Learning the Past, Confused About the Future
Day 242
We spent yesterday hanging out in the trendy Melville area of Jo’Burg and booking some travel plans. This part of Johannesburg was certainly not the bad you always read about. It was full of independent shops, great second hand bookstores, bars and restaurants. We also noticed a good mix of black, white, brown and any other person you could think of. Melville was refreshing and different than anything else we had experienced in South Africa. To common a “nicer” area in South Africa merely means white up scale shopping malls, filled with chain stores and chain restaurants. However the small area of Melville was certainly not that. Of all the South African cities we’ve been to it was our favourite spot hands down. Right, so you heard it here. As is the case in any large city, if you stay in the right neighbourhood in Johannesburg you can easily enjoy the city and dare I say even like it.
We were enjoying it, also staying at iDube helped. The great pool was very welcoming in the 32 degree heat. Today however we were off to see some sights. Transportation may be the biggest issue as a tourist here. Public transit is almost non existent and the transit that does exist is considered to dangerous to ride. So Jordana and I have rented a car. Yep, call us crazy but it is easily the best way to get around and outside the city the highways are just like home.
We jumped in a cab to pickup to car which was downtown at Budget Car Rental. Tim, an American from D.C. came along for the ride as we were going to drive to the Apartheid museum after. Everything went smoothly at the office and soon enough I was climbing into the unfamiliar right side to drive off. Oh and as the cars here are all manual transmission that was another challenge, I drive an automatic at home. Although when I was 21 I worked a summer as a car jockey at a dealership, so I drove manual there. Besides its not that hard. I climbed in to the brand new Toyota Yaris, it only had 3250 km on it, adjusted my mirrors and started the car. So far so good. “Ok, first gear and let’s go!” I drove out of the garage and into the madness of downtown Johannesburg.
“Really? You haven’t ever driven stick”? Tim commented as I explained my lack of experience. I think he may have been worried. Actually I was doing OK, the toughest thing was getting used to shifting with my left hand and of course driving on the left-side! “Left, left, left”. I kept repeating in my head everytime I turned a corner. Which was often since we couldn’t find the on ramp for the M2 south. Soon we did and 10 minutes later on the edge of Soweto we arrived at the Apartheid Museum.
We paid our entrance and entered the large and impressive structure. We were assigned a race as we entered. I was “non-white” and Jordana “white”. Each of us had to enter via separate doors and start the museum separately. Instantly the smiles we may have been wearing as we strolled in were wiped from our faces. This museum was incredible. Beginning with the arrival of the first Europeans they traced the policies that led to apartheid. Also shown were intriguing movies of life under apartheid, British news interviews of a young Nelson Mandela before going to prison and propaganda videos from the National Party on why apartheid was needed. Actually they called it a form of “togetherness”, I’m not sure what that means though. Walking through I was left depressed, confused and filled with anger. Yet inspired by the end of it. The museum finishes with the release of Mandela, apartheid finally ending and of course the first democratic elections in 1994. When you see how hard the struggle was and the never ending will of those involved you can’t help but be inspired. I’m not going to go into the historic details of apartheid here but I can tell you that I never really understood how far reaching, organised, sick and disturbing apartheid was. Although the more I knew about it the most confused I was about South Africa, to say its a complex society is an understatement. As we left the museum I was reminded again what has made travelling in South Africa exciting for myself. Even though I’ve sometimes have said the tourist sights are a bit bland, the really interesting thing here has been observing the country. Democracy, an apartheid free country, all these are so new here you really are watching history in the making in South Africa.
We spent 3 hours at the museum, most of the day. We safely and easily drove back to Melville and went grocery shopping. In the morning we are off on safari in Kruger and planning to self cater as much as possible. After shopping and before the evil of darkness fell (I’m exaggerating about evil, kinda) we were back at iDube for a swim, dinner and looking at a map for our 500km drive towards Kruger in the morning.
Tags: Apartheid, Johannesburg, South Africa
Michael Coroneos
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