It has been hard to put into words…our one day in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was both surprising & very educational to me. What a history lesson! There is no way I can write about everything we learned but I’ll give you some tidbits. My hope is that you will be interested enough that you might do more research into South Africa & exactly what Aparthied was. Where do we begin…
It really was hard for me to know where to start to post about our day trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. It was educational & definitely one seldom if ever taught in schools nowadays! A downtown area that was once thriving with beauty & wealth that was taken from the lands of South Africa was now a ghost town of sorts. Let me see if I can give you an accurate taste of our visit.
Our Day in Johannesburg, South Africa
Our day in Johannesburg, South Africa was very much an educational visit. We went there with the intent of spending a quiet Christmas Holiday in the bed & breakfast that we had picked on the outskirts of Johannesburg before heading back to the states
Let me back up a sec to tell you how we actually wound up in South Africa. The Big guy was summoned back to the United States for jury duty. How he feels about Jury duty is a whole story that I would need days to explain.
Anyway back to how we decided to travel from Windhoek, Namibia to Johannesburg, South Africa. While we were researching flights back to the United States from Namibia (the second least populated country in the world), we found that we would have to fly 8-12 hours backwards to Europe & then a flight from Europe an equal number of hours forward to the United States. We found the costs associated with that kind of travel was not within our budget, therefore we started researching other flight options. We soon discovered the closest major International Airport was in Johannesburg, South Africa & due to its size with the number of international flights coming & going from its airport, we could fly to Johannesburg, stay at a hotel & catch an international flight that was within our budget. So we reluctantly booked a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Yes, I said it out loud, “reluctantly”, because everything that we read online about crime & safety of Johannesburg made us feel like we were going into a war zone with no weapons.
Finally, this is where our day in Johannesburg begins.
Upon arrival in Johannesburg, a driver from the B&B met us at the airport transporting us to our lodging in Sandton, a suburb located outside of Johannesburg. Our original plan was to stay in our tranquil & secure B&B avoiding all contact with Johannesburg. While we were traveling to Sandton, we could see the massive skyscrapers of Johannesburg towering into the clouds. We asked the driver about the dangers of Johannesburg & he confirmed that what was once the beautiful financial center of Johannesburg had experienced a high rate of criminal activity.
Our B&B in Sandton was a highly secure gated community that was safe to walk around. A staff person from B&B agreed to give us a ride to the nearest mall to pick up a few supplies before the stores closed for the Christmas Holiday. As we drove through the streets of Sandton we noticed well maintained beautiful trees & plants everywhere. Side note: we were told later that over six million trees (some indigenous & others from South America & Australia!) had been planted in Johannesburg which supposedly could be seen from satellite!
We asked the staff person about Johannesburg & they told us they would arrange a driving tour to explore downtown Johannesburg & the well known Soweto neighborhoods. The next day an older gentleman named “Sunny-boy” picked us up to begin our day tour of Johannesburg & Soweto Town.
The start of our day tour was to downtown Johannesburg. Having had read so many negative things on the internet about crime in downtown Johannesburg, which the South African people lovingly refer to as Jo’Burg, we looked at each other like soldiers preparing to go into battle.
We wondered what we would see. We wondered if our being a mixed black & white couple would cause us any problems? Other than a side eye or rare frown, we were treated with kindness.
To our surprise it looked like a ghost town filled with skyscrapers. The streets were either empty or full of homeless people & trash. There are no longer ‘shoppers’ on the streets of this city of over 4 million people. It was explained to us that the once great & thriving Johannesburg, which was also called the City of Gold, was now nothing more than empty glass & metal towers with squatters & trash lined streets. After Apartheid, crime in Johannesburg had become so bad that the owners of many of the downtown skyscrapers decided to close their businesses & moved outside of Johannesburg such as Sandton or Rosebank.
After a few minutes of driving down the empty streets of downtown Johannesburg, our driver decided to take us to an area that contained a cruel history of how the South African police treated native (Black) South Africans during apartheid. “Apartheid” is an Afrikaans word meaning apartness.
Our driver drove to a multi-story police building & began telling us stories of how the white South African police officers would end interrogations of black suspects by handcuffing the suspect & throwing them out of the upper floor windows. We were told that many of the survivors of the police interrogations now roam around the streets of downtown Johannesburg disabled in wheelchairs. The police were responsible for the investigation of their own staff & many of the police that conducted the interrogations are still on the police force.
We then drove to a location of a building that former political prisoner & eventual President of South Africa – Nelson Mandela – once took boxing lessons. One of the building walls was lined with photos of many civil rights activist black leaders from around the world & was the original law office of Nelson Mandela & Oliver R. Tambo.
Did you know South Africa is the only country in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners lived in the same neighborhood. Soweto’s Orland West neighborhood is the only neighborhood in the world where two people from that neighborhood won a Nobel Peace Prize. Yes..with a little research, you will find that Nelson Mandela received the 1993 Nobel Peach Prize [shared with FW de Klerk also of South Africa]. Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner that was known for his work in apartheid was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace! Nelson Mandela & Desmond Tutu at one time or another resided in Soweto’s Orland West neighborhood.
Dancing is a large part of African celebration and life.
A Few Facts About Apartheid in Johannesburg
During apartheid black people were not allowed to enter the urban areas as they were reserved for whites only. Blacks that worked as laborers in the city were issued an interior “passbook”, they referred this passbook as “Dompas”, which literally meant “dumb-ass”! It allowed them to enter the city only during their working hours! It was illegal for a Black person not to carry the passbook. If they were found in the urban areas WITHOUT the passbook they were taken to jail and interrogated (refer to the above paragraph regarding interrogation).
If your interest is peaked, check out the story of Hector Pieterson {Petersen}, the 14 year old killed during the Soweto Uprising in 1976! About 1500 school children were conducting a peaceful protest against learning the Afrikaans language in school instead of their native Zulu. That’s it. The school children drafted a letter of protest against being taught the Afrikaans language and went to present it to school administrators. The school children were surprised to be met at the school administration offices by a Police force that was authorized to use lethal force to disperse the students protesting the enforcement of the teaching of Afrikaans language. The police opened fire on the school children & the first school child shot & killed was 12 year old Hector Pieterson. Check out this article for all the details.
Note: The United States supported the South African apartheid regime with economic & military aide from the 1950’s until 1986 when Congress passed Anti-Apartheid Act, which imposed sanctions against the South African Apartheid regime.
Wide variations between the have & have nots lead to scenes such as these on our drive thru Soweto. Homes with next to no utilities, etc are within eye shot of homes such as those in the following photo.
Many of the homes such as below have been turned into Bed & Breakfasts!
If you want to know more about Africa, South Africa, Johannesburg, Apartheid, etc, I encourage you to research. It really is an education.