Kliptown

Our last visit of the day was to Kliptown, an informal settlement within the borders of Soweto.  Kliptown is actually older than Soweto and has long been a place of poverty and resistance.  Today it is a rambling and crowded area where the homes are made mainly of corrugated iron and scrap wood.  There is no road inside, just twisted unpaved and uneven paths winding between homes.  Even these small yards are fenced, some protected by dogs, others with small gardens or chickens.  Children, some barefoot, waved and smiled as we walked through.  We stepped on tumbling bricks, packed dirt, garbage, tiles, mud, roots, and through running waste-water.  There is no electricity in this area, nor is there running water, just a few spigots rising out of the mud and shared by everyone.

Our guide was a young man named Mo, who was born and raised in Kliptown.  He has for years worked with the Kliptown Youth Project, an amazing organization that helps feed and tutor the kids of Kliptown.  They serve 500 children in after-school programs that help with tutoring and computer skills.  There's a kitchen that makes two meals a day for these kids.  We visited the computer room, which was filled with small children who were working on a learning computer program that was custom made and donated by a New Zealand NGO.  The computers were funded by a prize from the CNN Hero's Program.  They have been doing this work for 10 years, and are very proud of their high school graduates, and even a few college graduates!  They have photos of their graduates on the walls as an inspiration for the other kids.  In the center courtyard, there is a basket ball net.  Kids were hanging around, laughing, watching us just like we were watching them.  If you are interested in learning more about this program, I'm including the link to their website here:  Kliptown Youth Project

We ended our visit to the project with an amazing performance by the young men's song and dance troupe.  They performed a dance that was invented by the early miners, and features a lot of clapping and boot stomping and slapping.  They were fantastic, and in fact, they are so good that they have been on tour to many countries in the world.  They are coming to the U.S in the fall.  It was a really great way to end our day!

Soweto

The township of Soweto is home to more than 3 million people, almost all of whom are Black.  It was the major labor supply for Apartheid-era Johannesburg and lies just outside the city.  Soweto is huge, filled with great poverty and also with wealth.  There small neat houses, most of which have walls around them, some of which have been rebuilt in great style. Other houses are the original small two-room homes from the Apartheid government decades ago.  And there are a number of what they call 'informal settlements,' but which some people might call shanty-towns or slums.  Here are some photos around Soweto.  

We also visited the street where both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu both lived in Soweto.  They were neighbors, on a street that is now filled with homes turned into shops and restaurants.  We were not the only foreigners in this area.  We had lunch at a buffet and sat outside watching the street.  The food was traditional South African, with bap and hominy and spinach, and spice chakalaka sauce, with stewed meats of various sorts.  They served ice cream, trifle, and malva pudding for dessert.  We had a few brave students who tried pretty much everything, including the tripe!

We then visited the Mandela  home, which was a small brick house still scarred with bullets from police raids long ago.  The house was surrounded by a high brick wall that Winnie Mandela built after she was released from prison and was there alone with her young children.  The yard has a small garden with a gnarled melaleuca tree, which has a significance for the Mandela family.  Both Nelson and Winnie were at times pass-restricted to this house and could not leave, even for groceries or work, without risking arrest.

The Apartheid Museum

Our main focus today was on the history of Apartheid.  This was the official law of the land from 1948 and the consolidation of power for the Afrikaner National Party.  This political party, with longstanding ties to Hitler's Nazi Party, came to power by mixing a strong sense of Boer nationalism, a belief in having a literal God-given destiny, and the political idea of total white supremacy.  They created a racial residency program by controlling land and tightly restricting movement.  Every person was issued a pass-card, which spelled out their race, and the areas in which they were allowed to move freely.  People could quite literally be restricted to their own home.  Families were separated as parents might have different racial designations from each other and their children.  Blacks found their movements highly restricted, although all people of color, and anyone viewed as subversive, were also tightly controlled.  Violating the pass law meant instant arrest, and both Steven Biko and Nelson Mandela were arrested for being out of their restricted spaces.  Many people were arrested for pass law violations, as police officers could ask anyone at any time to produce their papers.

The other controlling arm for Apartheid was violence and the lack of due process of the law.  Essentially, the Afrikaner government created a sort of martial law state for people of color.  Black neighborhoods were heavily patrolled, electricity and water were cut as a means of control, mass arrests, and the heavy use of rubber (or real) bullets kept people in a state of fear.

