Walking in Soweto

Hector Pietersen museum; shanty town

On Sunday our group went to Soweto. It is always inspiring for me to walk on streets where history was made.

We stopped at the Hector Pietersen memorial museum established in honor of all the students that died in the 1976 Soweto uprising and the events that followed soon after. Henry Pietersen was the first student that was shot and killed by the police on June 16, 1976 which is why the place is named after him.

The movie Sarafina is loosely based on the events of that day. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarafina

Anyone who claims to fully understand this complex nation is truly a genius in my opinion. It is hard for me to make sense of the relationships between all the races and the apparent mistakes ( at least to me in my ignorance) that the government of the day is still making.

I am still trying to understand the love/hate relationship between the different black races, the Afrikaaners who are viewed as the former perpetrators of apartheid but who were themselves opposed by the English who were attracted to the vast natural/mineral resources of the land and wanted some of the wealth for themselves and the Indians and "colored" ( yes that is a politically correct term in South Africa) who came due to trade and slavery.

Whew! That was a mouthful and by no means comes close to capturing the truth of the complexity that is South Africa.

Gogo and her adopted granson Phillip from buildafuture organization; Teju, Gogo and Jenna(in the ugly shirt)

We also visited a "shanty" town;Motsoaledi and met with Gogo; a local granny who has a soup kitchen that feeds about 100 children (a lot of whom are aids orphans) every saturday and provides a safe place for the children to play everyday. The organization we visited with, http://buildthefutureusa.com/, provides a means for the poorer people they work with to provide for themselves versus giving a donation that makes them dependent on others. They teach practical technical skills, provide access to micro-loans for small businesses and provide for basic nutritional needs such as providing seedlings for each home to grow a garden so they can have vegetables to supplement their maize based meals.

The levels of poverty are incomprehensible for most people in the world and truly beg to be seen for the scale and level to be fathomed but I was impressed by how clean everything was inspite of this.