Farewell South Africa!

For the class I was taking here in Cape Town, each of my USC comrades and I were asked to put together a final project to sum up our time here and show some of the people we met. I made a video using some of my personal photos and video footage as well as some of the interviews that I did for News24. Here's what I came up with:

And with that, my South African adventure comes to an end. Farewell, SA!!

The elephant in the room

One of the cool things about traveling abroad is that it can really alter the way you view your own country. I spent a lot of time in India--a place we Westerners like to paint as a horrible place for social inequality, where poverty is everywhere and no one has a chance at improving their situation. While I did notice poverty a lot in India, the experience of being there actually just caused me to spend more time thinking about social mobility, or lack thereof, in the USA.

In South Africa, the issue that's been on my mind the most is, perhaps unsurprisingly, race.

I've been highly aware of racial issues since I stepped off the plane here, but I haven't written anything on the subject yet. That's mostly because I have no idea what to say. I've been spending all of this time trying to come up with something insightful, but it hasn't happened.

People call South Africa "the rainbow nation" because of the amazing diversity here. But while it is a diverse place, and that diversity widely celebrated, racial issues in this country did not just dissolve with the Apartheid government in 1994.

South Africa has some pretty distinct racial categories. The categories don't necessarily stem from the attitudes of the people here, but from the country's political history. Apartheid, a system of government which was based entirely on race, had to define race very categorically in order to work. As a result, anyone in this country born before 1994 still knows in a deep, intimate way which category they fit into.

The basic breakdown is White, Colored, and Black. White people basically have entirely European heritage while Black people identify as entirely African. So that leaves "Colored." It's hard for us Americans to wrap our minds around, first of all, because in the USA, obviously, "colored" is an extremely derogatory word. Secondly, in the USA we don't really differentiate between someone who is of African descent and someone who is mixed race. Our half-Kenyan, half Irish-American president, Barack Obama, for example, we call "black." Here, it would be a lot more complicated.

South Africa population | Infographics

Colored most often means mixed race, but racial mixing has been happening in South Africa since the 1600s, so while many Colored people are, technically "mixed," many have only a vague idea of what their racial mix is, and while they don't identify as "Black African," their ancestors have in most cases, been in Africa for hundreds of years. Racial heritage among South Africa's Colored population can include Dutch, English, Indian, Pacific Islander, East Asian, African, and any other combination of the many many cultures that have passed through South Africa due to colonization, slavery, and trading. Traders and colonizers who passed through Cape Town did not enslave the native people they found here, rather, they brought slaves from all over Asia and other parts of Africa. Most slaves they brought, however, were men. So the gender imbalance inevitably lead to some racial mixing. Indian, Asian or East African slaves would marry native South African Khoi Khoi women and white men would frequently impregnate the rare female slaves they owned. As a result, Cape Town became an extremely interracial society until Apartheid outlawed interracial sex or marriage in the 1950s. Interestingly, hundreds of years after slavery, South Africa's Colored, mixed race population still generally only lives around Cape Town in the provinces known as the Western Cape and Northern Cape. Here in Cape Town, the population is largely Colored, but in the rest of the country, Colored people remain a small minority.

Ethnic Breakdown of South Africas Population by Province | Infographics

Another hard thing for Americans to conceptualize about race in South Africa is that there are two pretty distinct groups of White people here in South Africa. Afrikaners are descended of Dutch settlers and speak Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch (mixed with African and Asian languages). They have a strong history of farming and make up the biggest population of white people here. But then there are also the English. You might meet one White person here who sounds like they're speaking English as a second language (because they are) and another White person who grew up in the same city whose accent sounds vaguely British or Australian. Afrikaners and English people, of course also, have fairly different customs, family names, favorite recipes, and whatever else defines culture.

