Johannesburg Tour

It is interesting that after 3 stops in Joburg that it was a part of the Zimbabwe extension so we finally got to tour the city. We went through downtown and again our guide was sure that we saw the good, the bad and the ugly. South Africa has received about 3 million Zimbabwean refugees, with a good share of them in Johannesburg, putting a strain on jobs and the economy.

We went to the Apartheid Museum. This became an emotional experience for me. For shock effect, your ticket said whether you were white or non-white, determining which door you could use. 20 years ago my new friend Larry Johnson (retired pastor from North Carolina) and I could not have entered through the same door, nor could the women pictured. We were a group of 10, 5 white and 5 black. How I wish more of life was like that. Apartheid was instituted in 1948 because segregation had failed. It was far more brutal to "put them in their place". The prime minister declared that apartheid was to produce good neighbors. Right. The battle for freedom was a long and costly one. I knew of Mandela's imprisonment, but I learned of his colleagues who suffered the same fate. I also learned that Mandela had advocated violence as a young man, part of the reason for his imprisonment. He is now the George Washington of South Africa, beloved by most, even in the white community. We then went to Soweto, a suburb where blacks were assigned living space, and toured Mandela's home there.

Following our very good day tour, we took all of our new friends to the airport to head home while we headed back to our new second home, The Airport Grand Hotel. Read the next blog for the wonderful evening we experienced on our last night in South Africa.

Joe