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Travelogues
Our flight landed simultaneously with other long haul flights and so it took sometime to get through the immigration process. My husband, who reached the day before, was waiting outside with the Bulgarian chauffer, Tony. Tony was quite a chatter box; he wasted no time to introduce me to his place which had been his home for the last 12 years. Johannesburg, as he informed, is the economic powerhouse of Africa but there is an omnipresent fear of crime. While driving down to Rosebank I could see beautiful houses with towering walls topped with razor wire and electric fences. Tony said he will take us to the suburbs where people live in conditions ranging from basic to appalling.
I read in the book that the first settlement in South Africa was
established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. This settlement was
built to provide the company's sailing ships with fresh supplies of food
and water for their journeys between Europe and India. In 1869 diamond
and in 1886 gold was discovered near Johannesburg. This event saw an
influx of immigrants. Today South Africa's population is forty million
out of which three-quarters is black (African) and about 15% white
(European), with the remaining 10% comprised of people of mixed white,
Malayan, and black descent and people of Asian (mostly Indian) descent.
Our first destination was Apartheid Museum. Museum to us always rendered a very typical picture of being a place where artifacts were preserved in big colossal mansions. But this museum is built in a very different manner - the synthesis of natural element and the building finish of plaster, concrete, red brick, rusted and galvanized steel, creates an amicable relationship between the structure and the backdrop. Its like a historical journey from the early people of South Africa to the birth of democracy. The apartheid museum not only narrates the apartheid story, but also shows the world how South Africa overcame apartheid.
Our next stop was Soweto. Soweto is the largest black township in the country. The township of Soweto as a whole could be called multi-cultural, in the sense that its residents are from all the tribes in South Africa. The type of housing ranges from huts to large manor.
Exhaustion overpowered us. We wanted to have dinner so Tony suggested we go to Nelson Mandela Square formerly known as Sandton square where a 6-metre statue of Nelson Mandela was installed to honor the famous South African statesman. We had our dinner there in a Thai restaurant quite a sumptuous meal and that too very reasonable. |
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Brussels - Heathrow- Johannesburg, almost 9 and ½ hrs flight. By 9 am
the plane was nearing Johannesburg and activities on land really started
to pick up - roads, farms, buildings just popped right out at me. The
plane flew in an anti-clockwise circle over Johannesburg for the
landing. The smell of the tropics greeted us; on April 5, 2006 I reached
a place on earth where life is endurance. 
Nobel Peace Prize winners; Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu
once lived here. We visited the house where Nelson Mandela once lived
for few years before he went to the prison. It was in Soweto that much
of the struggle against apartheid was fought.
