History!

 Sunday, September 11, 2022

We have two stops today and lunch in between.  But first there's breakfast!!  It's a full buffet with an omelet/scrambled eggs station and we basically have the dining room to ourselves.  Sisa invites me to sit with him; but after about ten minutes he leaves to confer with today's driver, so I finish quickly and go to join Marilyn and the three of our compadres on the tour.  Back to the room with just time to gather our things and we're off!

Marilyn's bird-song identifier app says these are African geese!

We drive through Johannesburg, seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly, and Sisa gives us a crash course in South African history, from the original Portuguese sailors who used the Cape as a midway point on their way to the West Indies, to the British who actually settled here, and on through all the conflicts and displacement of the locals. Our driver, Alfred, delivers us to Constitution Hill where we meet Pius, a guide extraordinaire.  Here we learn about the fort and the first prison in Johannesburg, famed for both the inhumanity of its treatment of prisoners, and list of famous prisoners who were incarcerated there.  Nelson Mandela served time here, as did Mahatma Gandhi, and numerous other freedom fighters.  There are several different sections, including a facility for women, and there are lots of isolation cells that would drive me insane within the first twenty-four hours.   (We also learned to "click" like Miriam Makeba, remember her? )

From Nelson Mandela's autobiography

a special kind of cruelty

biographies of some of the prisoners held in solitary confinement

and videos of those who stayed in a particular tiny cell.  They are as small as this looks.

She's called "Hope".

They tore down one of the sections to make room for administrative buildings,

                                         but they kept the four stairwells.  These are two of them.

They kept Mandela here, saying it would give him more room for his books and papers.
They really just thought it would be harder for him to escape from here.

There are many videos of his speeches.

And many, many of his papers.

Floggings took place in this courtyard until quite recently.

This is the warders' office

You can read a description of the job.

It says "Strength is Unity".

Pius lead us though the intricate maze, saying that we'd better stay together or we'd never find him!

a veritable rabbit warren of danger and inhumanity

When this Telecon tower was built, it was the tallest structure in Johannesburg.

The lobby of the Constitutional Court.  The brown mosaics signify the tree trunks, the green and blue are the branches, and overhead are the leaves.  The sun shines in through skylights.

Our crew with Alfred, our driver for today, in the red, and Sisa in the beige polo.

These symbolize sunlight and shadow.

These are cowhides from indigenous African cows.

Anyone is welcome to observe the court's proceedings and transcripts are available in all the 11 officially recognized African languages.

The magnificent doors to the court

The name is spelled out in all eleven languages.

The oppression of the indigenous peoples by the Europeans.

The prisoners' diet - almost exclusively water and rice.

For Christmas the whites got a cake or pudding, the non-whites got coffee or tea. 

This Gandhi quote says, "A man is but a product of his thoughts.  What he thinks, he becomes."

I never knew that Gandhi was an attorney or that he practiced in Johannesburg!!

This was Gandhi's prison uniform.  It looks unbearably hot. These were worn by black male prisoners in the early 1900s.

museum on the Constitution Hill grounds

We drive to a section of town which used to be quite run down but is being gentrified, and have a tour of the really cool restaurant in which we will eat, Bertrands.  Our tour guide is Thando, which means Love in Zulu.  She's quite theatrical and even sings for us!

We also saw several offering 30 minute abortions.  I learned that one of our group is
a UU who lives in upstate New York!  She spotted this poster first.

Thando greeting us.

Books, records, antiques, and photos everywhere!  And patrons are encouraged to browse!

A more intimate space for "special" dates!

The bar featuring South African heroes and Abraham Lincoln!

Thando's favorite room, with a stage at the far end!

Many famous performers

We need this sign for SLUU!

Something for everyone!  sausage, BBQ chicken, lamb, beef kabobs, 
potato wedges and sauted veggies!

rice in a spicy tomato sauce

fun overhead!

And this restaurant down the street takes it even further!

This is the name of the area.

marvelous street art

My favorite!

artsy fartsy tree sap!

Lunch is al fresco and consists of platters of local delicacies, with accommodations for our vegan and non-red meat eaters.  And it's grand!  The rice dish is quite spicy but everything else disappears, although the last platter doesn't get cleaned off until it passes my seat mate and me.  We finish off the vegetables!

                Marilyn capturedd this language lesson for us - Hello and Thank you in Sisa's language.

Now we're going to the Apartheid Museum and it's about as difficult emotionally as going to the concentration camps.  It is so hard to believe both how recent this all is, and how inhumane mankind can be.  That's sort of been the theme today!  We have a guide here, too, who was a history major and he details all the trials and tribulations that finally resulted in the freedom seen here today.  Interestingly, Sisa tells us that the pendulum has actually swung to the other side and a young, white professional would actually be at the bottom of the hiring list, after a black male, a black female, a colored (that's the PC word for people of mixed race) man or woman and a white female!  There are even white slums.

Downtown Johannesburg

I guess we're riding in a conversion van.  It holds the twelve of us and Sisa
and Alfred quite nicely.

There are seven pillars of the South African constitution. They are 
diversity, respect, reconciliation, equality, responsibility, democracy, and freedom!

South African Masked Weaver, according to our tour buddy, Allen

The red of the flag is for the blood that has been shed, the white is for peace, the green is for the land, the gold is for the mineral, gold, the black is for the people and the blue is for the sky.  The largest flag is the one in the Constitutional Court.  The large number of stones represents the vast majority of people who wanted to see apartheid end.

Early cave drawings by the original inhabitants.

These stones represent the miners who worked underground in the gold mines.

Unbelievable

Our tickets told us if we were whites or non-whites and we took different paths
at the beginning of the tour, before coming back together.

Cell phone tower!

Back to the van and to the hotel where we have a couple of hours before dinner.   Time to shower and blog and re-pack since we're leaving tomorrow morning to take a plane to Victoria Falls.  Then off to dinner and to bed!

spinach, squash, beef stew, hake, roasted potatoes, and rice

Castle, a lovely local lager

            Thando performing for us.  Don't know why Blogger wouldn't put her where she belongs!

"Good Night, Moon"