Johannesburg

We ended up with a couple of spare days left in Johannesburg. With a 40% unemployment rate it is no surprise that crime and violence is rife in this city. We elected to stay in one of the safer suburbs, Sandton.

During our stay we did a tour of Soweto, one of the townships. The townships are the communities where Africans were forcefully relocated under apartheid. There are a few middle class houses in Soweto like those of Winnie Mandela and Desmond Tutu but an even greater number live in poverty in shacks constructed of scrap material. We visited a shantytown which was home to 25,000 people who had no electricity, shared 40 water faucets, and 1500 outhouses. The daycare facility constructed of scraps of sheet metal and painted in cheerful red displayed a “this is a gun free zone” sign at the gate. We visited one of the homes, a sparsely furnished two room (no not 2 bedroom – 2 room) shack that was home to one woman and her five children. In spite of the modest conditions it was evident that the owners had a sense of pride and ownership with their neatly kept yards, the odd potted plant, cleanly swept floors and brightly painted doors and window frames.

We also visited the apartheid museum which definitely earned its place as our favourite museum on our trip thus far. The exhibits were interactive and really moving and the architecture correlated with the journey through the history of apartheid. Even four hours wasn’t quite enough to take it all in.

Amidst all the heavy stuff we also managed to fill the social calendar with a great couple that we had met in Kruger that were staying at the same hotel as us. The first night the four of us were too nervous to venture out into the notoriously dangerous streets so we ordered dinner in. By the third night we were getting a bit of cabin fever so we braved the streets (which really weren’t that bad) and walked up to the nearby square for a great evening of dinner, drinks, laughs, and somehow managed to avoid getting mugged. The next evening we were “out of Africa” and on to the last and perhaps most exciting part of our journey… meeting up with Nat and Martin!!!!!