The Black/African population in South Africa is just as diverse as any other grouping. A person who identifies as Black might be Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, or one of many other tribal groups. Nelson Mandela came from a Xhosa tribe, while Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa is Zulu. Of course, each group also has their own language and cultural heritage. Almost 80 percent of South Africa's population identifies as Black, though here again, this varies widely region-to-region. Here in the Western Cape, Black people are a minority.

Beyond those three big groups there are many other ethnic and racial groups in South Africa as well. There is a huge Indian diaspora here, especially in the city of Durban. Gandhi even got his start in politics fighting for the rights of Indian people in South Africa. There is also a huge refugee population in South Africa. This country takes in more refugees than almost anywhere else in the world. Many of them come from other African countries. As is the case in many countries with large immigrant populations, these newcomers don't always receive a warm welcome. 

As I mentioned before, Apartheid called for strict divisions among the races. Your social standing was defined by your DNA. But of course, there are always gray areas. South Africans will tell you all kinds of stories--from amazingly recent memory--about a time when two brothers might be legally classified with one as White and the other Colored or one Colored and one Black, or when a government bureaucrat would run a comb through your hair to see if your locks were straight enough to "pass" for "White."

What's eerie is that many of the racial divides set up by Apartheid have had long lasting effects. Black people in South Africa, though the largest group by the numbers, still experience hugely disproportionate poverty. White people, making up less than 10 percent of the country's population, still seem to be the wealthy ones. People still identify certain parts of town as a "Black township," or a "White suburb." Most employees in the shops at the mall attached to the apartment where I have been living are Black or Colored while most of the shoppers are White. Riding in the elevator in my office building the other day, I heard a White woman mistake a Black woman who is an employee of the building who was carrying a tray of food for a delivery person. And the list of examples goes on.

Race also comes up frequently in conversation. Almost every person I met in South Africa had something to say on the subject. There was the highly educated Colored man who works in city government and admitted he still feels nervous speaking in front of his White coworkers. There was the White employee of the national park who I interviewed who said improving outreach efforts to other populations (implying beyond just White) of the city was a major concern for her. There were the many many conversations about race as it relates to politics.

It all seems eyebrow-raising, but on the other hand, familiar. After all, don't I live in a diverse city where city government is still largely white? Or where sections of town are strongly associated with certain racial populations? Recent events surrounding the Trayvon Martin case in the USA serve as reminders that racial conflict is still very present in American society.

My time in South Africa has certainly taught me a lot about the history of race here and the remaining issues surrounding race in this country, but I think in the long run, my South African experience will also help me look at racial issues in the USA with a little more perspective.

Things I'm hauling home

Tomorrow is my last day in South Africa! I'm packing up now and here's what's weighing down my luggage (besides the aforementioned Kudu). I would bring all of these things home by the caseload if I could, but I'll have to settle for just as much as will fit in my bursting-at-the-seams suitcases.

Wine! I never tasted a bad wine the whole time I was in South Africa. It's cheap and wonderful and I'll miss it!

Rooibos! I love rooibos tea and it's so hard to find in the USA. Here, it's hard to avoid, in fact, I'll admit, at this point I've had so much rooibos (at least one cup per day, often more) while I've been here that I'm starting to get sick of it, but I know that will wear off soon and I'll start craving it as soon as I'm back home.

Peri peri sauce!! Peri peri sauce is something I had never heard of before South Africa. Now I'm mad that I know about it because I know I'll crave it for the rest of my life and I'll never be able to find it at home. It's the local hot sauce of choice and I think they make it from a special South African chili pepper and some kind of highly addictive narcotic. I may or may not have been heard uttering things about how I want to "guzzle peri peri sauce by the gallon." I'm already plotting ways I can get to the Eastern USA where they have the only locations of Nando's (an awesome, peri peri-centric South African fast food chain) in the country. I'll also be drafting a letter to their CEO suggesting they open a branch in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Johannesburg day four: Soweto

(I'm back in Cape Town now with my computer and better Internet. I've added photos to all of the Joburg posts if you want to go back and see what I was talking about.)

