Day 157 & 158: Capetown

Day 157: Cape Town
Today I headed to the waterfront and the tried the snoek, a typical South African fish, it was pretty good. Then headed to Robben Island, how quite disturbing it held at one time 800 people. This is the prison that Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner. Our tour guide was a former prisoner. Even in this prison there was segration between the prisoners. They were separated between the colors and Indians in one group and the blacks in another. The colors and Indians were treated slightly better than the blacks, but the colors and Indian did share what they had with the others. The government did so because of fear of unity among the prisoners. Interesting when I would walk thru malls or shops I still noticed the blacks pretty much hung out, the Indians, colors, and the white even with segration gone for 13 years there is still segration in the minds of the people, the mind is a very powerful tool. It will take racism a couple of decades to filter out. The black Africans did not ask for anything from the white government except a simply apology for how they were treated in their own country. The current president at the time did give them an apology, but the man who started apartheid did not.

Day 158: Cape Town
Today I went to the District 6 museum. This museum shows where 150,000 black, Indians, Jewish and other groups were forcefully removed in 1960’s to make an area for the whites. These people were forced to move to townships and other areas. These townships were based on color and if a colored woman was married to a black man they could not live together simply based on the color of their skin. They use to have the pencil test where the blacks would sometime try and pass for colored as the life was better the officials would put a pencil in their hair to see if it fell out or not that would determine if you were colored or black. I met a colored woman and she told me that her family was always fearful of supporting Mandela as to not get thrown in jail. I met a colored man and he told me if he even looked at a white girl he would be arrested. Everybody had to carry identification card with what race they were. Interesting I see the most mixed couples in Cape Town. It’s the country where I am most aware of the color of my skin. I met one of the guys who lived in District 6, his grandfather was Indian his mother was Scottish, he was a mixed of many different races. Went to the BoKap area where a lot of Malaysians live, quite colorful areas with bright homes.