A Hard, But Awesome Day

First a quick bit about dinner Wednesday night.  We got to talking to our wine steward about beer...he brought us two craft beers with instructions to take them back to our room and try them, then let him know which one we liked best.  So generous...and an affirmation that the craft beer culture is alive and kicking!

It's actually Friday at this posting...the internet said, "fuck it" last night while I was trying to post.  Anyway, our tour of JoBerg on Thursday was hard, but so powerful.  We visited the Workers' Museum which memorializes the migrant workers who mined the gold that brought Johannesburg into existence.
Back in 1886, a large gold reef was discovered under the veldt of South Africa.  The wealthy white land owners needed workers to mine the gold, so they drew in blacks and other people of color who were desperate for work/money.  The conditions were horrible, the treatment, reprehensible, and the indignities, many.  There were several large compounds of workers around the city.  In front of the one we visited, there's a tree that used to have a shackle attached to it.  Workers who defied rules would be tied up to the tree overnight as punishment.  Shiver.

Next we went to the Apartheid Museum.  The beautifully curated and massive collection is impressive, though chilling.  We had the bonus of a special Mandela exhibit.

Many nations have racial segregation problems, but in 1948, South Africa actually put a name to it and codified it!  Thankfully in 1991, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk put an end to it and unified the nation.  The museum chronicles the discrimination, the oppression, the protests, the mass murders, the uprising and finally reconciliation and the publishing of a new South African Bill of Rights.  It took about 3 hours to go through, and I was exhausted by the end.  I cried, I was repulsed, I cheered.

After a quick lunch we stopped at the Hector Pieterson memorial.  Hector was a student in the 1976 Soweto uprising.  Black students were protesting against the white Afrikaaners who were not allowing them a proper education.  Instead of learning arts and sciences, the black students were learning how to cook and clean and tend to other...effectively learning to be slaves.  The students spoke English, the police state spoke Afrikaan...because they could not communicate, the police (and their dogs) set upon the students.  This photo became a signal fire to the rest of the world as to what was going on in South Africa.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

There's also a great piece of art work on the spot where the photo was taken.

Kind of hard to see in the pic, but it represents the students holding signs and showing raised fists against the police.  Wow.

After a long day of in-your-face South African history, we were spent.  Graphic and real...hard to see, hard to bear...but nothing like those who lived it.  So powerful.

Tomorrow Durban and we head out to the bush!