Soweto

One evening I hired an all-in-one driver/tour guide/bodyguard to take me to Soweto for a private tour. We left Sandton and made our way through Johannesburg which looks like any other city: densely populated with tall skyscrapers, billboards, and bright lights. It was clear we were entering Soweto when the streets were “paved” with dirt, there was no industry to be seen, and the houses reminded me of the shanty towns I had seen in North India: small and made of corrugated steel, their inhabitants hanging out on the sidewalks drinking and talking to neighbors. I don’t recommend Soweto unless you are deeply interested in recent South African history. For me, before visiting Nelson M and Desmond T’s houses (they lived one block from each other), SA’s apartheid history was peripheral to American slave history and the mid-20th-century Civil Rights Movement I learned about in school, movies and print. Just like visiting Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria inspired me to ponder European migration to countries other than America, visiting Soweto raised my consciousness about civil rights movements around the world. Finally, we visited the Hector P memorial which commemorates the first person, a 13-year old boy, to die in the 1976 Student Uprising in Soweto, what had started as a peaceful demonstration against the mandate that Afrikaans (a Dutch-derived language) become the teaching medium in SA.

It was my first time in Sub-Saharan Africa – I left impressed with how gentle and welcoming, helpful and kind, the locals in South Africa are towards foreign visitors. Sandton’s slow pace and the city’s greenery contrast Jo’burg from most of the otherwise granite cities I’ve visited (Edinburgh is an exception).

Pretoria’s Voortrekker Monument

During a brief visit to Pretoria, we stopped by the Voortrekker Monument which honours the Dutch immigrants who moved from SA’s Cape Colony to the country’s interior in the mid-19th-century. Inside the monument are slabs of marble depicting images of this trek, reminding me of similar visuals of late-colonial migration in the States (wagons, bonnets, big dresses, overalls). Visiting the monument got me thinking about global migratory patterns, wondering how Europeans looking for religious freedom and opportunity decided whether to migrate to Canada, the States, South Africa, etc. – what inspired some families to venture to Africa versus North America?

Sandton, Jo’burg

The night before leaving for Jo’burg, my mother reminded me of Mahatma G’s history in South Africa: living in SA was consciousness raising and gave him the opportunity to develop his litigation and community organisation skills that would come so handy in leading India to its independence. While Jo’burg’s history is etched on every street sign, plaza and most major buildings, it’s all in homage to Nelson M who fought against apartheid. I stayed in Sandton, Jo’burg’s financial district on a recent business trip. Mandela Square is just one of many examples of how the city celebrates Nelson M, their local hero and the nation’s source of pride. As you can see from the size of Nelson’s statue, it captures the man’s “larger than life” presence.