Summing up Johannesburg – A Day of Contrasts

Our day in Johannesburg was an interesting one, the hotel was very nice and breakfast at the hotel was both adventuresome and what we are now used to. Bacon, eggs, etc., but also this time ox tongue in a curry sauce. I couldn’t pass it up! I filled my plate with mostly normal things, and a few pieces of ox tongue, just to give it a try, I think I can skip it in the future but I am glad that I did have a taste.

 

It’s easy to see why  ox tongue is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world and to different cultures, the texture is very soft, and i would compare it to brisket, to be entirely honest, but it’s even softer than that. Imagine actually biting through your own tongue, yep… that’s pretty much the texture, and while I knew it was meat and it tasted just fine, I just couldn’t get past that fact either. It’s delicious, it’s just not for me. I finished breakfast, and we headed out.

 

Our driver’s name was Cornelis, pronounced almost as Cornelius, and he was an elderly white gentleman. He seemed very proper, that’s the word I would use to sum him up if I had to. He picked us up in Sandton, and we headed to Soweto.

 

 

I’m going to avoid speaking very much to the history of Soweto, and stay mostly within our experience there, but know that Soweto stands for South Western Township, and it was built by the government here to house “the blacks” during a very long period of government-mandated discrimination. Here in South Africa, there is a mixture of many different races, and it seemes as though at some point the people here were forced to put a label on themselves. While in other parts of the world (like the US) the idea of calling someone “colored” has become derogatory, South Africa classifies any race darker than white, but not black, as “colored”, and for many it is a point of pride. It took some getting used to to say the least. As this relates to Soweto, while Apartheid has ended many have not moved on from their dwellings, and almost all Soweto residents, to this day, are black.

 

When considering the Soweto tour, I almost told Jen I didn’t think we should. It was not high on my list of things to learn about, and my historical knowledge on the subject was, and still is, lacking. With that said, she was very interested and I was sure our guide would keep us safe. I did not feel threatened, however just as we entered Soweto there was a man walking with four or five dogs, and brandishing a pretty visible rifle. He didn’t look trustworthy, in fact very much the opposite, and it was apparent that our car full of cameras was not welcome there. I did sneak a picture of him, but I’m pretty sure had he noticed us there would have been trouble. Other than that, I didn’t feel threatened as we toured the township, though many parts were rather odd.

 

 

 

We spent a lot of time looking at museums and memorials to the so-named “children of 1976”, a defining time in which Soweto found a global voice. A very large group of local students acted out in non-violent protest against the way the schools here focused on multiple languages. They met up, many from different schools altogether, and marched into town to head to a soccer stadium and request their voices be heard. What happened next was police intervention, and I think `V for Vendetta` put it best: What happened next is “what always happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns”. In all, they say twenty students died that day, and hundreds died or disappeared over the next few years as the debate continued. Those dead ranged from ages eleven to eighteen, and none deserved what they got. The local police, of course, stated they had no choice. It was moving to see, and the world responded as well, condemning what had happened on both sides (the violence did spread, and some of adults were killed. Children were arrested and tried for those murders at the time.)

 

Many of you know that I am not a proponent of active policing, nor would I ever be called an advocate for police in general, and it was easy to side with the people of Soweto when learning about these events. A museum we visited tracked those who spoke out against the events that day, and it was no surprise to me that many had disappeared… never to be heard from again. I’m disappointed, but not surprised, by what happened, and between a memorial and a museum Jen and I both were affected in different ways. For Soweto, it was a defining moment, and today the township is not just shanty houses. To some degree it is coming along, and driving through was interesting and a bit disturbing.

 

 

The highways and streets are very modern, in fact all of Johannesburg has amazing infrastructure, but it is contrasted by the new buildings the government has erected for public housing (which have solar panels on top providing hot water), and the older style homes on the side of the street that really do resemble a shoe box. Our guide told us the story that if someone was given a house, they were required to live there and were unable to sell it or rent it for eight years. This was to discourage price gouging, etc., and the end result is somewhat different than expected. During the first eight years, people were unable to modify their property as well, but afterward some built upward, some added on, some started businesses, and others fit sheds onto their property not more than four foot by six foot, and rented them out. One house we saw had eight sheds on the property, and all were full. Cornelis also told us that South Africa’s unemployment rate is nearly 25%, and that this poverty leads people to open all the roadside shops, barber options on the sidewalks, and other businesses (like the restaurant where we had lunch, more on that later) that we saw as we drove through.

 

 

It’s easy to say that Soweto appears to be getting somewhat better, given some of the things our guide told us. The memorials were moving and to me show a sense a pride that comes from ownership. We drove by Nelson Mandela’s house where he lived in Soweto before going to jail during his years of resistance. Soweto does have character, and history, but at the end of the day the  most striking images were seen just driving along.

