Day 147: Jo'burg, South Africa

Day 147:
Today I met a guy at the hostel with a bruised up lip, he had gotten robbed the day before. He had just rented a car and was at a red light and a kid came up to him and knocked on his window. He of course rolled down the window and the kid put a knife to him. Not knowing what to do he fought back, which ended him with a bruised up lip. Later he found out that the car rental places have some type of notice stating that if you feel unsafe at a red light feel free to go through it. A lot of the crime I found out later is attributed to the high unemployment ~25% and the influx of people from neighboring Zimbabwe (as they are going thru a civil war). Went to the city of Johannesburg.with my tour group, found out that the majority of whites left Joburg and went to live in the suburbs after the end of apartheid as they were fearful of their lives, some are coming back. Went to SOWETO, which stands for the South West Townships. It is basically south west of Joburg. That was designated area for the blacks to live during apartheid. Conditions were poor they had no plumbing they had to squat in buckets. The townships were however in better condition than the slums that I saw in Nairobi, which is the biggest slums in Africa. Their was a volunteer group helping out even stars from the NBA gave donations and paid visits and Oprah even donated a school there. The kids were playing with us and none of them asked us for money. Went to the church where one of the black protest had happened and a student got shot. In the church they had a black Madonna and child of Soweto sitting on our lap. The biggest hospital in the world is in Soweto. Went to wandi’s and had a traditional African meal, which of course consisted similar to the corn maize I had in Kenya, which they eat with the meats. Their food has a lot of stews, meats, and of course the corn maize (for the starch). Went to see Nelson Mandela’s house. He had a small modest home in Soweto.

Then headed to the Apartheid museum, which was very heart wrenching. Simply appalling what had happened in South Africa with apartheid and the conditions that the non whites had to deal with. There was segration in everything between the whites, blacks, coloreds (people of mixed race), and Chinese, what is completely more appalling is that is ended in 1994, which is simply amazing when you consider South Africa is such a modern country, actually the wealthiest country in Africa and filled with intelligent people, but I guess it’s not intelligence that drives people to do what they, but rather fear…As the Afrikaner (Dutch-whites) were afraid that they would be taken over by the blacks as they constituted such a large portion of the population ~80%, so their tactic was segration in everyway possibly and even with the other minorities segration with them so that they could not become allies. The British kicked South Africa out of the commonwealth. The UN had mandates against doing business with South Africa. But looking at South Africa it is definitely a first world country, so I am amazed with all the boycotts from the other countries that South Africa did survive. Later of course I would come to find out our infamous Bush Senior was secretly funding apartheid, he justified it by saying they did not want them to fall to communism. After apartheid Bush Senior did not apologize for this. With things like this, it's sometimes hard to be proud as an American when you have leaders like Bush Senion. I am very disappointed that other countries did not come to the aid of South Africas apartheid issue earlier.

From what I was told tensions had been rising between blacks and whites and not wanting a civil war the president at the time against his party wishes, decided to give the blacks the right to vote and release Nelson Mandela. Of course you can guess the next election Nelson Mandela won with more than half the votes! As my tour guide told me as he talked passionately about what happened in his country, that is simply a miracle that apartheid ended and the blacks were given their home land back without any bloodshed!!!! So I guess in life you can say miracles do happen, I hope that these miracles will trickle down to other areas of the world like the Palestian/Israelian conflict and other parts of the world .