I always have a knee-jerk reaction to guided tours. It's not that I don't find them informative--it's just the walking slowly in a clump that immediately identifies you to everyone around as a tourist, the lack of chances to get lost, the rehearsed jokes--I just prefer a clumsier, more nonsensical way to see a place. I also cringe at the idea of poverty tourism--something I've heard about in several parts of the world, LA included. While I get that it's important to expose people to the realities of poverty, it's hard to do in a way that doesn't come off as exploitative. On the other hand, what was I to do in Johannesburg, where some of the city's most well known sites also lie within its biggest township?

I had to break my own rules and take a guided tour of Soweto.

Besides the fact that Soweto (South West Township) is legally under the same jurisdiction as Joburg, it could easily be its own city. It's a massive ecosystem 3.5 million people strong--that's bigger than Johannesburg's city center. While parts of the township are as affluent-looking as any American suburb, other parts are made up of rows and rows of corrugated tin shacks with no electricity or running water.

I booked a Soweto tour through my hostel. Besides the driver, it was just me and two young people who are studying the tourism industry, so were only riding along for educational purposes. (A side note--these are the fourth and fifth people I've met in South Africa who are studying hospitality and tourism. That could be a coincidence, or it could be evidence of a new, growing industry.) In three and a half hours I know we barely scratched the surface of Soweto.

At our stops in the township, the driver and the students stayed behind in the car while I got out to look around. At our first stop, that meant I was alone wandering through one of Soweto's most impoverished areas. The driver connected me with a local volunteer guide who walked me back through the shacks and pointed out a daycare.

He told me about using pit toilets and collecting water in a bucket from a community tap and getting used to total darkness at night after the government realized people were stealing electricity from streetlights and shut them all off. "Take pictures!" everyone encouraged as I walked through this community. There were plenty of things to take pictures of, but I didn't take that many in this area, I couldn't help feeling a little disrespectful snapping away at people in their homes.

Two massive towers that used to be part of a power plant are a major Soweto landmark. Once, they served the white people of Johannesburg while polluting the black townships, now they are no longer active, but they have been made into a huge piece of public art which celebrates Soweto life in murals.

Nelson Mandela lived in Soweto once. Before he was imprisoned in Cape Town's Robben Island prison, he had a small brick house there with his second wife, Winnie. The house is now a museum. Mandela's birthday was last week, so the messages of well wishers are still hanging on the walls outside the house.

Just down the road from where Mandela lived, sits another Soweto landmark--perhaps the township's most well recognize. Soweto rose to global infamy in 1976 when black schoolkids who, under a new Apartheid law, were being forced to speak Afrikaans at school, decided to strike. Police opened fire on the crowd of children killing 176. The tragedy was a major turning point in the struggle against Apartheid. Today, the spot is a beautiful memorial and museum.

I left Johannesburg in the afternoon after the tour. I almost didn't go on a Soweto tour, but after visiting I was so glad I did. I think I would have missed out on an important place in South Africa if I hadn't. 

Johannesburg day three: caves and lions

One of the big draws about Joburg for me was a world heritage site about an hour outside town called "The Cradle of Humankind." The name kind of says it all--it's an area where tons of fossils and remnants of our early ancestors have been found.

The drive out of Joburg was an interesting experience itself. The more I see of this city, the more I think it looks like Los Angeles. One similarity is that it takes a loooong time to get past the city part and into the countryside. Driving though the city and into suburbia is a cool way to get a sense of life here though. I don't really mind traveling alone, but I really missed having someone else in the car that I could hand the camera to while I drove so they could take pictures of all the interesting things I was passing--crowds of people walking down the side of the freeway on the way to work, busy marketplaces, a beautiful college campus, and the posters which someone has plastered to every park bench, bus stop and public trash can in the city, which advertise "penis enlargement."

When I did make it out of the city, the countryside was really beautiful. It doesn't look like Cape Town at all. It looks much more like what you probably envision when you think "Africa:" wide, grassy, yellowish plains against a big, impossibly blue sky.

