South Africa 2024 Trip Day 1, Part 2: Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (September 26)

    

This was a picture (which I have since cropped) of the new South Africa flag of the post-apartheid era. I actually took this one at the apartheid museum, as this was the final display, if you will, of the museum, the symbol of the emergence of a "new South Africa."

Again, here is a post continuing my effort to more extensively document my 2024 trip to South Africa.

After getting picked up from the Oliver Tambo Airport by the host and driver of a tour of Jo'burg, the Apartheid Museum, Soweto & Pretoria, we headed through the downtown of Johannesburg, and then visited the Apartheid Museum. I had wanted to visit this place for a long time, and now here was my chance. 

Now admittedly, I did not get much of a chance to sort through the pictures to organize them. So they are kind of in a chaotic bunch.

Still, it feels to me that they do have value, and would be worth sharing here.

So, here is the post, and the pictures below that.

Enjoy.

Once the rather long flight from London to Johannesburg was over. Finally, here I was in South Africa. After going to the bathroom and splashing some water on my face (and giving a tip to the bathroom attendant), I went to customs and went through without a problem. Then I exchanged some money, and headed towards the hotel where I was supposed to meet the guide for the visit to Johannesburg, the Apartheid Museum, Soweto, and Pretoria.

So once the guide arrived, I got in the van and we took off, heading towards Johannesburg. He handed me a bottle of water, which was good. Somehow, I was very thirsty. 

Now admittedly, my expectations for the city of Johannesburg were not very high. I had always heard of it described as the "city of gold," because of the historical dominance of gold here. Indeed, Johannesburg was kind of a boom town following the discovery of gold in the late 1800's, similar to some American cities in the western half of the country. 

Since those earliest days, the city had just continued to grow bigger and bigger. Now with a population of eight million, it is the largest city in the country, and one of the biggest cities in Africa. 

However, none of that made it feel especially interesting to me, as far as South Africa was concerned. It lacked the history and natural beauty of Cape Town or Durban. It did not have riveting points of interest that Pretoria or Pietermaritzburg have. Really, it is just a really big city, I figured. 

Still, now that I was here, and it was to be my first real taste of South Africa, I was intrigued and wanted to see it.

As it turns out, Johannesburg proved to be a disappointment. Even while my expectations were not particularly high, it simply did not measure up. There were modern buildings, like any other major modern city has. However, it was unpleasantly chaotic, and felt extremely seedy and decadent. There were numerous people crossing the streets from different points, all at once. Obviously, I had seen jaywalking before, and in fact, been guilty of jaywalking. But this was something different, on a whole other level. Our van hardly slowed down, and there were numerous close calls, as there were with other vehicles and pedestrians. Yet, no one seemed to find it unusual or really even to notice any of this, so that the impression left was that this was pretty much the norm here. 

Also, there was garbage lining the streets. I had been to New York City once when it was like that. If memory serves correctly, it was because of a garbage strike. Again, though, this was on a whole other level. It looked awful, and made things actively unpleasant. The guide said that this was because the city of Johannesburg had run out of money, and garbage pick up could simply not keep up with the demand. In large part, he explained, it was because the people living here were now mostly poor. There had been a mass migration out of the city by whites in recent decades, so the city had been neglected and grown poorer. Now, despite the presence of modern buildings, the city felt like a place where you could see how there had been more prosperous times for this city, but that it now felt like it was deteriorating. 

Now, it did not really occur to me to take a picture, much less video, of the garbage situation. Only after the fact did it occur to me that...well, this was a large part of my experience of Johannesburg. And so I wanted to illustrate it nevertheless, and found this recent (from earlier this year) clip of a news report which shows how bad the situation of uncollected trash has become in Johannesburg (and as it turns out, downtown Pretoria as well). Admittedly, I did not know before this trip.

Uncollected rubbish in Joburg is fast becoming a health hazard

It saddened me. Not for the first time, I was reminded of what I had long felt were the similarities between South Africa and the United States. In this case, apparently, they both seemed unfortunately to allow at least some of their cities to fall into decadence and disrepair. I had always wanted to see Johannesburg. Yet admittedly, I was almost glad once we left the downtown behind, as we approached the Apartheid Museum. 

Now, the Apartheid Museum 

One of main things which I wanted to see during a trip to South Africa would have to be the Apartheid Museum. After all, it was for the struggle against apartheid that I first learned about South Africa, as it was received much of the world's attention at the time. It was one of the first world news events or issues with which I gained something resembling true awareness. 

And so it was only natural that apartheid should also be part of my first visit to South Africa, if only now where I heard someone once suggest it belonged: in a museum.

The Apartheid Museum was easily the highlight of my visit to Johannesburg proper, with the possible exception of Soweto (although I believe that Soweto is it's own entity, and not actually really a part of the city of Johannesburg). Visiting the museum took me back to when I first grew acclimated with South Africa and the struggle against apartheid. Everywhere in the museum, you see signs that used to be part of actual apartheid in practice, maintaining a strict racial segregation. 

There is also a part of it that delves into the history of Johannesburg from the earliest days, when it was founded and soon became a boom town because of the discovery of gold deposits there. It is this history so closely linked to gold that has given this city the nickname "The City of Gold." But the focus here is not only on gold or how the town grew, but on how the racial divisions and inequality grew from these boom town days.

Downtown Johannesburg

Apartheid Museum