DAY 35

Today started as lazy as the past but at noon Charles returned from work to give as a ride to the Apartheid museum. But pshhhh! that’s a surprise^^ For R40 entrance fee you’ll get a historic overview why exploitive white people suck and I’ve gotta admit that I sometimes felt a little embarrassed for what these fuckers did to Africans, even though I was not involved in that shit. It started off with Johanna getting an entrance card saying ‘Non-white’ and me one saying ‘White’ just to be separated in the entrance hallways one for whites and one for the non-whites including the same information but giving you a slight first impression of what’s going to await you. After we rejoined, wonderful and romantic cave drawings of the natives of SA, the San awaited us. (irony) These showed the first contact with people from Europe, in fact showing people getting slaughtered by big men with rifles. Unfortunately the idea of spiritual power beating bullets didn’t work out (San never invented war machinery) and most of them died because of murder or not being allowed to access land they used for ages. You’ve gotta know that the San are nomadic people not owning any land because according to their philosophy the land owns the people giving them everything they need to live. The idea of owning a part of the earth is completely ridiculous to them and I’m tempted to agree. Unfortunately western culture doesn’t, and so the San faced fences and fierce violence for attempts to access common ground. Yes, that’s how we get in touch with other cultures, take a look at Afghanistan, Iraq or any other place currently being invaded and you’ll realize that things didn’t change much. The story goes on with Dutch and British people coming (other countries, too but these were the most) and overthrowing all the other chiefdoms taking 92% of the land from the Africans and digging for gold. Gold is also the reason why JoBurg was set up and I think you can imagine the disgusting working conditions the miners had to face (most of them were black but also Indians, Chinese and white people). Because the white government didn’t want blacks to settle in their towns they invented a rule that a black employee had to return to his rural home at least every 18 month, and I can tell you in the beginning there wasn’t even a train, so have fun if you’re from Zimbabwe.
The cool thing is that loads of pictures are added to the information boards and if available even video footage including early propaganda movies for the Dutch people having a very funny scene: A settler wants to bye land for his people from an African chief who is surrounded by his tribe and he asks him twice ‘Did you completely understand the contract?’ the chief nods and signs with a big single X. Now it’s time to dance around the nice settlers, which was a trap to kill all of the settlers. Evil savages, huh?
There were two assholes who tried to implement the whole idea of segregating people so black and coloured people were not allowed to the same facilities as whites anymore, this included a complete different school system to grow stupid slaves who were smart enough to do forms of labour between lowest and low.
When this system failed they started the real Apartheid which made everything worse. This means every person was put into a specific group like black, white, coloured, Chinese, Indian or other and people of the same group were put into the same area which means they moved over 1 million people from their homes into townships because they were too close to white people.
There were over 300 laws dividing everything: Who is allowed to reproduce with whom, who has to go to which school, who is allowed to work in which particular area…
For sure there were people opposing this stuff even white people but the Apartheid government didn’t waste much time talking, declared every political threat as terrorism and terrorists have to be fought, don’t they? (doesn’t that sound familiar) A big part was about the different parties and organisations fighting for equality like the ANC or the international Congress or just black women fighting for their right to brew the traditional beer.
Most of the resistance was peaceful especially the stuff the ANC did in the beginning because Ghandi was in SA and fought for the rights of Indians using peaceful strategies and they wanted to adapt these because they new that they can’t match the firepower and knowledge of warfare.
This changed when the Apartheid government became more and more brutal especially against demonstrations which were completely peaceful ending in massacres, one ending in school kids being shot. We saw the first TV interview of Nelson Mandela (he was hidden in the underground at that time) where he was addressing that particular issue. Why should you be peaceful and reasonable when your people get imprisoned, beaten up, even slaughtered and every attempt for a peaceful solution includes you being a second rate human being.
We couldn’t finish the last third of the museum which was about the 80s and early 90s when it became really ugly and violent because the museum was closing and reading every single information board took more time than I estimated. Still it was a very valuable and interesting experience which you mustn’t miss when you’re in SA. It helped me understand even more why racism is still an issue in this country after 16 years of living relatively peaceful.
I know it’s stupid but Johanna and I didn’t eat for the whole day so we really shovelled the food down our throats once we were back home. Before we went to bed I asked Charles what we’ll have to wear at the launch of the African Bahai Business Forum tomorrow and he said a suit would be nice. Man I was prepared to go there with my usual clothes if I hadn´t have asked, so Johanna and I checked our official clothes and I shaved my attempts of growing a beard. Once I looked like a person who is ready to bargain land for marbles we went to bed^^