Trip to Africa - Johannesberg and Nelson Mandela

October 19, 2019
We spent a couple of days in Johannesberg, the largest city in South Africa.

 It's a big city and these beautiful purple trees were in bloom all over the city.

 They were so beautiful.  It's the Jacaranda Tree.  I just loved them.  That word means fragrant in a native dialect and they have blossoms in the spring of this gorgeous purple.

 Another picture of the Jacaranda blossoms.

 We got to take a short tour of Soweto, which is an apartheid originated township within Johannesburg, know for the student uprisings that helped in the struggle for freedom against apartheid.  These townships were set up to house black workers and keep them separate from white housing.  They are being rebuild with government housing now as South Africa tries to rebuild from apartheid and provide a house for everyone; but some of the conditions are still terrible as more people keep moving there and building crude shanty shack huts hoping for a house too.

 Smokestacks of a coal powered electrical plant in Soweto.

 We got to take a tour of Mandela House, a museum where Nelson and Minnie Mandela lived on Vilakazi Street, Orlando West, Soweto.  There were bullet holes on the outside and scorch marks from torches from the rioting that took place there when Nelson Mandela was a leader of the anti-apartheid movement.

 Picture of Nelson Mandela.  He was a truly great man.  We got to tour the apartheid museum also and learned about the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa.  Nelson Mandela was able to bring about an end of apartheid through peaceful means and then was elected president in the first general election and was the main driving force in a peaceful transition.

 Winnie Mandela, the wife of Nelson Mandela, a great woman also.

 Memorabilia inside.

 Another room in the Mandela House.

 Bedroom.

A short walk away we saw the front of Bishop Desmond Tutu's house and then came to this park and memorial called the Hector Pieterson Memorial.  On June 16, 1976 (not that long ago), the high school children in Soweto took to the streets in protest when the government in Petrolia ordered that black secondary schools be taught in Afrikaans language.  They were marching to this park and then the Department of Education Office to present their grievances, when they were met by police.  Some stones were thrown and shots were fired.  Hector Pieterson and other high schoolstudents were shot.  A newspaper photographer got a picture of Hector being carried by his friend Mbuyisa Makhubo, with his sister running alongside, as they ran for medial help.  Hector died and the picture became a symbol of the injustice of apartheid.  This ignited riots across the country and was instrumental in the struggle to end apartheid.