Soweto

A visit to Soweto is an emotional roller coaster, however, being the most famous of the “townships” created by the Apartheid government to segregate its population, Soweto is a must see for anyone trying to understand this chapter of South Africa’s history. Its grid of indistinguishable drab box homes are a testament to what happens when a government has no concern for the welfare of a segment of its people. It is also here that the movement that would eventually dismantle that system first took root, and its people talk with pride about the part they played in its undoing.

I spoke with locals in a shebeen (township bar). One guy told me about how he and other youth organizers had to pretend that they were a swimming club and meet in secrecy at the pool. It was illegal for blacks to assemble in large groups under apartheid. He laughed about how it was sometimes difficult to take one another seriously while standing in their bathing suits. “Not one of us could swim” he said with another great laugh. Another middle-aged man told me emphatically, "none of this was here", gesturing to the things in front of us, "the roads, the cars, that gas station, that market, none of it was here - it was only dirt." The others at our table nodded, and I could see them envisioning the Soweto of their youth. This was perhaps the most tangible impression I had yet of what had changed since the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Indeed the signs of improvement were everywhere in Soweto. There were still “unofficial settlements” within Soweto – shanty towns of currigated iron and make shift fences that illustrated a poverty that could not be denied. But the signs of development were everywhere - electric lines and sewer systems being laid out. There was a huge hospital, the largest in the southern hemisphere. People owned cars. It was clear that with the restrictions of apartheid lifted the material things were trickling in.


An old coal burning plant that had been beautified


Me and "grandma"- she said she was 86 and had never had her picture taken.

The Lure of Gold

While taking care of the necessary task of exchanging travelers checks I stumbled upon an unexpected record of the cities sorted past. During the banks construction, right in the center of downtown Johannesburg, workers uncovered a vast network of tunnels running underneath the city itself. Beneath the tellers and the ATMs there is now a section of one of these tunnels which has been preserved as an exhibit. From the impressive marble lobby you can get into an elevator and when the doors open you are in a 19th century mine shaft. Lit only by lanterns, an iron cart sits on a track leading down a tight crack in the rock and onwards into the darkness below. Even more revealing are the black and white photographs on display - pictures of the mine when it was operational, with half-naked sweating Africans starring back blankly at the camera, or captured in their brutal task of breaking up the rock. In many pictures they are hunched over in the cramped spaces with knees bare in the rocky rubble, gouging at the rock with simple hand tools. In most they are not the focal point, but in the background behind a bunch of hard looking white bosses posing for the camera. In these pictures the words of Alan Paton, South Africa's most famous author, can be seen to be true - "the wealth of South Africa’s gold mining industry is not so much do to the richness of gold as it is to the poorness of black wages."

Nowhere is the vastness of the mineral wealth which has been drained from the African continent more apparent than in Johannesburg. The native name for the city - “gauteng” means “city of gold”. Of the metal estimated to have been mined in the world to date, around half has come from Africa, and the bulk of that has been from the nation of South Africa. It has been and remains the world's largest producer of both gold and diamonds. Its landscape is still littered with man-made mountains of mine waste and the hulking machinery of depleted mine-shafts. The demands of the mining companies for a guaranteed supply of permanently cheap black unskilled labor led to the legalized framework of racial discrimination. The origins of apartheid lays in large part in the mines and the lure of gold.

At the beginning of 1886 the undistinguished stretch of Transvaal highveld that would become Johannesburg was nothing more than open plains and sparsely settled farmland. All that would change when George Harrison, an Australian prospector, stumbled on the only surface outcrop of the richest gold-bearing reef in the world. Within months droves of diggers descended on the site, and a tent city was erected. Because the gold was deep and in reef form, not the easily accessible alluvial form, mining required heavy equipment, so mines were quickly concentrated in the hands of men who had the capital to finance large underground operations. From there the city of Johannesburg sprung up and is today the largest economic hub in all of Africa.




Though their conditions have been much improved miners in South Africa still do not have a life to be envied. Most begin their day by climbing into the metal cages that will take them deep into the belly of the earth where they will spend there shift in one of the narrow shafts that run as deep as 10,000 feet (nearly 2 miles). At that depth the temperature of the surrounding rock reaches 130°and it is necessary to pump refrigerated air in constantly. During my stay in South Africa the newspapers were filled with coverage of the current mine workers strike.

