donderdag 13 oktober 2011

12th October

On Wednesday we went on a city tour organized for us by the City of Joburg.

We visited the Apartheidmuseum, Soweto, the house of Mandela and the Hector Pietersmuseum.
In the Apartheidmuseum it was straiking that your got a random entrance ticket that tagged you as white or non-whites. That created the feeling people have had during that period when there were a lot of services or areas where not accessible if you were 'non-white'. Juri, our guide , told us that the coridors in buildings were sometimes made wider so non-whites would not touch the whites and there were banks in the parks that said '  for blanks only'. Not really thinkable for us...







My entrance ticket made me randomly white

 For the people that understand Flemish: some signs in 'Afrikaans':




 

After the museam we continued our trip and passed by the Stadium that was created for the Worldcup in 2010:


Then we arrived in Soweto ( South West Township) : the largest Township of Joburg:
Although there is still a lot of poverty in this township you do start to see that  the government is building new houses in some areas: 









 In 1948 the blank Africans won the elections for the first time and in 1955 the charts of freedom was signed that included 10 chapters. The monument below describes each of the 10 chapters and the South African you see on the picture spontaneously started to sign the African athem



On our way to have lunch  a  herd of sheep crossed the road right in front of us...


We had lunch is  a local African restaurant in Soweto called: Sakhumzi and I was lucky because there was a local market right in front of the restaurant!









The house of Desmond Tutu was right around the corner:



After that we visited the house where Mandela has lived in Soweto:





These are the original chairs he used on his terrasse:








After the government wanted to put the 'Afrikaans' as first language to teach in all schools there was a strong protest & manifestation   from the students.  On 16th June 1976  Hector Pieterson was cold-blooded killed during a manifestation together with hundreds of other students.  A monument was created to remember this major disaster.

 Hector's sister carrying his body:



The firing line  is illustrated through the  grass strip on the square:

It was  again a very learning and rich day
We wrapped  up the day  working on our project as we had a dinner coming up with the CIO of the City of Joburg:


In the boardroom there were some guidelines in Afrikaans on a card to have a good and productive meeting.... for those who understand Flemish: look at the wording  ;-)!


Stay tuned!
#ibmcsc south africa

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