South Africa

Ghandi-India To So Africa

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In my last story, I mistakenly said that Gandi was born in South Africa. He was not. He was born in 1869 in Porbander in the Indian state of Gujarat where his father was chief minister.

He attended law school in London and since there were no opportunities at the time in India, he went to South Africa. The pictures on the wall of the museum in South Africa illustrate his experiences there including one when he was on his way to Maritzburg on the train where because of his color and race he was thrown out of his first class seat. This incident changed him for the course of his life.

He remained in South Africa for 10 years helping lay the foundation for the freedom struggle in the transvaal while at the same time developing his own framework for satyagraha (passive resistance). Ghandi returned to India from South Africa and lived at Mani Bhavan-the name of his home where he developed his ideals of Truth and Non-violence-and inspired his followers and devotees with a sense of service and sacrifice.

As Bob and I retrieved our shoes and walked down the hall to the door leading out into the street, I sense him following us, through the heat and dust. I turn around and ask “why are you trailing us from South Africa to India?” He is small, stooped over, tired but with sharp black all-seeing eyes. Then I hear Ghandi’s soft even voice: “I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”

Sleepover In Soweto

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A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township
On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in Soweto-a township about 30 minutes outside the city where most of the violence occurred in the years leading up to the end of apartheid. Lolo’s nephew who runs Jimi’s Face To Face Tours, picked us up at the Johannesburg airport in his van.

Soweto has always had a small and thriving middle class and after all the press about the violence before the end of apartheid they are anxious to get the message out.

About one million people live in the township that was designated for blacks and established in the early 1900’s. The community is still poor and more than half of its adults are unemployed. Roughly twenty percent live in one room tin and cardboard shacks. Lolo, a retired high school principal and school inspector, lives in middle class Diepkloof Extension, however, in a new two story brick faced multi bedroom/bathroom home that would sell for half a million dollars in California. A member of Parliament lives across the street.

Lolo raised several of her niece’s children and her one natural child is an attorney and works for the Justice Department. But she said that blacks didn’t have electricity and she never saw TV in a township until about 1982. She worked 35 years as a teacher and for that she only receives a $300 a month pension. This is because blacks didn’t pay into the pension fund because they were not going to be given pensions.

Lolo cooked us a feast of dumplings, oxtail stew, fried chicken, carrots, beets, salad and fruit. The cuisine includes other traditional treats such as mealie-pap, samp, spinach and ‘mabele’ porridge.

The next day she drove us to the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere where we walked through the pitiful emergency area with people inside and outside lying on gurneys. Most of the doctors are young white doctors from other countries eager for the experience they will gain here-especially with weekend knife and gunshot wounds.

The next morning she drove us to the beautiful Museum Africa housed in what used to be a fruit and vegetable market. One section dealt with the four and a half year trial of 156 people opposed to apartheid that were arrested in 1956. All, many of whom were white allies of the freedom fighters were eventually acquitted. Most of the defense were white and the trial was held in a Jewish Synagogue.

Another interesting section depicted the places and activities of Mahatma Gandhi who lived for a time in Johannesburg. His philosophy of “Satyagraha” or passive resistance was shaped by his 10 year resistance to black discrimination in South Africa.

Finally we drove out to Liliesleaf Farm where Mandela and about 10 other political activists were arrested during a resistance planning meeting. Apparently they had been given away by someone on the inside. The beautiful 29 acre farm and buildings now in an upscale Johannesburg suburb-far from Soweto-had been purchased with Communist Party funds for the use of the freedom fighters. It has been a guest house but recently was sold and will become a museum next year.

Back in Soweto we drove by Mandela and Winnie’s old house that has since been bombed, by Winnie’s new big beautiful home and Archbishop Tutu’s home (yes, he still lives in Soweto! Two Nobel Prize winners on the same street!

For dinner we stopped at a tavern owned by one of Lolo’s former students and had a wonderful supper of African delicacies-mielie pap (corn porridge picked up with the fingers and dipped into a gravy), lamb ribs in gravy, chicken, beet salad, lettuce salad, green mango chutney, cole slaw and I can’t remember what else.

