Africa Day 1

Friday, May 27, 2011
Johannesburg, South Africa
After 11 hours in the air and another hour on the tarmac at Heathrow, we landed in Johannesburg around 10 a.m. After more than 30 hours in transit I was a little spacy, but excited to finally be in Southern Africa. I'd checked the landscape from the air about an hour before we landed, and my first impression was that it looked a lot like West Texas--very flat and with scrubby grass and no trees. The roads were few and far between and perfectly straight, and there were very few trees. But the airport wasvery modern and reminded us we were landing in a large city.  

The hotel is only about a 5 minute drive from the terminal and actually overlooks part of the airport grounds . Since this is basically another transit stop, lasting only 24 hours and without any planned itinerary, we arranged for a tour of Johannesburg and Soweto. Johannesburg is the administrative capitol of SA and developed in the 1800s after discovery of gold in the area. With a population of more than 7 million, in the city and its suburbs, it is a huge city. I took almost an hour to get from our hotel near the airport into the city which is much hillier than the surrounding countryside and lies at an altitude of almost 5000 feet (1750 meters). We drove through many middle class and bllue collar neighborhoods before climbing the hills to reach the area where Nelson Mandela lives with his third wife and some of his grandchildren.  

Next we headed for Soweto, which is actually an abbreviation of South West Township. During Apartheid, the black South Africans were moved from Johannesburg proper to an area across the river. Today it is home to approximately 3 million South Africans and an unknown number of illegal refugees from other African countries . Although there is no longer any restriction on where people can live, many successful people have chosen to live in the Townships and in addition to the very poor shantytowns where people still live in shacks made of sheet metal, there are modest houses built by the government and also neighborhoods that you might find in suburbs in the US. There is little public transportation in Johannesburg and the suburbs and none in the townships. However there are more than 800 minivans that are used for transportation. Specific hand signals are used by people wanting a ride, and a driver going to that location will pick them up. The streets were full of minivans but the few buses we saw were almost empty. The bus system was put into service last year when the World Cup finals were played here.  

We stopped at some brightly decorated cooling towers that were part of a nuclear power plant built in the 70s and shut down after the end of Apartheid in the late 80s. Now you can bungy jump from a platform between the towers . We stopped at the Hector Pieterson Museum located where he was shot and killed on June 16, 1976. That shooting was during a march by Soweto school children protesting a new law that required that their studies be conducted in Africaans, the language of the white South Africans. The museum, where photos were not permitted, tells the story of Apartheid and the struggles to end it. It was a real education into the struggles of a country. Our guide, General, told us that most South Africans today live and work where they choose, but there are still scars from the bad times and a small percentage (less than 10%) of the populations, both blacks and whites still oppose integration.

Our final destination in Soweto was to visit the street where the homes of Desmond Tutu and Winne Mandela are located. The Mandela house was built by the citizens of Soweto for Nelson Mandela and he lived there briefly. It was amazing to learn that two Nobel Peace Prize winners lived with blocks of each other. 

The final stop on our tour was to see the Soccer Stadium built for last year's World Cup. Then it was back to the hotel and a chance to spend the night sleeping in a real bed.

Comments

Mark
2011-05-31

Thanks for sharing your adventures with us. I hope you have a great trip. The London debacle was something like I'd have experienced. So, I take it you didn't bunji jump? Me neithery! Love, Mark

Dee H
2011-06-01

Hi to both weary travelers,
I am sure you will have a great time and take wonderful pictures especially of the animals and the falls. I am off to NJ on Mom for 2 weeks on Monday.
Dee

2025-02-12

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank