South African Holiday: Day 15 Johannesburg

This morning we had decided to go to the Apartheid Museum in Pretoria, and we had to travel along a section of motorway. We noticed a sign at the side of the road which was extremely disturbing to all of us, basically it stated all travel on motorways in this area, was extremely dangerous and people should not stop on any account as there has recently been a spate of people being hijacked in their cars at gunpoint. To say this was disturbing would be an understatement. We locked the doors on the 4 x 4 and continued on to our destination.

Apartheid Museum Pretoria

The Apartheid Museum opened in 2001 and it is acknowledged as the pre-eminent museum in the world, dealing with 20th century South Africa, at the heart of which is the apartheid story.
In 1995 the South African government set up a process for the granting of casino licenses, establishing an agency to do this called the Gambling Board. The bid documents stipulated that bidders should demonstrate how they would attract tourism and thereby grow the economy and stimulate job creation.
A consortium, called Akani Egoli (Gold Reef City), put in a bid that included the commitment to building a museum. Their bid was successful, the Gold Reef City Casino was built and an adjacent piece of land given for the construction of the museum.

The cost of the construction of what became the Apartheid Museum - approximately 80 million rand - was paid for by Gold Reef City.
I could have stayed in the museum all day, I found it so interesting and was totally absorbed with the various exhibits. The audio tour was excellent and gave you a good insight into the plight and struggles of a multi cultural Africa.

Kath with her audio tour headset

From 1948-91, the policy of racial discrimination known as apartheid plagued the country of South Africa.
Apartheid was a system of laws and measures designed to oppress the rights of blacks, while maintaining white supremacy within the ranks of the government as well as society. These rules and regulations were often harsh and unjust in nature.

Nelson Mandela as a young man.

Picture Exhibits

Some of the exhibits try to explain the full history of apartheid, and without turning this blog into a historical account of the political points from both sides for the "Pro Apartheid" and "Anti Apartheid" I will keep my own thoughts of what I heard and read while in the museum to myself and not commit to paper.
It would be difficult to talk about the apartheid museum without some mention of Nelson Mandela, as there is a section of the museum which is dedicated to him and his involvement with ANC.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]; born 18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life. Mandela went on to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.^[2][3]

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father).^[4] Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades.

F.W. de Klerk & Nelson Mandela

One experience that Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu all have in common is that they were all Zulu Bantu Boys, which at the age of 16 had to be circumcised by a traditional surgeon, were the elder of the village would walk down the line of 16 year old boys, making a ring type cut of their foreskins until they fell off. The boys could not so much as blink or show any emotion, it was "A right of Passage" that took them beyond pain. They shouted, Ndiyindola "I am the Man". Nelson Mandela said that he did not shout as loud as he could and that he felt a tear trickle down his cheeks.

For Nelson Mandela the circumcision was some thing that linked him to his ancestors, in losing part of his manhood he became a man.

Nelson Mandela

We had lunch in the grounds of the museum, and then crossed the car park outside the museum to the Gold Reef City Theme Park which was where an original gold mining plant and mine shaft where situated. Once again the signs outside were clear and straight to the point " No Firearms" this word keeps cropping up!!

Gold Reef City Theme Park

Gold stampmills

These stampmills were donated by the Durban Roodepoort Deep Mining Company where they were in operation from the early 1900's and worked continuously until they were replaced by tube mills. These mills crushed approximately 50 million tons of ore during their working life, yielding more than 200 tons of gold.

Stampmill for crushing gold ore.

There was a mine shaft and pit head tower in the next picture, with a large ferris wheel at the side of the entrance to the theme park, which had caught some of the World Cup fever that was in South Africa, this year, as the gondola's had world cup footballs as canopies.

Gold Reef City Theme Park

Unfortunately we were running out of time to enter the theme park, as we still had to drive through Johannesburg to reach the airport for our late afternoon departure. We still managed to take some pictures as we travelled through the city.

Johannesburg Skyline

GPO Tower even has World Cup fever!!

Johannesburg World Cup Stadium

We past the world cup stadium, but we didnt feel inclined to stop anywhere as we were not sure of our safety. Some pictures are taken near the football stadium these show some of the neighbourhoods we travelled through.