This tragic history, in which many people were killed or tortured, is still under the surface.  Part of the genius of this country is that the transition of power was peaceful and democratic.  The people who struggled for justice, or died during Apartheid are memorialized in many places, but even after so many great wrongs, there was no violence or revenge as the country shifted to majority (Black) rule.  Part of why Mandela is revered as a great statesman is that he was instrumental in this non-violent transition to the modern South Africa.

We had a long and moving visit to the Apartheid Museum, which is a world-class history museum dedicated to remembering what went wrong, how people fought, who died, and how change came.  It's a very powerful museum, starting from the doors in, which divided us by an assigned race on our tickets.  We came in through different doors, looking at real passbooks with racial designations.

Some of the exhibits were particularly moving.  At one point, there's a memorial to the people who died in police custody.  They have an official list--not complete--of all the known who died, and the list goes on and on, with causes of death such as "slipped in the shower," or "fight with other inmate."  The whole room had nooses packed together hanging on long ropes from the ceiling.  It was chilling.  Another area had rebuilt some of the cells that were used to keep people in solitary confinement.  They had no windows, and were hardly larger than a single human being.  Many activists, including Winnie Mandela, were kept in solitary confinement for years.

Another really powerful exhibit was of a real "anti-riot" police tank called a Casspir.  This giant vehicle was used by the police to patrol the townships.  Soldiers would shoot and throw grenades from these giant trucks, and just the sight of them is impressive and scary.  They have narrow windows with gun holes, and the particular Casspir that was on exhibit had bullet-chipped safety glass all along the sides.  We could climb up inside, which was dark and closed and felt of paranoia and fear.  It was pretty awful and I can only imagine what it would have been like to see it in a neighborhood as an instrument of repression.

One of the hopeful exhibits was at the end, where they showed artifacts and photos of South Africa's first democratic election in 1994.  The political expressions and exuberance were clearly evident, and the best photo of  hundreds and hundreds of people in snaking lines waiting to vote for the first time in their lives.  That photo gave such a sense of hope for the future, it was wonderful!  And it as a much-needed note of happiness amidst the horrors.  We weren't able to take photos once we were inside the museum, but I'm including a couple photos here from as we entered.

Johannesburg

We started our day with a drive through the sprawling suburbs of Johannesburg, down the curving hills, into the city.  This area is at a very high elevation, with dry golden-colored soil, scrubby plant life, and lots of large trees.  It's clearly a major industrial city, with trucks and factories and warehouses all spread throughout the city.  The downtown itself has several large buildings, including Africa's tallest skyscraper, built in the 1970s.  In fact, much of the city looks like it was built decades ago.

Our first stop was at the city courthouse.  In his early days as a lawyer, this is the courthouse where Nelson Mandela first practiced law, as one of South Africa's very few Black lawyers.  His old office building, now spruced up, is still standing across from the courthouse.  His actual office window is the one with the green sign in it.

There is a large sculpture of Mandela in front of the courthouse.  The sculpture is of Mandela as a boxer, taken from a photo of him as a youth.  Everywhere we go in this city, we see Mandela's face.  His picture is on the wall in many businesses, and his great work is memorialized throughout society.

The city of Johannesburg was built up on the mining industry.  Gold was discovered here in the 1880s, and it has been a rich source of gold, platinum, and diamonds ever since.  In the days of Apartheid, many workers were imported here from around the country to work in the mines.  This lead to the rise of huge townships, including the largest and most politically active township in South Africa, the famous Soweto.  There are reminders of the city's mining past everywhere, with huge piles of mining tailings just dumped in human-made mountains throughout the city.  It's actually quite a problem, as gold mining was done with cyanide, and the tailings were never cleaned.  When there is a heavy rain, the tailings run off into gullies, and put cyanide into the water table.  And of course, being some of the open land in the area, families build informal shacks and live there.  Here's a photo of what looks like a mountain, but is actually a pile of mine waste.

The descendants and families of those miners and other workers still live here.  This urban area is huge, with more than 7 million people.  White mini-buses are everywhere, as they are the main form of public transportation.  They are really more like group taxis, and privately owned, but they are the largest force that moves people from place to place.

In 2010, South Africa was the host of the FIFA World Cup and the country is soccer-mad.  We saw kids playing soccer by the side of the road, and kids wearing soccer hero clothes.  We also saw the most important soccer stadium in South Africa, where they hosted the World Cup championships, and also had Nelson Mandela's family.