Jozi

Any airport that has an airline called "Mango" is my kind of airport!

I arrived in Johannesburg on Saturday 5 December for a weekender with my good friend, Natalie, who had just finished a one month tour through East Africa and was on her way back to Australia. Natalie and I worked together at Vodafone some years back - that's how we met. The flight from Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg is a two and a half hour direct flight. Given it was just a weekend trip I borrowed a small suitcase from my neighbour, Janet, in Dar es Salaam. Travelling light is not usually my forte but I think I did pretty well although my plastic bag is not the epitome of stylish travel luggage (I am yet to find Louis Vuitton in Uganda).
Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and the capital of Gauteng province. It's a modern city in terms of infrastructure and services. I stayed in a well-to-do area of Joburg called Sandton which has one of the largest malls in Africa called Sandton City. Sandton has become the financial hub of the country. Walking through Sandton City was an almost strange experience as I realised I've become quite unaccustomed to large malls since I left Australia. Mr Westfield is yet to travel across the Indian Ocean - thankfully! This shoe or 'all-terrain vehicle' I spied in a shoe store in Sandton City gave me a new appreciation for the understated second-hand shoes on offer in Kampala's Owino Market.
Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum offers a comprehensive view of the apartheid struggle in South Africa. Apartheid was an official policy of the South African government between 1948 and 1994 although well prior to 1948 discrimination along racial grounds was commonplace. A special exhibition on Mandela was open at the museum during our visit. Here is a picture of Natalie and I outside the museum in front of the special exhibition banner.
When you purchase your museum ticket you are also randomly allocated a special pass which says "white" or "non-white". This pass dictates which entrance by which you are allowed to enter the museum - serving as a small taste of the overt discrimination people experienced during the apartheid era.
Below is the South African flag which was adopted in 1994. It marked the dawn of a new era in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela lives in the upmarket Joburg suburb of Houghton. This is a picture of his home which I drove past.
Through my hotel I organised a trip to Soweto, one of the largest black townships in South Africa. The name Soweto is a shortened form of the words "SOuth WEstern TOwnship". With my guide, Trust, we drove through Joburg CBD, across Nelson Mandela Bridge and past the strangely named Housewives Paradise (both pictured below) in the direction of Soweto. Soweto, not known as Soweto until 1964, was established to house black labourers most of whom worked in the many gold mines around Johannesburg.
A small home on Vilakazi Street in West Orlando, a suburb of Soweto, is the site of Mandela's first house. Mandela moved there with his first wife. Later he lived there with his second wife, Winnie Mandela. Much of Mandela's time was spent away from the small red brick home as he was on the run and later during his incarceration. Winnie stayed in the home with their two children Zeni and Zindzi. The tree pictured in Mandela's garden below is where the umbilical cords of their two children and grandchildren are buried. This is a tradition of the Xhosa people, the ethnic group to which Nelson and Winnie belong. Xhosa language is famous for its click sounds.
Across the road and a few doors down, also on Vilakazi Street, is the home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Unlike Mandela's house, Tutu's remains a private home to this day. Winnie Mandela did not have an easy run whilst her then husband was in prison. Their home in Soweto was regularly attacked and under surveillance by the police. In the picture below you can see a patched up bullet hole on the lower right of the window. This is only one of the bullet holes that are visible on the facade.
The Soweto Uprising of 1976 was a significant event in the apartheid struggle in South Africa. The uprising was triggered by the governing National Party policy that enforced the use Afrikaans as an official language of instruction in black schools for key subjects such as mathematics. A peaceful protest was organised by students in Soweto to express their discontent at yet another of the oppressive policies of the apartheid government. Police opened fire and the protest transformed into a full scale riot. Some hundreds of protestors were killed or injured in the brutal display of police savagery. An enduring image of the Soweto Uprising is a photo taken by a photographer of the dying young boy - Hector Pieterson - who was only 12 years old. In the impressive Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto there is an outdoor area with hundreds of granite tiles each bearing the name of a person who died in the riots. Here is a picture of Hector Pieterson's tile. Wikipedia has an interesting writeup on Hector here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Pieterson.

This is the soccer stadium in Soweto where a number of World Cup games will be staged.
This is the major stadium called Soccer City in Johannesburg for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Soccer City has been built to resemble a calabash and is an impressive structure.
This oversized beaded replica of Nelson Mandela was on display at the Joburg airport. I didn't make it all that far past his knee!

Interestingly, today - 2 February 2010 - is the 20th anniversary of the speech given by former president F.W. de Clerk announcing the release of all political prisoners, including Mandela, and marking the decline of the policy of apartheid in South Africa.