My weekend in Johannesburg and Pretoria

My weekend in Joburg and Pretoria

This past weekend, a group of us from the CIEE Seminar class as well as a few RA's traveled to Johannesburg and Pretoria for the weekend.  N We boarded our flight for a two-hour plane ride.  Touching down in Joburg there was already an immediate difference in temperature.  Joburg felt much more like Florida, with a hot yet dry feeling in the air.  We boarded those big busses that tourists all ride in, you know the ones where you are in big cozy seats and air conditioning while people on the streets stare up at you wondering why there is a huge bus traveling down such a small street.  Alright, as you all may have figured out, I truly dislike feeling like a tourist. 

            Our first stop was the Apartheid Museum.  We bought our tickets,noticing that each ticket separated the visitors by both race and gender.   My ticket said Blankes/Whites and then female which then guided me to a specific entrance into the museum.     We all went through the entrances into the first exhibition. The exhibition was new and was titled Nelson Mandela.   We were told not to spend all of our time in just this exhibition because there was still much to see.  I have talked to a few people who have said they dislike Mandela for taking credit of ending apartheid, when in reality so many other people took part.  I knew some of my friends here would have been a bit disgruntled with the fact that Nelson Mandela had an entire exhibition.  I still haven’t fully developed my views on Nelson Mandela, or as his nickname goes, Madiba, but I do recognize the large role that Mandela played in both shaping the country's past and present. I have tremendous respect for all that he has accomplished in South Africa but have also taken into account the actions that he took to achieve the outcomes that can be seen today.  I learned about rites of passage, Mandela's passions, his time in jail and the end of apartheid. There was plenty of information to take in.  I could have spent hours in the exhibit studying Mandela’s life, hardships, and accomplishments but I had to remind myself to move on to other areas of the museum.

            There were a vast amount of resources and information to make use of. I thought three hours would have been plenty of time for a museum, but I wish I had more time. The interactive stations never allowed for a dull moment.   The history of the beginnings of apartheid were discussed, dating back to 1651 with the arrival of Dutch settlers in South Africa. There were exhibits showing the violence and manslaughter that occurred, people who were involved, and the outcomes which are very visible today, were all plastered along the walls with pictures, or videos playing.  There was even a room with nooses hanging from the ceiling portraying political executions and how they went about.  There was a wall listing the ways that prisoners supposedly died, by accident, or by hanging themselves, when in reality almost all of the political prisoners were killed by the police, beaten to death, hung, electrocuted, or shot.  Personal stories were written with pictures next to them.  I read about Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist and the founder of the Black Consciousness movement. Hector Pieterson was another memorable person, who became the character in a symbolic picture of the 1976 Soweto uprising after being shot and killed at the age of 13 by the South African Police force. There were many others who were represented along this wall as well.   Reading the personal stories and watching the videos on the wall depicting the violence unleashed onto a number of school kids my age. These videos portrayed school age kids being beaten to death, women and children being tear gassed, and a group of people praying for mercy and justice.  A wave of emotion took over me as I was deeply saddened and enraged by what happened during apartheid. I felt disheartened in my faith questioning why God would allow such terrible atrocities to occur in this world.   I became so angry not just with the atrocities that occurred during apartheid in South Africa, but also the similar occurrences of race based atrocities that took place in the states and the separations that still occur in both countries.   There are so many things about life that are unfair, and the injustices that were done to so many people left me leaving the museum frustrated, disheartened, and contemplative. This visit to the museum pushed me to consider questions about my faith that I had been avoiding, giving me the desire to find ways of bringing racial justice and reconciliation to my current environments in any ways that I could. I recognized my White privilege as well as the importance of being an ally, but I still felt disheartened. I am very thankful for having gotten the chance to go to a museum that allowed me to grapple with such important issues.   Here is a link to the museum, feel free to check out the website! http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/political-executions

We stayed at a backpacker’s called Brown Sugar. www.brownsugarbackpackers.com. The girls in my room were Charnan, and Aayanah.  We all changed our clothes as it was getting chilly and we were going to see a play that night.  Everyone went upstairs and waited for the food as we were all getting pretty hungry.  After eating we headed back on the busses to go to a play at the market theatre called Shwele Bawo (a grave injustice). http://markettheatre.co.za/shows/now-showing.  It was an incredibly moving and comical play.  I don’t think the playwright/actress intended for it to be comical, but her sense of humor made it enjoyable and yet serious at the same time.  It was a one woman play, based on life experiences, surroundings, and understandings of the world surrounding the actress.  The woman was able to play wonderfully a large amount of other characters but her character was the one that moved me the most.  This is a better description of the play taken from the website above, if you get the chance please read it, it was incredibly moving.

 “Tshabi Girl Productions
in association with the Market Theatre presents
Shwele Bawo

Shwele Bawo looks at the juxtaposition of old traditions fighting for survival against modern ways in South Africa and the effect this has on society.