Apartheid Laws

What makes South Africa's apartheid era different than the segregation and racial hatred that has occurred in other countries is the systematic way in which it was formalized through law. I spent some time looking into the legislation that the National Party used in their attempt to engineer a society with different roles for people based on race. It’s pretty scary stuff.

The Population Registration Act classified people as Bantu (black Africans), colored (people of mixed race), white (the descendants of the Boers and the British), and Asian (Indian and Pakistani immigrants). Classification into these categories was based on appearance, social acceptance, and descent. For example, a white person was defined as “in appearance obviously a white person or generally accepted as a white person.” A person could not be considered white if one of his or her parents were non-white. The determination that a person was “obviously white” would take into account “his habits, education, and speech and deportment and demeanor.” The subjectivity of these qualifications left a lot of room for the discretion of the authorities, all of whom were of course white. Another common method was the “pencil test” in which the authorities would place a pencil in a person’s hair – if it stuck they were black, if it dropped they were not. The large number of reclassifications on record is an indication of how inaccurate the notion of “race” really is.

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act Forced segregation in all public amenities, public buildings, and public transport with the aim of eliminating contact between whites and other races. "Europeans Only" and "Non-Europeans Only" signs were put up. The act stated that facilities provided for different races need not be equal.

The Group Areas Act established separate sections for each race. Members of other races were forbidden to live, work, or own land in areas belonging to other races. A part of this was the dreaded Pass Laws which required non-whites to carry a “pass” to prove they had permission to travel in white areas. Failure to produce a pass led to imprisonment.





The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act created several small “nations” within South Africa for black South Africans. All black South Africans, regardless of where they lived, were made citizens of their “homelands” and thus were excluded from participating in the governing of South Africa.

Bantu Education Act established a Black Education Department in the Department of Native Affairs which would compile a curriculum that suited the "nature and requirements of the black people". The author of the legislation, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd (then Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister), stated that its aim was to prevent Africans from receiving an education that would lead them to aspire to positions they wouldn't be allowed to hold in society. How thoughtful! Instead Africans were to receive an education designed to provide them with skills to suit their own capacities or to work in laboring jobs under whites. In this way it was ensured that no African could exceed the low expectations that their racist government had for them. As a teacher I found this one particularly disgusting.

The full extent of the damage that the apartheid experiment has had on South Africa’s people cannot be told. It is amazing to think that this was the way of life here as recently as the early 90’s.

Joburg City Tour

On the morning of my first day in South Africa I spoke to the owner of the hostel I was staying in about my project. He offered to introduce me to a driver who he believed would be able to help me gain access to some of the areas I was interested in. He made a phone call and an hour later I was greeted at the gate by Arnold, a soft spoken South African who shook my hand and asked me what I would like to see. We spoke for a while in the comfort of his decades-old Mercedes and then we sped off into the city.

Hillboro, our first destination, had once been a prosporous area, famous for its pubs and restaraunts. It still bosts ironic names such as Greenwich village and times square. It was now disidedly the most crime ridden of the slums of Johannesburg. Arnold assured me that our visit would be short and relatively safe. It was obvious when we had arrived. The streets were teeming with people. Many of the buildings were literally crumbling.

He brought the car to a brief stop to point out a group of kids that he said sniffed glue. I sat there feeling awkward starring at the desperate looking kids sitting on the curb just a few feet away. Looking dazed, they graually noticed me, and when we made eye contact it was obvious that my presence was as strange a thing for them as it was for me. Not knowing what else to do I gave a little wave which was returned before Arnold sped off. In this way we moved through the city streets, pausing only long enough for him to point something out and then driving off once I had been noticed.

Arnold turned out to be an excellent guide and readily offered an explanation for everything we saw. For instance, if a man has a bit of goatskin tied around his wrist or a number of small parallel scars on his cheeks he is a Zulu. A Nigerian coke dealer can apparently be identified by his long pointy shoes. He described how gangsters use heavier cars to crash into cash carrying vans causing them to flip over, and then saw off the roof, shoot those inside and make off with the cash. Much of what he said hinted at the tension that exists between black south Africans, as according to him different ethnic groups were responsible for the various problems that plague South Africa.

At one point we stopped and he directed me to look down an avenue to where a number of people could be seen standing around. "I would not take you down there" he said, "Someone would approach the car believing that we wanted drugs, and then we could get into trouble." I was glad that he didn't and happier still when he said that we were leaving Hillboro.

Our next stop was houghton, just on the other side of the hill that gives hillboro its name. It would only have been a ten minute walk, but my guess is that few ever do, in either direction. The Juxtuposition is staggering; suddenly we were on wide tree-lined streets, craning our necks to catch glimpses of the mansions that could be seen over the high walls that surrounded each property. We got out of the car and peered through some of the gates to see manicured gardens, swimming pools, tennis courts and other signs of wealth.

When I asked Arnold what kept the crime from Hillboro from spilling over into here, he replied that "those people could not come here, because they would be recognized at once as people who did not belong." It was pretty obvious what role race played in this. He pointed to a shed outside of the entrance to one of the homes. In it was a security guard sitting watching monitor screens. "That man would stop any man walking on the street who looked suspicious. If they were not able to provide proof of their business here, as well as the address of where they were going, they would not be allowed. When a crime is committed here, the response from the police is so rapid that few get more than a block before they are caught." Indeed every house had a call box, an electric fence, and a sign displaying the various security companies whose services the occupants employ.

Our final stop was a visit to the tallest building in Africa. For seven Rand we took the elevator to the "top of Africa" and took in the panaramic views of Johannesburg. Even from this elevation you could make out the patchwork of poverty and affluence from the greeness of the trees or the drab brown of different areas. At the city's edge ochre-colored mountain ranges were heaped here and there. "These are not mountains" Arnold said, "they are the excrement of the mines that are the foundation of this city."

Vaccinations & Travel Medications

During this pre-trip preparation time I scheduled a visit with a physician who specialized in travel medicine. The following is a partial list of the diseases for which I recieved a vaccine or medication.

Diphtheria is an extremely contagious and life-threatening infection that usually attacks the throat and nose. It is contracted by breathing in bacteria after an infected person has coughed or sneezed or from close contact with discharges from an infected person's mouth, nose, throat, or skin. Early symptoms are a sore throat and mild fever, followed by the formation of a membrane over the throat and tonsils and which makes it hard to swallow or breath. If not treated, the bacteria will release a powerful toxin into the blood stream that damages the heart muscles and causes heart failure or paralysis of the breathing muscles.

Hepatitis A & B are both viruses that attack the liver. Hepatitis B, the more serious of the two, causes lifelong infection, cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and death. Both are contracted through the transmission of blood.

Japanese encephalitis is a virus contracted from a mosquito which has bitten an infected domestic pig or wild bird. Symptoms include; fever, headache, and neck rigidity, which may be followed by convulsions, mental retardation, coma and death.

Typhoid fever is contracted by eating food or drinking beverages that have been handled by a person who has typhoid fever or if sewage contaminated with the typhoid bacteria gets into the water you use for drinking or washing food. A Person with typhoid fever usually has a sustained fever as high as 103° to 104° F, that is sometimes accompanied by a rash of flat, rose-colored spots. If not treated, the fever may last for weeks or months, and around 20% die from complications of the infection..

Typhoid fever is very common in the developing world, where it affects close to 21.5 million people each year. In the United States there are only about 400 cases a year, and 75% of these are acquired while traveling abroad. It is worth a moment to consider why, someone like me, who lives in a zone thousands of miles away from any real danger of infection from these diseases, is able to procure a reasonable safeguard against them in a single afternoon, while those who live with the constant threat of them are largely not.

Itinerary and Written Materials

I received a moderate savings on my international airfare due to the fact that I was a student once again. Discount airfare is just one of the numerous advantages that exist for students which I cannot recommend highly enough. Whatever your position is however, I imagine most would be surprised by the low cost of air travel relative to its potential to yield learning and self-development. Despite my criminally low salary as a public high school teacher, the cost of airfare for my first three-month leg was slightly less than what I would make in just six weeks. So long as one is capable of finding enjoyment in activities whose costs are not too immoderate for their means, independent travel is within the reach of more individuals than one might realize. It has been my experience that once one arrives in a foreign place, the most rewarding and remarkable experiences often have no monetary cost whatsoever.

The web of airlines, routes, and hub cities that make up air travel is a complex and constantly changing system. It is necessary to learn some of the nuances of how airfare is determined in order to know what routes might be possible. For instance, when creating a international multi-stop itinerary one is sometimes shocked to find out, that in some cases, travel to additional unplanned destinations can actually save money. I spent a significant amount of time working out a route that would satisfy my interests and still be within my means.

With the countries I was going to visit and the dates that I would be there determined, I began the long process of planning the specific sites that I would visit and activities I would partake in once I arrived. Many of the things I planned to do within each country included visits to museums and other public institutions dedicated to educating the public. These sites often represent how a society remembers its own past, and offer insight into the collective memory of a people. They are invaluable as centers for the prevailing knowledge concerning certain subjects. They are the logical starting point for the understanding of a number of things that I hope to be able to teach my students. However, I wanted to be certain that my trip also included exposure to everyday life in different parts of the world, and the opportunity to consider how these experiences could be revealing about humanity and its past. This required an itinerary engineered towards interaction with various segments of each society I was to visit, and I gave much consideration to what it is that I would do in the limited time that I would have in each country.

I also wanted to avoid constraining myself, by over-planning to the degree that would not allow my path to be swayed by the circumstances I encountered on the road. The result is a list of sights and activities that I had researched thoroughly enough to help me gain access to them, but that I could adhere to loosely enough to allow the insight gained from being in each region still influence my trip. I am eager dive into the thinking behind my selection of particular items, but I would prefer to include their description where I narrate their encounter.

I also spent time making the final selection of the reading materials that I would carry along while on my trip. I wanted to bring anything that could provide useful information about the history and the culture of the regions I was going to visit. Of course, once again this would be restricted by the fact that everything I wanted to bring from home and read at any point along my trip I would have to carry on my back. To maximize what I could fit, I spent a few days in the public library and the school where I work, shrinking down and making copies of written materials using a Xerox machine. The result is a neat half-sized three-ring binder which includes a diverse range of materials I selected from a variety of sources.

Computer Solutions

Next I had to consider how I was going to write while on the road. My laptop looked like it had already survived a lot; it was covered with scratches and missing a shift key. It had endured almost constant use in a high school classroom and been jostled home and back for two years straight. My alternative was a personal digital assistant donated to the cause by my father. It was seven years old - ancient by today’s timeline of obsoleteness. However, the PDA was simple, light weight, no bigger than a small book, it loaded up at the push of a button and it has a battery life of 14 hours. Its drawback was that it was basically only good for word processing, and even that it did on a scaled down version of Microsoft Word that can apparently only be opened by some computers and even then seemed to work only about half of the time. In addition I wouldn’t be able to do anything else on it that might prove useful, like upload pictures or use the internet. My laptop could do all these things, but it could only be used while plugged in, and was too cumbersome to take out in most of the situations I envisioned using it anyway. As illogical as it sounds I finally came to the conclusion that taking both would be the best option. I could use the laptop and all of its features when I was in a secure place with a constant power supply. When I just needed to jot down a quick paragraph, or when there was no power in sight, I could use the PDA. As an added bonus, either one could break and I would still have the other to get by with.

Camera Solutions

Next I turned to the camera which would be the primary tool with which I would capture the experiences I was to have and share them with my students. The video camera I had was a present given to me by a combined effort of my immediately family six years earlier when I graduated from college. I had dragged it on a number of adventures already, and had some experience with its pros and cons. For its time, it has outstanding picture quality in a number of conditions, but it is big and heavy.

It is equipped with an external microphone, however anything that it picks up which is not directly in its field or closer than a few feet can end up sounding muddled. Since I intended to conduct interviews it would be necessary to have a microphone that could be brought closer to the source of the sound. Professionals record audio onto a separate device and splice it in when they are editing, but since I had to carry it all on my back I was looking for a solution that would record directly onto the camera’s tape. I decided to purchase an inexpensive lavalier microphone that could be clipped onto a person’s shirt, and had a thin 12 foot cord running back to the camera. I figured that this type of mic was small enough to fit in my pack and could also be positioned to reduce background noise if necessary.

Next I looked into the use of different lens adapters. I went back to the camera store and experimented with the few that fit my camera. The lens that I believed would be most effective for what I was doing was a fisheye lens. A fisheye lens uses a series of concave lenses to bend the image in view. I found that with the fisheye I had a much wider field of view, which would be useful for capturing landscapes and larger scenes. It also created a sense of depth as the peripheral portions of the footage appeared to curve and move more quickly from the field of view as the camera moved towards a subject.

Then I considered a tripod. As it turns out a surprising amount of what separates the professional look of most film from the amateur look of home video, is the vantage point of the camera. The position of the camera determines the window into the scene that the viewer will experience. If that window is jerky or it seems like the camera man is trying to chase the subject around to keep it in the scene, it tends to annoy the viewer and detract from their ability to enjoy the footage. Having a tripod is a good start and is fine for still footage; however, as I found out when I experimented with an old tripod that I had, the real difference is in the head. A normal friction head, like the one that is used on many tripods for still cameras, will produce irregular choppy movement when used with a video camera. The smooth look that professional footage has is normally achieved through the use of a fluid head. A fluid head uses a viscous oil between the mechanical components and creates a smooth movement with clean starts and stops, as well as jerk-free pans. As I read into it and experimented with different things I realized that I was going to have buy I fluid head and a new tripod.

These are not typically designed with my style of travel in mind. Finding sticks (tripod legs) that would fit a fluid head, were a size and weight that I could carry, and were not made of some astronomically expensive carbon fibre material, was not easy. The solution I finally found was a used tripod in a camera store in a neighboring town that had a ball head that could lock. I found that I could mount a fluid head on top of that, and as long as I was careful about keeping the fluid head screwed on tightly it would give pretty smooth results. It was hoaky but it worked.
Even with the head attached it folded up to about 16 inches and with some nylon straps I bought at an outdoors store I was able to lash it down to my pack above the case for my camera. I then covered them with a nylon stuff sack to prevent scratches and damage.

Backpack Solutions

My first order of business was to reflect on the nature of the backpack which would become my home while on this trip. I have had a substantial amount of experience traveling independently, and I have always found that despite any inclinations towards the contrary, the less one brings the more comfortable one usually is. In my first travels abroad, when I did not require the paraphernalia necessary to film and edit digital video or correspond remotely with an advisor, I started out with a 2000 cubic inch daypack and slowly streamlined it down to a small satchel little bigger than a ladies purse. In this way I had traveled to a number of very remote regions of the world and I had always found that anything that I truly needed for survival was available readily enough to the local population that I could afford some. However, my intention to document this trip in a way that could be shared with my students was going to require loads of equipment, and a pack that would provide protection from the harsh environments of the world.

The pack I finally found is unique enough to merit description. It was developed by a Swedish industrial designer named Jonas Blanking, who had worked in the automotive industry but had an inclination towards extreme outdoor activities. He was frustrated with conventional backpack designs that would render his books and papers soggy and his laptop casing occasionally fractured. His goal was something rigid that would protect its contents, could hold adequate volume, and still be worn comfortably. He employed the use of aluminum and ABS plastic to create the MegalopolisTM, a pack with an external hard shell designed to carry a laptop and other contents. It has an ingenious array of facets on the outer shell that can be used to cinch cargo down in any number of customizable ways, making the things inside safe and the things needed accessible easy to get at. New they cost around $200, but I found one used through an ebay auction.

My laptop fit perfectly into a protected compartment in the interior of the pack, but I still had to find a way to transport the digital video camera that I was going use in a way that would be relatively safe from damage. After abandoning a crazy scheme involving PVC pipe and memory foam, I found that a local camera store sold a carrying case for large telephoto lenses, which happened to fit my camera snuggly, and left room for the lens hood and the extended battery. It also fit perfectly into the recess left by the curvature of the lumbar support of my backpack. Now it just had to be secured.


The company that makes my backpack also sells a cargo bridge accessory which is designed to allow you to secure skis or a snowboard to the back of their backpacks. With a little modification it held the camera and case securely and even allowed me to reach around and take the camera out without having to take the pack off. I anticipated that this might be useful in situations that were crowded or when I needed to be discrete.

Introduction to my Initial Preparations

The subsequent posts contain an account of the logistical work completed during the initial preparation phase of my study plan. Much of this period has been spent developing an itinerary that comprises of experiences that will provide insight into the history I hope to share with my future students. During this time I have also had to procure the necessary equipment to carry out these investigations, and figure out how best to transport it all. Those who know me will perhaps at first be surprised by what would appear a lapse from my normally narrow subscription to the monetary system. To this I will only state that each purchase contributes in some way to the efficacy with which I am able share what I gain from this trip with my students, and each is in keeping with my own notions of value and cost as they apply to me and others. Regarding consumption, I remain as conscientious and/or as cheap an individual as ever, depending on how one looks at it.