I asked Lolo what happened between Mandela and Winnie. She said it was personal and had to do with the bedroom. But it is only speculation as to who was sabataging the relationship and for what reason. Mandela has since married the pretty widow of the President of Mozambique.

As a single divorced mom Lolo didn’t say how she was able to afford her home. The most curious thing though, was that there was not a single African-motif item in the entire house. A walk inside and you could have been in a quaint B&B in a western country…the new black rich…

Reflections on Africa
We loved Africa and feel sad to be leaving. But the one single strong impression is how little Africans everywhere we traveled, black and white, knew about the outside world and how few, even those who could afford to, had ever traveled out of their own countries. The news media is pathetic and our references to current people and events went clear over the heads of the people we talked to whether it was the sophisticated gay Afrikaner managers in the Waterkant office across the street or Lolo in Soweto.

Jimi, our driver who was born and raised in Soweto and who picked us up at the airport said that he didn’t know what poverty was until he made a trip to the Congo one year… “that was poverty,” he exclaimed! Ironic.

Jimmy’s Face to Face Tours arranges overnight stays with families in Soweto, including Lolo’s Guesthouse, for $52 a night per person, including breakfast and transportation to and from the township, at 8.15 rand to the dollar. Information: (27-11) 331-6109 or (27-11) 331-6132, http://www.face2face.co.za.

Lolo’s Guesthouse: Diepkloof Extension. lolosbb@mweb. co.za. Lolo Mabitsela charges about $50 a night for two, which includes dinner and breakfast. She can accommodate up to four and can be reached at 011 (27-11) 985-9183 or at 011 (27-82) 332-2460.

The Soweto page of Johannesburg’s Web site, http://www.joburg.org.za/soweto, has the most useful visitor information for the township. Gauteng Tourism Authority has regional info at http://www.guateng.net. You can also contact the Soweto Tourism Association’s Dumisani Ntshangase, 011-27-73-310-5886, or Zodwa Nyembe, 011-27-72-437-3944.

Hout Bay Township Tour

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Just outside Cape Town we visited a squatter’s camp where poor people including immigrants from Zimbabwe and Algeria, who were not allowed to live in Cape Town prior to apartheid, live on “no man’s land” and try to find fishing jobs on nearby Hout Bay.

The hillside facing the bay is covered with little tin and cardboard shacks that remind me of the worst of the migrant housing at home. We took a stroll up and down the narrow dirt lanes while Bob entertained the children with his digital camera-taking their pictures and then letting them see themselves on the video screen.

In one small shack some women were sewing some skirts and “aprons” (worn if you were married) so I bought an outfit and put it on. Idle people (unemployment is about 90%) gaped at the white woman with her cloddy athletic shoes and long black pants underneath their local African costume and laughed and shook their heads as I paraded past them. One woman in a “shabeen” (home where beer is made and sold) dipped some homemade beer out of an old keg into an empty gallon can from which we took turns drinking…

Table Mountain & District 6

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The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car to the top of the mountain on a clear beautiful day. We rented a car and took a ride down to the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town isn’t actually on the tip of the Cape) about 20 miles down the peninsula where Bob hiked up to the lighthouse to get a good view of the Atlantic on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other.

Music
The epic documentary by American Lee Hirsch, “Amandla! A Revolution in four Part Harmony,” had its first South African outing on June 16 at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. The film that earned two awards from the Sundance Film Festival describes the arc of the ANC’s resistance to apartheid from 1948 to the moment when Nelson Mandela dropped the first black vote into the ballot box in 1994 via the music that gave shape and direction to the war on apartheid. It has been entered for the US Academy awards. It will be showing in the States.

