Johannesburg was a difficult place for me to feel comfortable. The high walls around property. The stark contrast between Black areas and White areas in terms of cleanliness and development. The dozens of white mini-taxis carrying Black passengers to and from their homes to work and back again. The ambiance of separation between the races was still in the air after centuries of white European dominance and injustice.

I'm not sure what I imagined it would be like in this country that had struggled with an official racist policy against a non-white majority for the past 400 years. And yet, this was the same country that overcame that policy with committed leaders and a population that suffered loss, humiliation, and indignity in order to be free. Yes, it was "a long walk to freedom", to use the title of Mandela's autobiography. However, it was not a walk in straight lines. This blog provides a brief look into that walk and South Africa's quest for justice.

A Brief History of South Africa (exhibit from the Apartheid Museum)

We Are Walkers

Welcome home. We are all from here.

The story of our human ancestry lies embedded in ancient rocks and sediments of southern Africa. Two billion years ago a massive meteorite smashed into the Vredefort soils just 120 km south of here. Shock waves rippled the Earth, lifting gold-bearing reefs towards the surface. Then, just over 100 years ago, their glitter drew fortune seekers from around the world. It was a kind of homecoming.

Long before we thought of gold as wealth, when more complex thinking itself was new to us, our distant ancestors evolved the habit of walking upright, on human-like feet. The Cradle of Humankind World heritage Site, just 40 km northwest of here, preserves their fossilized bone fragments. Up to 4 million years old, the fossils tell their story still.

Our genes carry traces of these distant origins, echoing our common African roots. From an ancestor some 200,000 years ago, modern humans ventured out of Africa to other continents, populating the world.

We are all their descendants.

We Are Thinkers

Look around to see fragments of our early ways of thinking. It was our modern human ancestors from the Stone Age who first began to make images.

Early evidence of our ability to think symbolically, to represent one thing by another, comes from Africa's southernmost shore. A piece of engraved stone, 77,000 years old, has a geometric pattern etched into its surface.

People made marks on stone and bone. They wore ochre and shell to symbolize social relationships, and perhaps a sense of beauty.

Thousands of years later their descendants created images, which we can still see today. They depicted the powerful animals which brought them sustenance and gave meaning to their lives. They chipped images into large boulders embedded across the veld or delicately painted onto the rock walls of mountain shelters. These images help us to gather the story of our thinking and our early beliefs.

Sometimes the artists painted images from their trance visions around a crack in the rock face, perhaps linking to the spirit energy beyond. They would mix the potent blood of hunted eland into their earth pigments. Their visions are still engraved upon our landscape.

We Are Fighters

In a shared landscape, all people are drawn to the same life-sustaining water. Conflict is inevitable and change disrupts the patterns of life.

From 2,000 years ago, African farmers migrated into southern Africa. They cultivated crops and kept livestock. Beyond their settlements, herds of cattle, sheep, and goats consumed and trampled the plant foods on which hunter-gatherer life depended. This transformed the landscape.

Then, 300 years ago, colonial farmers arrived from the southwest. They coveted the shared waterholes of the Karoo, claiming land and bewildering the great herds of game with gunfire.

Hunter-gatherers tried to repel these migrating farmers, or trekboers, with poisoned arrow. But soon their armed commandos on horseback ended all resistance. Accustomed to taking their strength from the spirit of a healer, hunter-gatherers were no match for the musket shot.

A Ixam hunter-gatherer prisoner observed: "The water pits were taken from us even though they had been shared by families for generations. The ostriches, whom we hunted for their meat and eggs, were being chased to death by the farmers on horseback in the hot sun."

We Are Gazers

Recorded history reveals how we name other and ourselves.

Newcomers to southern Africa found their own names for the people they encountered here. Ixam hunter-gatherers, met by incoming herders, were called Sonqua, meaning "those without cattle". To sea-borne Dutch traders who landed on Africa's southern shore in the 1600s, they were Boschjesmans, "men of the bush".

The Dutch called the herders with whom they bartered for fresh meat Hottentots after the strange clicking sounds of their complex language. They knew themselves as KhoeKhoe, meaning "men of men", who owned cattle wealth.

To outsiders, the Boschjesmans seemed to have no sense of property or leadership, affirming European ideas about this "uncivilized" and "heathen" place at the other end of the world.

When hunter-gatherers from Britain's Cape Colony were taken to Europe and placed on public display as curiosities, the London press described them as "the connecting link between man and the monkey".

"I call him savage, something desirous to be civilized off the face of the Earth. The world will be all the better when his place knows him no more." Charles Dickens, The Noble Savage, 1853

We Are Survivors

We are who we are because of others. An open frontier created new southern African identities.

In Europe, people's ideas about a "primitive" Africa led to the conviction that a colonial presence would bring "civilization" to the Cape.

