Apartheid Museum & Soweto

apartheid (ə-pärt'hīt', -hāt') n.
An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.


Yesterday, Erin and I had our first day in Joburg alone. So... we decided to play it safe and go on a tour. From what we've heard, this is not the city to just wonder around aimlessly.

Our friend Eric who picked us up from the airport Thursday night was our tour director. He is such a character... I think part of it is that he just really likes to hear himself talk. He repeats everything he says about 10 different ways and in different voices. Sometimes, he'll draw his sentences ouuuuuttt realllll slooooooooow. You get the idea. Erin and I just exchange looks and stifle our giggles. All day with him was quite the experience.

We started off our tour by driving by a botched armoured car heist. There were police everywhere, the area was taped off, and their were bodies scattered around the parking lot. I don't know if they were alive or dead. Eric seemed to think it was better they were dead because "we're better in peace than in pieces." Of course then refering to pieces he meant us and not those possibly dead around the crime scene.

We went to the Apartheid Museum. It was so overwhelming. My favorite part was the movie showing the student riots in Soweto (a township of around 3.5 MILLION people) in the 1980s. The video footage was incredible. Think US civil rights movement magnified. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside sadly.

After the museum, we picked up a few more (there were a total of 7 in our group) and drove to Soweto to see some of the actual places instrumental to bringing down apartheid. We drove by Winnie Mandela's current house, Desmond Tutu's current house, went into the house Nelson Mandela lived in when he was arrested. I saw shoes that he wore in jail and the first he bought when he was freed. We went to a church Catholic church that was raided several times during the uprisings in Soweto, and even saw bullet holes where South African police fired into the church and from the inside of the church.

It was a fantastic experience. There's so much more I could add, but I must leave some stories for once I get home.