District Six
We visited the museum where a former Indian occupant expained that 60 to 70 thousand people-freed slaves, immigrants, labourers, merchants and artisans-used to live in the one and a half square km district spread along the flank of Table Mountain south of the center of Cape Town. In 1975 District Six was officially declared an area for white people only and bulldozed flat. All that remains now is a grassy area…but “they” had gotten rid of the Blacks, Colored and other undesirables that lived on the edge of the city…

The museum was established in 1992 to commemorate the destruction of the area and the sense of loss has been sensitively captured by the many artifacts donated by the ex-residents.

The Cannon is on Signal Hill right behind our apartment and is fired off every day at noon and makes your heart jump out of your skin. Started in the 1800’s we are told, when the English withdrew after the English/Boer War. They fire off the cannon 21 times at important times or when important dignitaries visit the city.

Robben Island

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June 16 to July 13, 2002
Standing bunched shoulder-to-shoulder in the small anteroom of the prison on Robben Island where Mandela and others were political prisoners, our half of the ferry load of visitors impatiently waited. Well, for Pete’s sake, I thought to myself…what a disorganized outfit…should have had someone to meet us here by now…and then finally….a tall large-bellied black African burst into the room from a side entrance, squeezed his way to the front of the group and quickly apologized for keeping us waiting. Come, he said, lets go see the prison rooms now.

On our way out to the exercise yard our guide stopped at the foot of a staircase. “I was imprisoned here for 9 years for the trumped up charge of sabotage, he said, and this is where all the orders came from,” he said as he looked to the top of the stairs at the door behind which pain and torture, psychological and physical, were incarnated. “All letters in and out of the prison were intercepted here…my father never received my letters…they led him to believe that I was dead…he only found out I was alive the day I arrived home from the prison all these years later,” he said. Here the decision was made to separate the political prisoners from the general population. The most feared political activists and the most watched, like Nelson Mandela, were kept in “B” section. The rest were put in other sections…

Out in the yard our ex-prisoner guide talked about the lack of medical care. “The doctor would put his stethoscope to my heart and all the time his ear pieces would still be hanging around his neck. Later, when I became very sick I was finally diagnosed with severe diabetes. I was assigned to work in the kitchen. That was how we communicated with Mandela and the others…messages were passed on with the food.” He showed us the spot where Mandela buried the original of his memoirs after they had been transcribed on tiny pieces of paper and smuggled out of the prison. Then we entered a door off the exercise yard, walked down a narrow hall and took turns looking in through an iron bar window into Mandela’s cell that was only a space of about 8 feet by 8 feet.

When it was discovered that he had been collaborating with the other prisoners, Mandela was moved to another prison in Cape Town and kept in isolation. It was from there that, as the recognized head of the African National Congress (ANC), he was able to get messages out asking for negotiations between the ANC and the South African government to end apartheid. When international pressure mounted and the internal violence continued, and it became apparent that apartheid was on it’s way out, Mandela was finally released in 1993-27 long years after his incarceration. Within a year he was elected President of South Africa.

Many of the former guards are still working on the island that has now become a national museum and there are about 15 former political prisoners who are volunteering daily to lead public tours. When someone asked how it felt to be around his former captors, our guide told us about his reconciliation with one of the most cruel guards who came to him and asked for forgiveness.  “It is very very difficult for all of us…all these many years later we are told that it is good to come here and confront the truth of what happened to us.” he told us that the reason he was late meeting the tour group was because another former guard and his wife were in the group just prior to ours. “When they departed, he said, I couldn’t stop myself from breaking down and crying…and as it all came back to me I just couldn’t stop for awhile…”

Robben Island was used at various times between the 17th and 20th centuries as a prison, a hospital for socially unacceptable groups and a military base. Its buildings, particularly those of the late 20th century such as the maximum security prison for political prisoners, witness the triumph of democracy and freedom over oppression and racism. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Bo Kaap or Cape Malay Quarter

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The next day we take a minibus for 3 rand each (10 rand to a dollar) to look for an apartment. The buses are many and frequent with no schedule-you just wave one down when you need it-very efficient!