From the 17th century onwards, pastoralist trekboers from the Dutch settlement at the Cape drifted inland, opening and continually expanding its boundaries.

On the colonial frontier to the north and in the interior of the country, the need to survive and get along in a harsh, dry land sometimes bound stranger and native together. In this process some new identities were forged, while others were destroyed.

When starving Ixam hunter-gatherers stole farmer's stock, commandos were sent out against them, capturing women and children to labor on trekboer farms. Later these raids turned into a full genocide of the Ixam people.

On the same frontier some mixed race fugitives from the Cape colony, the Bastaards or Oorlams, created new opportunities for themselves. Bandit groups of Oorlams formed their own commandos, raiding their neighbors with the guns and horses they traded across the frontier.

By the 1860s and 1870s full frontier wars had erupted. In the war of 1878, a group of mixed-race raiders and Ixam hunter-gatherers joined forces. Defeated and destitute after a year, the surviving fighters were tried and imprisoned by the British colonial government in Cape Town.

The Age of Discovery and the First Europeans

Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450 – May 29, 1500) was the first European to go around the Cape on March 12, 1488. He was a Portuguese explorer.

Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea thus linking Europe and Asia by an ocean route. His voyage marked the beginning of a sea-based era of globalization and imperialism. Traveling around southern Africa enabled the Portuguese to avoid Mediterranean Sea traffic and the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. Da Gama's initial voyage to India was accomplished via the Cape of Good Hope (1497-99), which was a major accomplishment in itself because of the dangerous waters in this area.

The Spanish and Portuguese dominated the southern tip of Africa with trade routes, however, the first European settlement goes back to 1652 when the Dutch East India Company founded Cape Town as a refreshment outpost that supplied ships with fresh water, fruits, vegetables, meat and a rest for weary sailors. The Khoikhoi who grazed their cattle at the Cape were gradually eased out of their lands as the Dutch built their new city. The VOC in Netherlands expanded Dutch influence by taking possession of land, expanding trade routes and establishing trade outposts in South Africa as well as Batavia, Indonesia; Colombo in Sri Lanka; Malabar in India; Makassar; and the Dutch East Indies.

In 1600, the British formed the East India Company. They occupied the Cape in 1795 and ended the Dutch East India Company’s role in the region through the introduction of the English language, the British pound sterling, colonial governors, and a system of landownership. British settlers began arriving in 1820 and acquired more and more land through military intervention against Africans. As the need for more labor increased, slaves were imported.

Expansion of colonialism also increased between 1835-70 as many people sought to escape British policies and controls by moving east. European missionaries arrived in the 1820s in order to Christianize indigenous communities and to introduce them to European manufactured goods. Their efforts undermined African worldviews and contributed to the destruction of traditional African communities throughout South Africa.

After years of fighting the British, the great African states began to weaken by the end of the 1860s. Not only did many important African leaders die but Europeans continued to exploit Africans as a source of labor and to acquire their lands.

The discovery of diamonds in the 1870s and gold in 1886 not only allowed the region to provide precious minerals to a world economy, it furthered the processes of immigration, urbanization, capital investment, industrialization, and labor migrancy. As a result, British control had increased to the point that two-thirds of the settler population spoke Dutch or Afrikaans while political power was held by an English-speaking elite of merchants, lawyers, and landholders.

Gold

Were it not for the discovery of gold in 1886, Johannesburg would not have existed. The Witwatersrand Gold Rush led to the founding of Johannesburg. It was a part of the Mineral Revolution, which began with the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly in 1867 and affected the country in every way.

The Mineral Revolution was largely driven by the need to create a permanent workforce to work in the mining industry. It transformed South Africa from a patchwork of agrarian states to a unified, industrial nation. The Mineral Revolution also impacted diplomacy and military affairs, agriculture, economics, and the environment. It had an increasingly negative impact on race relations in South Africa that formed the basis of the century-long apartheid system where white South Africans had control over black South Africans.

Click the link for more info on the Witwatersrand Gold Rush.

Ferreirasdorp gold mine in 1886, the oldest part of Johannesburg where the first gold diggers initially settled.

Apartheid (1948-early 90s)

Almost everything about South Africa in the Apartheid era was about race. This national policy became a tool for the White minority to impose laws against Black and Colored majorities in order to control them and to protect their capitalist interests. Before the transformation of minority White rule to the majority Black rule, people were obliged to carry identification that defined their race. Here is an explanation of the system based on numeric codes.

Racial classification was the foundation of all Apartheid laws. It placed individuals in one of four groups: African, described as 'Bantu' in Apartheid laws, 'colored' (mixed race), 'Asian' or 'white'.

