas.

Our first outing was to Soweto (South West Townships), a Johannesburg suburb, the location where 7 year old Hector Pieterson was killed by police in 1976 during a school children's march to protest the government's decision to teach in Afrikaans, a language unknown to most Blacks.  This event ignited the massive protests which eventually overturned apartheid almost 20 years later.  It's not that Hector's death was unusual in those days, it simply happened to be the event that coalesced the grievances and brought world-wide attention to the terrible injustices in South Africa.  Example - not only were Blacks and Coloreds (a South African legal term for people of mixed race) restricted to living in the townships and homelands, required to carry identification with them at all times and be out of the White neighborhoods before dark, but at the time the government spent 42 rand/yr on a Black child's education and 644 on a White child's.  After all, why would a Black child need to learn mathematics - (s)he'd never have cause to use it.

Today Soweto is home to 2-3 million people, primarily Black.  Desmond Tutu, Winnie Mandella and other notables live there.  Nelson Mandela has a home but now lives in the East Cape, near his childhood home.  There are relatively wealthy areas with large homes and fenced yards alongside shanty towns with homes made of corrugated steel and families sharing common water sources.  Much of the housing is small 2-4 room government provided cinder block houses, often inhabited by extended families of 15-20 people.  Many are still awaiting to be assigned one of these homes.
When I was here 11 years ago the shanty towns seemed to predominate and people were very optimistic that the new South African government would rectify the injustices of the past.  Things haven't improved as quickly as hoped. In recent weeks SA is experiencing massive protests and yesterday all public transportation was shut down due to a strike for better pay.

Today we took in the Apartheid Museum, the Voortrekker's Monument and Museum and the legislative capital in Pretoria.  With the places we've visited and the lectures from our guide we've been pretty well steeped in the history of this country.  What makes this so very fascinating is to compare the history with the current events...  More about this later as we continue to learn.

Tomorrow we leave history/politics behind as we drive through the Klein Drakensburg escarpment and arrive at Kruger National Park.