Maropeng was the name of my first stop, it's a museum about some of the history of the area's archeological sites. Of course it's interesting to learn about our very early ancestors, but the presentation of the information at this museum is at times baffling. At one point in the museum you go on a short boat ride underground. It's something akin to "It's a Small World," but with less educational value. Of course, I'm always totally delighted by that kind of nonsense.

I headed from Maropeng to the nearby Sterkfontein Caves. The caves are 20 million years old and 40 meters underground if I remember correctly. Somewhere inside, a very important skeleton of one of man's very ancient ancestors was found. The poor fellow fell down a crevasse many hundreds of thousands of years ago only to be fossilized and dug up by modern archaeologists. It looks like "Goonies" inside the cave, you have to crawl around under a lot of big rocks, and we got to see a bat, so that was all great for me.

 I was tired after the museum and the caves, but I needed to press on! There were more attractions awaiting me. Within the same big park is a place called the Rhino and Lion reserve, which is basically self explanatory. What I didn't know about this place was that you get to drive around in your own car--a do it yourself safari, you might say. So I proceeded down the dirt road to see some animals and dirty my rental car.

When I got to the lion area I was surprised that the lions were napping right next to the dirt road. One of them was even napping IN the road which meant I had to drive my dinky VW over some big rocks to avoid her. Then I wondered if anyone has ever had to change a tire in the park right next to a pride of lions. Luckily, I didn't have to.

The Rhino and Lion park has its own ancient cave and though I had just spent an hour in the impressive Sterkfontein Caves, I was still interested in this one. If nothing else, I wanted to see how it earned the name "The Wonder Cave." The Wonder Cave is not as old as Sterkfontein--10 million years instead of 20 million--and not as deep either, but it is much more adorned with beautiful, white, limestone stalactites and stalagmites. It's like an underground rock cathedral. The tites and mites take about 100 years to gain one centimeter in length, so the massive size of these ones makes the cave's age apparent.

By the time I emerged from the Wonder Cave it was almost 4pm. This worried me because the guard at the entrance to the park had warned me that most attractions would close at 4 and I still had one thing left to do. I wanted to hold a baby lion.

I drove as fast as my little VW could handle on gravel and dirt roads toward the visitor center where the baby lions live. I got there just as they were beginning to close but ran though the gate anyways. I stood near the baby lion enclosure hoping some employee would see me and take pity, scooping a cub into my arms. That didn't happen, so instead I took pictures of their kitten like faces and their oversized paws though the bars until the employees kicked me out. Holding a baby lion will get added to the ever lengthening list of things I want to do someday when I come back to Africa.

Johannesburg day two: brunch, etc.

My second day in Johannesburg began as every Sunday should as far as I'm concerned, that is, with brunch.

 In Cape Town, my comrades and I have been taking a once weekly class about South African media taught by a lovely Capetonian couple named Chantel and Andre. Hearing that I was traveling to Joburg alone, Andre insisted that I get in touch with Anwar, a good friend of his.

 Anwar and his girlfriend Jolene came to get me from my hostel--how lovely it was to be driven around by someone else--and took me to a spot downtown that completely surprised me. We parked in an industrial area under a freeway overpass and approached a graffitied warehouse building but stepped inside and were in a hip, bustling marketplace that makes Seattle's Pike Place look sleepy and lame by comparison.

Jolene and Anwar were kind enough to treat me to a decadent crepe while we perused booths of cool art, vintage clothing, anti-Zuma posters, and hipster cupcakes.

 When they returned me to my hostel I hopped in my rental car again--an act of great bravery--and headed out toward Johannesburg's number one attraction, the Apartheid Museum.

GPS and I had differing opinions as to where one can turn legally, what "keep left means," and how to get onto a freeway, but we made it there. The Apartheid Museum, a memorial to one of the greatest social justice atrocities in recent history, sits on the campus of a huge casino and theme park complex. As you walk in past huge pillars reading "freedom" and "equality," you can hear the shrieks of young children on roller coasters nearby--another form of liberation, I guess?