 

As we meandered through the streets, it was almost easy to look into the backyards of the shanty houses the government had built. People lived on the lawns of some, trash piled high in some areas but empty from most. While most of Soweto has services, parts do not. In some of the smaller shanty-town structures, services like electricity, if any, were stolen by rigging power from a nearby light pole for newly-constructed houses. In Soweto, these smaller shanty-town like structures pop up every once in a while and are allowed to stay. They consistent of typically migrant workers who move in to the big city, and they build themselves a life and a hut out of corrugated aluminum and willpower.

 

In one backyard in such an area, I saw an elderly man embracing a young-ish looking woman. Even if she was enough of an adult for the sexual nature of the behavior (I’m not sure, but pretty sure, she wasn’t), it was in clear sight of the roadway and something you would not see in a town that is yearning for greatness. Again, it’s not my culture, it’s my vignette, and so I did not mention what I saw to the driver or even to Jen until I wrote this down.

 

 

It does bring to mind another question I had asked Cornelis later in the day, where I wondered if Johannesburg was safe to tour. He started out by saying it was quite safe, and then amended. I’m paraphrasing, but his response essentially was that there were many murders in Johannesburg, and that the level of violence accompanying regular crime was very high also. He told us women were raped every day in Johannesburg, but that this happened everywhere. He told us that there had been a recent string of armed-truck robberies, but that the police had that well under control now. He told us that the supermarket was robbed a few days before our visit, people with high-powered rifles had killed some shoppers as they tried to flee, and recommended we stay out of markets near closing as they anticipated more. He told us not to go out after dark at all, and never to be walking where we could see no one else. I appreciated his honesty, but it was also a dark affirmation of some of the things we had viewed that day. It is one part of our trip that I will be glad to leave behind, but with some hope I’ll explain after Johannesburg’s main-city tour.

 

On the way out of Soweto, we stopped at Wandi’s, a restaurant that was once a government-built home that has since been converted in a big way. We enjoyed a buffet lunch which was delicious, and I tried Mealipop, which is actually something I will be finding a recipe for and seeing if I can make it at home. It is extremely filling, and accepts different flavors very well. From there, Cornelius took us to a few more sights in Soweto before we headed off to our Johannesburg tour.

 

 

 

Johannesburg, much like Soweto, was also a tour of contradictions. We visited a prison known during apartheid for its abhorrent treatment of black prisoners, we visited the new Constitutional Courthouse which was symbolically build using the old prison’s bricks, we visited the business districts of downtown Johannesburg, and we visited the North part of the city, where foot traffic was so thick many walked in the street, vendors were everywhere, and the streets felt dangerous. Jen will provide a few more details in this part I think, it’s been more of a summary post for me, but suffice it to say that we saw a great deal of Johannesburg, and it provided me a good picture of the town and its character.

 

Visiting the prison, you learn that some of those imprisoned there were the likes of Ghandi and Mandela, and that the treatment they endured there was unfair to say the least. Stories of inspiration, of commitment, and of dedication line the walls in the prison/museum, and this theme is carried along inside the Constitutional Court as well. Built as a monument to equality, the government of South Africa has done an amazing job of paying tribute to its history, admitting wrong where it has occurred, and attempting to move forward. A transformation is underway, but it is very recent.

 

 

 

While on the steps of the Constitutional Court, our tour guide told us the story of unfairness that took place in the old prison. A woman, forced to be naked for nearly ten days before being killed, clothed herself in a plastic bag for propriety. An artist took this forward and today a dress made from grocery store bags hangs there, along with two paintings depicting a woman in the dark fighting against a powerful and violent foe. A dedication on the wall tells the story, and the moral is to work harder at treating those around us with more dignity.

 

 

 

 

It was at this moment that I was very struck by Johannesburg, not because of what I had seen there… as even today there are citizens being abused in clear sight of the road, but by the idea that the government had built this place, this bastion of equality, lore, and meaning for its people. It occurs to me that Johannesburg is not building itself, and these symbols, for today’s people. It is building the foundation for the people of Johannesburg over the next few generations. Museums, monuments, and stories are what build a religious belief. Call the Bible true, or false, and the truth becomes irrelevant. We believe because we are both instilled to, and because we have been moved by the stories, history, and lore of the tales that define the religion.

 

 

 

It’s not so much the historical accuracy of events as it is the meaning that we instill in them, and the morals, lessons, and truth we glean out of them. This is what Johannesburg wants, what they yearn for, to bring a sense of pride and fellowship into its population. Wrapped in equality as a driving force, Johannesburg wants to civilize. As much as the city’s infrastructure, business districts, and airport are of the first world, Johannesburg is fighting to bring its people along as well, and show them through belief and spirit that there is a better way. I hope they get there someday, Johannesburg could be an amazing place.

 

 

After the warnings we had received, we did venture out to dinner tonight but kept it quick and careful. It was just getting dark as we got back to our hotel unscathed. Dinner was Thai food, which I enjoyed and Jen disliked greatly. It wasn’t really Thai food, but it wasn’t too bad either. The next day we awoke for a trip to Kapama Game Reserve, we had a lot to look forward to.