Johannesburg- the Apartheid Museum

 

Hello Everyone,

 

It is Tuesday afternoon, and Ozell and I are waiting to board our flight to Singapore.  These posts aren't going to show up until we are already in Singapore because we have no internet access until then.

 

We stayed in Johannesburg last night at a third, different hostel.  It was reasonably close to the airport and had some decent reviews online.  But the same criticisms were applicable for this place also: we couldn't walk very far from the hostel, there were no shops or restaurants nearby, they advertised WiFi access but did not have it (or claimed they didn't know the security code), and their bar was out of beer.  We were disappointed with the hostels in Rio, but I think Johannesburg's hostels suck the most collectively out of all of the places we have been.

 

I don't recall if I mentioned in the previous post about Johannesburg that we went to the Apartheid Museum.  That was a very worthwhile museum especially for the $4 entrance fee.  It taught me a lot about how apartheid came into being (I didn't realize that it was introduced only after WWII.  I thought it had been around longer than that), how it changed and mutated, how it survived so long, who opposed it, and how it finally came to an end in 1989-1990.  There is too much about the museum to write about here, but I will mention the entrance because it was a very cool idea that had an immediate impact...

 

When we were at the ticket counter, Ozell received a "Colored Person" ticket, and I received a "White Person" ticket.  We walked around the corner to the actual museum entrance.  At this point, we each had to go into separate entrances.  I was allowed in the "Whites Only" entrance, and Ozell was forced into the "Coloreds" entrance.  The inside of the museum was also segregated.  We each had to make our way through separate passages lined with metal bars and fences.  On each side of us and in between us, there were oversized ID cards showing real South Africa citizens and their government established race.  Whites were the top social class.  Then came full blooded Indians.  Then other Asians and Coloreds (mixed race people).  Last were the Blacks.  Typically, if you had traits or drops of blood from a lower social class, then you were classified in the lower class.  The quality of public facilities, political rights, public services, education, and many other things were strictly based on your racial classification.  The other fascinating thing was how do you go about classifying the races of a population when there had been so much racial mixing already?  The answer was that Whites (often untrained and completely ignorant of their tasks) went around and classified people pretty much only on their personal hunches, prejudices, and common sense.  There ostensibly was also a point system to help with the classification including:  race of parents, native language, color of eyes, literacy.  But the point system also contained such scientific gems such as: curliness of hair and if you stuck a pencil in your hair could you shake it out with one shake (true!).

 

We were joined up at the end of this part of the museum and could see the rest together, but at first, you weren't sure whether the whole museum was this way or not.

 

The pic is of a sunset over Jburg from our second hostel.  Not a very pretty pic because the air pollution here is very bad.  I think it is one of the worst cities in the world in that aspect.

 

Cheers for now,

 

Sean