A "dompas" during the Apartheid era. All black people outside the confines of their government-designated areas were legally required to carry passbooks, sometimes known as ‘reference’ books. Police officers could apprehend any black person and ask to see it. Failure to produce the "dompas" resulted in being arrested and imprisoned if one could not pay the required fine.

Identity documents, like those on both sides of these cages featured in the Apartheid Museum, were the main tools used to implement the racial divide. The cages symbolize the restrictive nature of Apartheid for everyone--white and non-white. It was a system that tried to order society but erred on the side of it racial prejudice and discrimination.

Apartheid, the stark reality of South Africa 1948-91

By 1966, over 12 million racial classification had been entered into the national population register. The fatal flaw of Apartheid was the very nature of its racial classifications as these testimonials attest.

"It is almost impossible to determine with any certainty which people are natives and which people are coloureds....It would be an uneconomical waste of time and money to try, throughout the country, to determine a person's race with precision.' W. Eiselen, Secretary for Native Affairs, 1951

"We have never experienced any difficulties in distinguishing between Europeans and non-Europeans." From parliamentary debate

America's first glimpse of Apartheid in Time Magazine in 1950 (6 minute read). The article includes graphic photos by Margaret Bourke-White.

Apartheid Museum

I wasn't able to take photos inside the museum, but here are some outdoor shots that both celebrate and outline the problem with apartheid.

To illustrate the everyday reality of Apartheid, visitors to the museum are arbitrarily classified as either white or non-white. You are only permitted to enter through the gate allocated to your race group.

The Ramp

As you walk up this ramp, notice the façade of stones in cages. These stones are a reminder of the thousands of miners who toiled underground in pursuit of the gold metal that was to drive the country and the story of apartheid.

The Birth of the Struggle

The rock art displayed in these alcoves is the work of the oldest inhabitants of South Africa, the Bushmen (San). Their stone-age ancestors were the first human beings to walk the Earth. Many Bushmen paintings portray the arrival of successive waves of people in South Africa. These groups eventually dispossessed the Bushmen of their land.

The discovery of gold in Johannesburg in 1886 attracted migrants from all over southern Africa and many other parts of the world. The people you see pictured on this ramp are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of some of those who journeyed to the city of gold in the years following 1886. Together they made up a diverse and often racially-mixed community. It was this racial mixing that segregation and apartheid were designed to prevent.

Nelson Mandela -- Victory Over Apartheid

As difficult as Johannesburg was to visit, it was also an inspiring place where the obscenely unjust system of racial differentiation was overcome after decades of sacrifice, imprisonment, beatings, and just plain determination to force a change in the society. The first evidence of change was blacks' and coloreds' eligibility to vote in elections. The second evidence of change was the election of Nelson Mandela as the first black president of the nation.

President Nelson Mandela Inauguration Speech May 10, 1994

Excerpts from Seven Brilliant Speeches of Mandela

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

The poem that inspired Mandela during his 27 years in jail for fighting Apartheid

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

On June 28, 1990, Nelson Mandela and his wife, Winnie, visited Detroit. A video of his tour in Detroit (below) shows how thousands of people greeted him at Tiger Stadium (24:18) as well as Aretha Franklin (24:35), Stevie Wonder (54:56), Frankie Beverly and Maze (28:00) and a 2,000 person choir (31:12) organized by Bishop Edgar Vann of the Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit. Mandela's speech (35:20 - 54:31) received rave applause and appreciation. The visit was part of an 11-city North American tour where Mandela pushed for corporate and government sanctions to pressure South Africa to end apartheid.

This is the house and street where Mandela lived during his presidency 1994-99.

The South African flag was designed in March 1994 and adopted on April 27, 1994, during South Africa's 1994 general election, to replace the previous flag used from 1928–1994.

The flag has horizontal bands of red (on the top) and blue (on the bottom), of equal width, separated by a central green band which splits into a horizontal "Y" shape, the arms of which end at the corners of the hoist side (and follow the flag's diagonals). The "Y" embraces a black isosceles triangle from which the arms are separated by narrow yellow or gold bands; the red and blue bands are separated from the green band and its arms by narrow white stripes. The stripes at the fly end are in the 5:1:3:1:5 ratio. Three of the flag's colours were taken from the flag of the South African Republic, itself derived from the flag of the Netherlands, as well as the Union Jack, while the remaining three colours were taken from the flag of the African National Congress. Nicknames for the flag include the Seskleur (lit. 'six colour') and the Rainbow Flag. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Africa)

30 Years After Apartheid -- the struggle continues

Click here to see a recent ad for different kinds of walls to suit all needs.

People ride in crowded mini-taxis for transportation between home to work. This remains one of the signs of inequality as government subsidies benefit middle-class and urban metro commuters at the expense of working-class commuters and those travelling in rural or peri-urban areas.