Today we went to a gorgeous private school called Crawford College, which hosted a college fair for over 250 students. I felt like I was feeding the piranhas with students and parents alike clamoring for information on Stanford. But that's what I'm here to do and I was excited to have the opportunity to do it. Exhausted, I climbed back into the bus at about 4:30pm. At 5:15 we arrived back at the hotel. Most of our group were going to chill out all evening. The time zone changes and workload have us all quite nackered.
But something in me said I had to get to Soweto. To the black township that led the struggle to dismantle the cruelty of Apartheid. To the place I had seen on TV as a child. To the place where black South Africans still languish. Of course I couldn't, and didn't want to, go alone. I found a fellow traveler, Robyn, from Princeton, who wanted to go, and off we went.
Our first task was to find someone to take us. Soweto is a 45 minute drive from our hotel so we needed transportation to and from our hotel. It was 6pm by the time we
left and the sun was setting. The thought of us being in Soweto after dark was making people shudder.
Our driver turned out to be a tour guide on contract with the hotel. His name was Freedom (we would later find out why) and he agreed to drive us around Soweto for 900 Rand ($90). It being a Sunday night Freedom told us the museums would be closed. We said that was fine, we just wanted to get a clearer sense of what Soweto was all about, the history of the place, and the people who live there now. We told him it would be great if we could hear live music and get some dinner. He was on board, and off we went.
As we drove the 45 minutes to Soweto, Freedom gave us a brief history lesson. Once in Soweto, he first drove us to an area with hostels -- areas for single black men who lived 8-to-a-house/4-to-a-bedroom after having been released from prison. People still live in these conditions (although the hostels are now integrated with women, children and men). (See picture above.) There is no running
water or plumbing in the hostels. Here is a picture of hostel residents getting water from a community pump. He then took us to a shantytown called Ellias Motsoaleti, a place where men, women and children live in small shanties erected along dirt paths, where 7 people might sleep, cook and live in an area smaller than a small American-sized bedroom.
We met one such woman, Ms. Hilda, who lives in the shanty shown along with her two daughters and 4 granddaughters. Unemployment in Soweto is 45%. Her daughters want jobs but cannot find them. We enjoyed our conversation with Ms. Hilda.
Freedom told us that Apartheid was officially enacted in 1948 but the white leadership of South Africa had started moving blacks to townships as early as 1902. In 1976 the government decided black children had to be taught in Afrikaans in schools, not in their native tongue. As was the case in the United States' civil rights movement, it was young people in great number who demanded
an end to oppressive policies. On June 16, 1976, students in Soweto took to the streets to protest the new language rule. Police began firing their guns, one of which struck a 13 year old boy named Hector Pierterson. Here is a picture of Hector being carried through the street by his friend, with his older sister running alongside. The children carried him to a car and drove him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Thirteen years old.
I had never heard the name Hector Pierterson before tonight. But now I know he is the Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, or the Emmett Till, of South Africa's Anti-Apartheid struggle (Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner were three U.S. students from the north who were killed by the Ku Klux Klan because of their effort to help blacks register to vote, in June 1964. Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. Both incidents garnered great media and public attention and were catalysts of change.) Hector Pieterson was a poor
innocent child in a group of children singing a song to protest the imposition of Afrikaans. The police ordered them to disburse, but before they did so, the police opened fire on the children. Hector -- born the year Goodma, Chaney and Schwerner were murdered -- was killed at the hands of Apartheid policemen, and nothing was done to them. But the fire of the anti-apartheid movement had been lit.
Because of the killing of Hector Pierterson, June 16, 1976 is now regarded
as the start of the struggle to end Apartheid, a struggle which culminated in the
release of Nelson Mandela from prison, in 1990, ending a 27 year
sentence, the dismantlement of apartheid, and the election of Mandela as President of the country in 1994. June 16 is also regarded as "National Youth Day" — a day on which South Africans honor young people and bring attention to their needs.
There is now a Hector Pieterson museum
in Soweto, with a monument to Hector which includes this large version of the famous photograph, this plaque, a beautiful fountain, and this quote which reads "To Honor the Youth Who Gave Their Lives in the Struggle for Freedom and Democracy."
Hector was killed in the Orlando West area of Soweto at the corner of Vilakazi and Moema Streets. This very area turns out to be historic for other reasons. Freedom took us to Nelson Mandela's former home (a museum is now being constructed on that site, located on Vilakazi, and to Desmond Tutu's home, also located on Vilakazi. (And then he quizzed us as to why Vilakazi Street is in the Guinness Book of World Records -- it didn't take me long to realize that it would be the only street to have two Nobel Prize
Winners living on it!)
After visiting the Hector Pieterson memorial, it was late and time for dinner. Freedom took us to a local Soweto place called "Nambitha." Our waiter, Gopolang (HO-po-long) convinced us to try the house specialty -- the Oxtail -- only to discover they were all out. He solved the problem by bringing us local side dishes (Robyn preferred the "pap" which tasted a lot like grits, whereas I liked the pap just as much as the "samb" (a corn and beans mixture) so I had both, along with the traditional
roasted chicken for our main dish. I had a few glasses
of Gewurztraminer wine and Robyn and I started to get to know Freedom better. Turns out Freedom (husband, father of 2, pictured left) was born in 1976, just before Hector Pierterson was murdered. The law of the land required Zulu children to have Christian names so the white people would be able to pronounce them, so his parents named him Freedom. Freedom is a smart and kind man, making a good living as a travel guide for tourists like me and Robyn, humoring, guiding and most importantly looking after us as we made our pilgrimage. The final picture is Gopolang, me, the owner of Nambitha, Robyn, and Freedom.
Robyn and I were African Americans hungry for a connection to a mysterious era in the Black Diaspora's global struggle for equal rights. We found it tonight by meeting Freedom, Ms. Hilda and the ghost of Hector Pieterson. By seeing the street on which Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu lived. By enjoying the local fare at Nambitha. Tomorrow we're onward to Swaziland. It's hard to imagine any aspect of the trip topping this.
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