Part of a week in Joburg

January 19, 2011
In the morning we met with Eddie Mikue, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and he spoke to us about programs the SACC is working on in South Africa. He was really interesting, and I liked how he emphasized that the SACC is concerned with earthly issues (including the HIV/AIDS crisis, the current environmental problems facing South Africa, and the high poverty rates in South Africa), unlike some other churches in South Africa who focus solely on eschatology. It got me really excited for my internship in Namibia. I’m going to be interning with the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), and just hearing about all the programs that the SACC is working on in South Africa, made me excited for learning about the role of the CCN and how the church is working to change lives in Namibia.
After meeting with the SACC we met with some people from the Khulumani Support Group. Khulumani works with victims of apartheid and attempts to turn them into victors, rather than have them remain as victims. A lot of the work they are doing is influential and important, but their presentation wasn’t very compelling, and I was tired after our first meeting (they were back to back meetings in the same conference room) so I was not very engaged.
In the afternoon we visited the Apartheid Museum. The first thing that struck me about the museum was its location. It’s located in the same complex as a fancy casino and an amusement park, which I thought was weird. I learned that it is there because the casino proposed it as a way to draw more tourism, so they won the bid to build it. But we had to drive through a big security gate to get to the parking lot and it did not feel very accessible to the public, which seemed contrary to what the museum stood for (the end of apartheid, showing what happened and trying to ensure it doesn’t happen again). The museum itself was really powerful. Our tickets randomly assigned us to groups of either “white” or “non-white”, which was the entrance we had to use. It was very sobering to be classified by something so superficial (for us it was our tickets, but skin color is kind of the definition of superficial) and it made me think a lot about my own privilege, but also the times where I feel like I am judged or stereotyped based on other qualities.
The museum had a temporary exhibit on the life of Nelson Mandela, which I found interesting and spent a lot of time in (although it was the most random set-up for the exhibit, it wasn’t logical and didn’t make much sense). However, this meant that by the time I got to the section of the museum which detailed the history of apartheid, including life before and during apartheid for whites and blacks, and details of the resistance movements which eventually helped end apartheid, I only had about a half hour for the extensive exhibit which can take as long as three hours. So I felt like I had to rush through everything and didn’t actually get to read the signs or look at anything very much. I wish we had more time there, but as it was everyone was pretty tired after our long morning.
After dinner we went to a musical, “Songs of Migration,” at the Market Theater in Joburg. It was a performance consisting entirely of songs about immigration in Africa. All of the performers were really good, but if there’s one thing I learned about myself while I was in Trinidad, it was that I don’t really care about the arts, especially if I’m tired. So I wasn’t very engaged with the performance, and started falling asleep at the end.

January 20, 2011
In the morning we met with representatives from both the African National Congress (ANC) and the major opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). The ANC representatives were disappointing because they weren’t very well prepared and were skilled at dodging questions the group asked. In contrast, the DA representative was well informed and answered all our questions very thoroughly, and is running for a mayorship in the 2011 elections. Basically, the ANC was the party that worked to end apartheid, so they have an emotional connection to the majority of the population and as a result won 65% of the vote in the 2009 elections. The DA is the liberal opposition to the ANC, but only won 17% of the vote and has a hard time even opening dialogue with the ANC. There are lots of political problems in South Africa that neither party seems to know how to deal with. After lunch we had a lecture about nuclear energy and some of the other environmental issues facing South Africa.

January 21, 2011
Such a busy day! First we met with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which works to help those living with HIV/AIDS and educate the general South African population about ways to prevent its spread. The South African government has been really slow at addressing the issue including: denying the problem existed (Mbeki claimed that HIV could not cause AIDS, which explains his inadequate response), claiming that antiretrovirals are toxic and don’t work very well (disproven by science) and that the uneducated public is not able to stick with their ARV program (Doctors Without Borders also disproved this when they started a program outside Cape Town). This presentation was informative, but also powerful because our speaker shared his personal story of how he found out he was HIV positive, and what it is like to live with HIV in South Africa today.
After our meeting with TAC we headed to Constitution Hill, the location of the Constitutional Court and an old prison where many black men were imprisoned during apartheid. We took a tour of the prison where, among many others, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi were imprisoned. We also visited the Constitutional Court, which has architecture that symbolically unites the past with the present.
We then headed to lunch in Sandton, one of the wealthiest communities in South Africa. We ate lunch in the fanciest mall I have ever been to. The floors were marble (or fake marble), and there were Michelangelo-esque paintings in rotundas scattered around the mall. There was a Ferrari store, a Bellagio store, an Apple store, and lots of other upscale places. This was one time I felt out of place not because of my race or my privilege, but because I couldn’t really afford anything at the mall (except for the one measly postcard I bought). When we sat in Nelson Mandela Square, eating gelato, it felt like what I imagine a European square to feel like. A big fancy fountain in the center of the square, pigeons flying around, an abundance of white South Africans, hot sun beating down. Except for the giant Mandela statue, it really felt like it wasn’t in South Africa. Coincidentally, Sandton is located right next to the township of Alexandra, which is one of the poorest communities in South Africa. Such lavish wealth, adjacent to such extreme poverty, South Africa is definitely a land of contrasts.