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As we walk into the neighborhood where we have found a beautiful modern apartment, de Waterkant Village, in a quiet residential area near downtown, I see a young guy in red plastic tennis shoes with a funky white patent plastic shoulder bag with Catch 22 written on it it cross the street and I know which Cape Town neighborhood we are in…do you? The neighorhood, used to be Malay, a (colored) neighborhood until all the Malays were run out by the apartheid system. Now it has become a gentrified little village with little cafes although some Malays are moving back in. This is the gay neighborhood.

The “Bo Kaap” or “Cape Malay Quarter” belongs to the culturally and historically most interesting parts of Cape Town. Many of the inhabitants are decendants of the people from Indonesia (Batavia), Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, who were captured in the 17th and 18th century and enslaved by the Dutch-East Indian Trading Company. Many were Mulims and others were converted to Islam by the Cape Muslim community.

The Cape Malays and their religious leaders played an important role in the development of the language and culture of the Cape colony. The Afrikaans language evolved as a language of its own through a simplification of Dutch in order for the slaves to be able to communicate with the Dutch and amongst each others, since they all came from different countries and cultures. Educated Muslims were the first to write texts in Afrikaans.

The Cape Malays have preserved their cultural identity and Muslemic creed. The old Malay Quarter with its steep and narrow streets, the plain artisan houses, Mosques and Minaretts reaches from the Buitengracht street up to the Signal Hill. The houses were restored and colourfully painted. The architectural style is a synthesis of Cape Dutch and Edwardian.

One of the oldest buildings in Wale Street 71 houses the “Bo-Kaap Museum”. It is furnished as a Muslim house of the 19th century and documents the history of the Cape Malays.

Coon Carnival
Around the corner from our apartment was a little muslim owned market we would go to every morning for a pastry and the newspaper. One morning I asked the shopkeeper who all the people were who would come at night to sing those wonderful rhythmic songs in the big empty garage across the street. He tried to explain to me about the “coons.” When I looked at him with a quizzical look he said, oh, yes, in the United States coon is a bad word isn’t it?

But later, when we visited the District 6 museum we learned about the Coon Carnival that takes place every year at New Years. They practice all year long, three times a week, for the new years carnival where groups from all over compete in singing contests. They parade through the center of Cape Town wearing their coon uniforms and black and white cream on their faces. No one ever did explain why the participants are called “coons.”

It was originally introduced by the Muslim slaves who celebrated their only day off work in the whole year. Nowadays men, woman and children march from the Grand Parade to the Green Point stadium, singing and dancing. They are clad in colorful, shiny suits, white hats and carry a sun umbrella.

The next leg of our journey is supposed to be India but since the state department has asked all Americans to leave India because of the Kashmir/Pakistani conflict I don’t know what we are going to do. We have four weeks here to decide but we will probably go. Right now I don’t want to think of going ANYWHERE!

Cape Town!

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June 15, 16, 2002
James make an unbelievable maneuver with the truck into the Lion’s Head Lodge & Backpacker Compound around a corner and in between parked cars on both sides of the street. We are amazed! He has done this before. He parks beside several other trucks. And we can’t believe the trip is over! I will miss the crew.

Cape Town, about 40km from the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of the continent, is a beautiful city up against the 1000 meter high giant Table Mountain. Lonely Planet calls the city a “volatile mixture of the Third and First Worlds.” The cafes on Long St. and the bars at the Waterfront could be in any cosmopolitan capital but the townships on the bleak, windswept plains to the east of the city could only be in Africa.”

We all eat a last meal together at a wonderful seafood restaurant in the upscale Victoria and Albert Waterfront Mall that evening. Bob and I come back to the compound and fall into bed; the others find a hip hop club and dance and party until 4:00 in the morning. Boy do we feel past that stage!

Citrusdal and The Baths

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June 14, 2002 My birthday
The Baths is a health spa about 16 km from Citrusdal in a pretty wooded gorge. It is a long weekend in South Africa; Monday is Youth Day-(SA has 13 public holidays) so Rod’s wife Brenda drives up from Cape Town. Bob and I, Sarah and Adrian and Heather and Fi upgrade to a chalet-$6 each and it’s wonderful to sleep in a bed.

