Normally I loath going to museums. While I see their purpose and know many enjoy them, the majority I’ve been to I usually leave disappointed as they simply don’t do it for me. I set out for a day at the Apartheid Museum, and boy am I glad I did. It’s world-renowned and filled with the history of black oppression and segregation in South Africa and it’s transition to democracy. There’s too much to explain in only a short blog. It’s a history I’m vaguely aware of but never had an appreciation for.
To think, less than twenty years ago this countries people where not free. Reading the story of Nelson Mandela and his courageous peaceful leadership should well anyone up with sadness and joy. I can’t help but think I’m visiting a country that politically would be comparable to visiting the US while George Washington was still alive.
My emotions are perplexed, I’m repulsed by the cruelty of some societies and people. It brings back memories of visiting German concentration camps and feelings of fortune to be from a time and place where such views are no longer institutionalized.
Fresh off my cultural education, I head to SOWETO a township mere miles outside Joburg formerly known as South West Township. During Apartheid this is where the government sent blacks to live in shanty town structures. It’s where Nelson Mandela was born and the home of the resistance he lead. It’s the largest township in the country with a population of 3.8 million that has a 40% HIV infection rate. The Township has come a long way in the past couple decades. It’s residents are now either quite rich or very poor. We drive down the street and one side is lined with big fancy homes and nice manicured lawns. Jaguars, Porches, and Mercedes parked at every home. There’s no security or barbed wire fences as crime here is almost non-existent. Yet across the street are thousands of rows of shanty town sheds where government supported residents live with no running water or electricity.
We stop for a bit and for a few bucks are guided by a local through rows of lean-to huts. We visit with the locals and inspect a few homes. It’s mind-boggling how the disparity is so grand.
I leave for the day thinking of a quote by Nelson Mandela, “In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth, and standard of education…but internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being: humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve your fellow men – qualities within the reach of every human soul”.
I’m thinking of the words on the museum wall. Diversity, Respect, Reconciliation, Equality, Responsibility, Democracy, and Freedom. These are concepts my country, the US, has a storied history of dealing with as well. These are things I was lucky enough I was born to know and I can only think of the power these concepts hold as we see daily news stories around the world of other people fighting for these same principles. One can only hope for a world to embrace them .
My time in Joburg has been superb. I can only hope South African’s are as welcoming as I head out to explore other parts.