The museum takes about two full hours to see. It's ends up being a lot of reading, but it's set up effectively. Chillingly, as you enter the museum, one door is marked "whites," the other, "non-whites," and you can only go through one.

I thought I would learn about South African history, and I did, but I was also amazed how much I already knew, that is, how much I've learned in the past two months.

After the museum it was late afternoon which in South Africa I have lovingly come to know as wine time. All the guidebooks say that the neighborhood of Melville is the place to be for trendiness and nightlife, so GPS and I headed that way. As promised, Melville was a bastion of trendy restaurants and bars--though I should note that almost every restaurant and bar that I haven been to in this country has been way cooler than the average LA eatery/drinkery. Sorry LA.

My Joburg native coworker in Cape Town had suggested a spot in the neighborhood, but the "Liberation Cafe" across the street looked more my speed. There, I drank wine, watched people salsa dance, and. Was joined yet again by Anwar and Jolene, who were very kind in their willingness to spend time with me.

Johannesburg day one: driving on th left

Naturally my first stop in Johannesburg was the South African Brewers' "World of Beer" museum. But it wasn't entirely because beer is a high priority for me. A lot of it just had to do with the fact that I was hopelessly lost. When I landed in this city I was exceedingly proud of myself--I got my rental car and made it to my hostel with uncanny ease. It was a more seamless travel experience than I usually have at home in LA.

 My ego inflated, I decided to head out for my first afternoon of sightseeing. I knew vaguely that the downtown part of Johannesburg had some interesting sights, plus I had theater tickets in that area for that night, so I decided to start there. I used the location of the beer museum just to get me started with an address to type into a google search and left with those directions in hand.

 My troubles began when I couldn't figure out how to get out to the hotel's gated driveway. My troubles continued when half the roads I needed to find we're unmarked and the other half had undergone name changes--a noble effort to erase the ghosts of colonialism, but a major impediment to my map reading.

 I managed to get from my hotel to downtown, but then I was faced with crazy pedestrians, buses, one- way streets, and roadside hawkers. You might say I was overwhelmed. When I had reached the point when my google directions became completely meaningless, I found a gas station to pull over in and start toiling with the rental company-provided GPS. (Maybe I should have done that in the first place.) I told GPS the address of the beer museum having nothing else to offer her at this point. In her calming, dulcet tone, she directed me there. As she soothingly said that we had arrived at our destination, a toothless man jumped right in front of my car.

You see, in South Africa, they don't have parking meters, they just have guys who stand around on the sidewalk and watch your car. Apparently, they also aggressively urge you to park with them. Not having driven a car in an urban center very much yet, I did not know this and was completely terrified when the man started yelling something in my window. I don't know how he could tell I was a tourist initially, but when I cowered in fear and started shaking my head, I'm sure it confirmed all of his suspicions about me. He charged me what I am certain is way way too much, but I nearly ran him over getting into the space, so I didn't feel like I was in a position to argue.

 At this point I was right in front for the beer museum and had lost all interest in exploring this neighborhood on foot. What I needed, as indicated by my palpitating heart and crazy eyes, was a drink. So into the beer museum I went.

I've been to the Guinness museum in Dublin and I grew up in microbrewtown, USA, so I feel pretty solid on my understanding of the whole hops plus barley process, but I did learn a thing or two at the "World of Beer." The Disneyesque exhibit walks you through African tribal beer making traditions then the European process as introduced by colonists. I learned that black South Africans weren't allowed to buy any "European" alcohol until 1962, so even beer had a dark history with Apartheid. The end of the tour came with a much needed TWO free drinks, though oddly, they had nothing on tap. I got a free souvenir glass then forgot to take it with me.

After beers and a pretty decent veggie burger I found my way to the theater. The play--a musical about five men in an Apartheid era prion--was fantastic. The parking was free.