Wednesday August 19, 2015- Long Walk to Freedom

Wednesday August 19, 2015

We were picked up by our guide Titus at 8 and then picked up a few more guests.

First stop was the District 6 museum. In 1901 Cape Town started segregation.  In 1950 apartheid started. In 1966 the first removal of people from the Cape Town area.

The government Introduced townships and relocated people there. 

The Dutch came first to the cape in 1652. They were trying to find a route to India. The Dutch developed farms and they be ought slaves from Indonesia. Then Brits took over and abolished slavery.

Bubonic plague introduced via shipping. They used this as an excuse in 1901 to move the non-whites, as they called them.

6 districts total and each district was for a particular group;

• Black
• Indian
• Colored- Which means anyone of mixed heritage

Even prisons were segregated.

The Government introduced the Pass law-this meant that 24/7 you had to carry your pass booklet. It dictated your school, work and the areas where you were allowed to be.

The Pencil test was instituted to delineate Blacks. A pencil was put in your hair and if it stayed, you were considered Black.

People born after 1986 are called "born frees" since they were never in a time of Apartheid.

We then went to an area of District 6 called Langa- which means the sun is shining. It is the first and oldest township. We saw a a lot of shanty homes.

25% unemployment in this area. We went into a typical home and it was appalling conditions. Smelly, holes in the roof and broken windows. 2 families lived in this one.

You buy a prepaid electricity card. For your rent you get running water.

Went to a bar of you can call it that. It was a shack of corrugated metal with no electricity and a dirt floor. We tasted the local brew.
2.5% alcohol. $3.50 for a bucket.

Yes, this is the outside of the "Bar."


The brew mistrees filling up a bucket of beer....


Yes, Felice is drinking beer from a paint bucket!



We went into another and more dismal shanty home. It was nothing more than a lean to. It had 4 rooms. A kitchen,den and 2 bedrooms. It is the size of half our kitchen.



We visited a preschool. While the primary through high schools are free, but the pre school is not. The children sang the SA national anthem. The saddest part of this visit is when we were told that these 3, 4 and 5 year olds are taught what child abuse is and how to report it. Felice tells me that the Junior League in WS has been doing this for years.







 Cape Town facts;

• We are 3000 km from Antarctica.
• There are 11 official languages.
• Afrikaans is a combo of Dutch and German.
• Table mountain often has a shroud of fog on top of it. The locals call it "the table cloth"
• SA has three capitals. A legislative (Cape Town) judicial (Pretoria) and  executive (Joburg).

We drove down to the water front and had a fish and chips and then took a 15 minute boat ride to
Robben Island. That's Hayes looking back at Cape Town and Table Mountain.

On the boat a young woman asked me take a picture of her and her friends. After I did, I asked where she was from and she said NC. I said I was from Winston and told her my name. It was Margaret Carlson who was in Hayes' class at Summit starting at 5k. She is in Cape Town on a program from UNC. She and Hayes had a great reunion. 

Robben means penguins and used to have a huge population of them.

Now it is a UNESCO world Heritage Site (opened in 1997) as the former prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 25 years in prison. We first took a bus tour.

Besides the many political prisoners it held, Robben held a Leper colony from 1846 to 1931.

1997 opens as a museum.

Lime quarry. Mandela worked there. 13 years.
Doctor seen just once a week. Respiratory problems. Bleeding hands.
1977 hard labor stopped.
20-30 worked at one time. Transfer prison to university. And teach in the sand of the quarry.

1200 former political prisoners had a 1995 reunion. Stone wall and first stone was placed by Mandela.

Had to be 18 to visit your parent in prison.

3000 prisons at peak.

Jama, a former political prisoner was our tour guide.He was 19 when he got here. he helped start the Soweto Riots,
He told us 30 people were in each cell. They slept on mats until 19?? when they got beds.



Showers are sea water. 1973 got hot water.

Prisoner number was 366/64 means prisoner #466 to arrive in 1964.

A got 4 letters per month.

This is the lime quarry where many (including Mandela) worked in brutal conditions. The stone pile (in the foreground next to the blue sign) was started in a 1995 reunion when Mandela placed a single stone and so did all the others.

 Against the wall in the background is the garden where Mandela worked in his later years. As he wrote Long Walk to Freedom, he buried the pages in this garden.

 Mandela's cell

An outside shot of the main prison.

Each prisoner was assigned a group letter For example, if you were in D group were allowed 1 visit and letter every 6 months. Visits were always observed. If you spoke in a language other that the 2 official, the visit was cut short. 30 min max.

It was an incredibly humbling day.

RB