Around the camp fire that night James and George teach me how to say “cool banana” in Swahili: Poe Matoke!

There is a cold swimming pool and another swimming pool fed by the hot springs so we sit in the soothing warm water a while before going to bed.

The next morning at breakfast Bob shows me a note he has written: “Happy Birthday,” which takes me by surprise as I had forgotten what day it was.

Then the truck takes us into Citrusdal where we experience a wine tasting of South African wines, including one made of Rooibos Tea which tastes like medicine. There is a nice break in the weather and we have lunch out on the front porch; the food is wonderful and half of us order a second entre which startles the woman restaurant owner!

That evening back at camp Bob appears with a cake and one candle and Nikki gives me Apricot jam and a piece of handmade soap made of goat’s milk and Ylang Ylang that we can use in our apartment in Cape Town. Think she must have seen me eyeing these things in the little wine shop…I am very touched by everyone’s good wishes!

Then everyone walks up to the Baths again. Just as Bob and I were getting into our tent, though, Rod drives up and tells us there has just been a cancellation in one of the suites in the hotel…so off we go to yet another night in a real bed on my birthday! Turned out to be a really good thing though because Bob was up about 10 times that night with diarrhea.

Orange River Bush Camp at Fiddler’s Creek

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The facilities are nice-big grassy campsite and there is a lapa (open air shelter) covered with green leaves of a plant with purple flowers within which to eat and wash dishes.

At camp we eat left-over Kudo steak sandwiches for lunch and kick back in the grass lean-to kitchen to watch it rain on the river…I am beginning to feel sad that the trip will be ending in four days…after seven weeks on the road sharing experiences I realize I care very much about the other travelers.

We all go to the bar where there is a nice fire in the braii (barbeque). I drag my computer and connectors to the bar with me and Sarah says “looking for a powerpoint?” That is a plug-in or socket. To us in the U.S. it means a microsoft application. I love learning all these different terms. Some of us order a Gluhwein (hot spiced wine). Then it’s Amaretto and coffee.

The next morning we packed up the tents in the rain, had breakfast of coffee and crepes with lemon juice and sugar and drove into the town of Springbok where we headed straight for the KFC…oh, grease heaven! While there-in walked one of the guys from the Kumuku Truck-barefoot in the rain and cold. Within 5 minutes Nikki had told him he looked like shit and where was his shoes! I asked where they were headed…he said he didn’t know-he just gets on the truck in the morning and gets off when it stops. We all laugh.

Two hours out of Springbok James “hoots” the horn as we pass the Kumuku parked at a toilet stop. Yeah, we’re going to beat them to the hot springs and get the best camping spot! It is getting colder when we go to the bar so we order hot mulled wine while the camp operators build a fire. Michelle introduces a mathematical puzzle which stumps everyone.

We shower in the thatched open air showers and crawl into our tents; during the night it starts to rain but we are snug. The next morning we are up and can’t wait to get to the last camp of the trip before we hit Capetown-Citrusdal and The Baths!

Fiddler’s Creek Camp

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June 12, 2002 To the South African Border
In the morning before we leave camp, three guys walk up to our campfire as George is frying bacon; I walk up and introduce myself. Two of the guys don’t speak. They ask many questions…what is your truck carrying…where are you all from…where did you travel from…are you going to South Africa? I came within an ace of saying “yes, we are going to South Africa and I just finished reading “Bang Bang Club” and I want to see the townships described in the book but there was something a little off…they were much too reserved…South African police, Rod hisses when they leave.

At the border the immigration officials who are jealous of George and James go into a room to confer about George’s passport but they don’t come out again. I go to the truck and tell Rod and everyone else that they are keeping George…silence for two seconds…then Rod gravely says “you’re kidding aren’t you…” He didn’t think it was funny.