Through the story of the protagonist, Dikeledi Nkabinde, told retrospectively from Dikeledi’s place of imprisonment, many themes create multiple layers for thought: identity crises among men and women; the disintegration of family structures;  women and child abuse; relationships; incest; the power of the media and the inequalities in our justice system, all come under the spotlight.

The play reveals how these issues, ignored for far too long, have created a social time bomb of secrets and lies that threaten to destroy our society.

Dikeledi is a woman who decides to take the law into her own hands and plans to kill her abusive husband. For over 12 years she has been a faithful wife to Solly Nkabinde, turning a blind eye to his infidelities and physical abuse. Traditional instructions from her elders to obey her husband (“Monna ke selepe wa kadimisangwa! A man is an axe to be borrowed!”) keep her from leaving her situation.

But when she realises that her daughter, Bontle, has also been a victim of abuse at the hands of Solly, she explodes and other proverbs are awakened within her -  (“Mmangwana o tshwara thipa ka bohaleng! The mother of the child holds the sharp end of the knife!”)

The protective instinct of the mother kicks in and to protect her children, she plans to kill her husband and break the chains of her repetitive abuse.

An award-winning playwright, actress and director, Motshabi is as well known for her belief in the need for the empowerment and cultural enrichment of our youth and society as she is for her theatrical and television work. “When we encounter Dikeledi at the beginning of the play she has already spent two years in jail. She has done some deep soul searching and has forgiven herself. Through the story, the audience sees not only Dikeledi’s story, but that of the South African society at large. Do we keep on judging her? Or are we going to look at her with different eyes? Are we going to look at ourselves and see what we`ve become and see what we stand for?  What do we stand for?” Motshabi asks.”

After the play, many of the students planned on going to one of the local bars or clubs, but for me I was exhausted, and not exactly comfortable going out in Joburg when I had only been there one day.  I am so glad we stayed in, one because we convinced Felicity and Quinton to make a stop at a gas station so we could all get chocolate and icecream, and two because three of my friends phones ended up getting stolen while they were out as did on girls camera.  Something that my friend end I noticed while on the bus to head back to the backpackers was that we had only seen one or two white people while driving around Joburg, even during the day.  It was a very interesting observation and we discussed more into the reasoning behind it, and the very evident separation that is still so present in Joburg, and even more so, in Pretoria.

The next day we headed to Soweto Township.  This place was built to meet the needs for the lack of housing during apartheid.  It is Soweto stands for South Western Townships.  Soweto is full of history being the place where the uprisings took place in 1976, the home of Mandela, and Desmond Tutu, and the place where the movie Tsotsi was filmed.  It was a great place to see and I do wish we were able to spend more time there.  We went to a wonderful restaurant called the Chez Alina, served us all buffet style the most delectable chicken and rich chocolate and vanilla slices of cake anyone could ever ask for.  After stopping to buy something at one of the stands I got back on the bus and prepared for a nap as we drove about an hour to get to Pretoria.

It was difficult immediately following a trip to Soweto, and the apartheid museum to hope off the bus and be greeted by a tour guide at the Voortrekker Monument.  Here is a link to the monument although there is not an accurate description of what to expect when arriving.  http://www.voortrekkermon.org.za/index.php.  One should expect to be slightly repulsed at the joy and pride that many of the white Afrikaans speaking people took in killing the Zulus in the area.  What was the most infuriating aspect to me was when the tour guide was showing us the murals on the wall.  There was one carving depicting the battle of blood river between the Voortrekker’s and the Zulus.  The tour guide said that the Voortrekker’s had prayed to God and asked for his favor and that if they won the battle they would build a church to worship him.  The tour guide said they won the battle, not one of the Voortrekker’s was killed but many of the Zulu’s were slaughtered.  He made it sound like God granted them this wish and it was just such a frustrating view of Christian fundamentalism.  If anyone wants to know more feel free to e-mail me, but write now I have nothing more to say this place except that it was interesting and I am glad we went there in order to see the way that people still think.

We also went to a rugby game that evening.  It was the Blue Bulls against the Auckland blues.  It was so fun, eating boererwors, watching the game, and cheering as hard as we can even if we fully didn’t understand the game.  Some people who were with me ran into some interesting people though that reminded them where we were.  We were still in Pretoria, where racism was very prominent and people did not seem to care about the comments they made or who they were harming in the process.  My friend Sam was talking to a White Afrikaans couple next to her, and when students in our program started singing to a Kwaito song we new they turned to her and asked why were singing to it when it was a black song.  Little comments like that happened throughout the evening and it truly felt like we were being taken back in time with the amount of separation and nasty comments that were being said.  When driving around it is easy to note which clubs are the black clubs and which are the white. It was an amazing learning experience to go on this trip, but it just left me a bit frustrated with they way things still work here.

I spent the last day eating an amazing breakfast at the backpackers and venturing into town with some friends, looking at a local flea market and heading to a frozen yogurt place where I got some black current yogurt (so good). We all headed home tired with our heads spinning with all of the information we had picked up over the weekend.

If anyone wants to know more about my experience feel free to e-mail me!

I love you all and have so much more to write about, I will try my best to make more time!

-Mia