Arrival in Joburg

After an exhausting 16 hour flight, complete with a refueling stop in Dakar, Senegal, our group arrived in Johannesburg at 5:40 pm on Sunday, August 15th. We were met by several of our program coordinators and 3 other students who flew separately. After driving to our guesthouse, eating dinner (which I wouldn’t have thought possible, since they gave us 3 meals on the plane), and having introductions, we went to sleep. I have never slept better, and never been more upset to wake up at 7:30 am. Our busy day today was worth the lack of sleep over the past few days.

After another introduction to the program, we had a lecture by a South African coordinator, Malefi. He was a student leader during the liberation struggle and so had a very good perspective and told us a lot about South Africa’s history since colonization. What I found most interesting, however, were his thoughts on South Africa since the 1990s. Many people say that the peace that South Africa is experiencing is a miracle; he disagrees. He says that he and the other student leaders never saw their struggle as a fight against the white Afrikaners, but instead as a fight against apartheid. The problems that arise today are because the government of the past framed the fight as a fight against white people, so that some white South Africans are even today afraid to go into historically black areas or townships like Soweto, in which we spent the remainder of the day.

We did a driving tour of Soweto to begin, with stops at the hostels (temporary housing for single males during apartheid, which today houses entire families without electricity, plumbing, or other basics that I have grown up considering necessities) and Regina Mundi church (a meeting place for student leaders during the struggle, and an important reminder of all the South Africans faced during apartheid). We went to the Soweto mall for lunch, which provided an incredible and disturbing contrast to the areas we had just visited. Afterwards, we went to Cliptown, a very impoverished area in Soweto. Since we met some local politicians there, we were allowed to walk through the alleys and actually go into some people’s living spaces (which are more easily categorized as shacks than houses). We saw the single water tap and row of port-a-potties that have to service hundreds of shacks at a time. We talked to the men who led us through the town, both lifelong residents, and met large groups of children who were very excited to see us. We also went into a 4-star hotel right next to the shanties (once again, a disturbing contrast, which may have explained the lack of guests) and went to Freedom Square, where the components of the Freedom Charter developed by the ANC in the 1950s is written and memorialized. All in all, an incredibly informing day. Our week in Joburg is a travel seminar, so I expect more of the same (guest speakers and tours) until Friday, when I’ll have a homestay in Soweto. After that, I travel to Pretoria for two days, and then on to Windhoek. Finally there I will start my classes and internship and, hopefully, become more of a resident than a tourist.