Anna enjoyed herself on our fun and educational excursion

Driving through Johannesburg, I expected to see rampant poverty and evidence of crime.  I’ve heard several negative comments about Jo’burg – Cape Town is bad at night, but Jo’burg is always bad.  Maybe we didn’t venture into the “bad” parts of the city, but I never felt unsafe.  We walked through townships and ate at restaurants owned by township residents.  We worked at a thriving Boys and Girls club and visited museums and memorials remembering South Africa’s past.  Interacting with locals definitely challenged my preconceptions of Jo’burg; the city may have a higher crime rate than Cape Town, but the people are still the same welcoming, loving, and caring South African citizens.  Still, there is racism, sexism, and classism evident in Jo’burg just like in Cape Town.  At a steak house, the smallest steak was called “ladies.”  Of course, because we’re feminists, we had to ask the server about this nomenclature.  He said they call it “ladies” so that men know not to order it.  Masculinity is so fragile that men are told what size steak is appropriate for them.

Visiting Constitution Hill opened my eyes to the true tortuous past of South Africa.  We visited an old prison for white, colored, and black men.  I learned that joining a gang was the only way to stay away from harm caused by other prisoners.  If you helped out a gang leader, he would give you a reward.  Many of these men probably did not want to become part of a gang, but it was the only way to survive.  Solitary confinement was another aspect of the prison that stood out to me.  One ex-prisoner described the experience of solitary confinement as being buried alive.  Stuck in a small cell with two buckets, men would not see another human for hundreds of days.  Some were driven to insanity.  Like everything during Apartheid, these men were treated differently based on their race.  Whites, coloreds and Asians, and Africans would be given different meals every day, with whites getting the most vegetables, bread, soup, and other more nutritious types of foods.  Based entirely off skin color, some men were treated much better in prison than other men.

The Hector Pietersen Museum was one of the most interesting yet saddening museums we visited on this trip.  Pietersen was a thirteen-year-old boy who was killed by the police during a peaceful protest against the use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in black schools.  Like Constitution Hill, the Hector Pietersen Museum gave real-life testimonies of the atrocious South African environment under the Apartheid government.  Hector’s sister recalls, “Everything was puzzling, it was so confusing.  But I was angry.  How can an adult shoot an innocent child?”  The police had become so brainwashed into seeing black as bad that they shot children without remorse.

On a more positive note, our three game drives at Kruger National Park were incredible.  We saw giraffes, an elephant, zebras, hyenas, monkeys, warthogs, a vulture, wildebeests, a huge herd of buffalo, and two male lions!  I felt like I was in the Lion King.  I like Kruger because the animals have a vast area of land to roam around; the park is larger than the size of Connecticut.  These animals are considered wild, so it was rewarding to go out on a game drive and spot these animals; we never knew what we would be able to see.  

One of my favorite moments was on our sunrise drive when we saw around ten giraffes hanging out with zebras.  It’s cool to see these plant-eating animals coexisting.  Another exciting moment was on the sunset drive.  Two male lions walked alongside our vehicle for about ten minutes as they marked their territory.  Their walk is so regal.  I wish we could have seen rhinos, but there are only two left in the entire park because of poaching.  Rhinos have no natural predators, but because of humans, they are going extinct.  Overall, our spring break in Jo’burg and Kruger was both fun and educational, and I really enjoyed myself.