Most of the time when Sarah and I travel, we visit places over a long weekend – usually only three days. It was easy to see many places in Europe like that, and here in East Africa we continue on occasion to drive to places in Kenya or take short flights to other countries in the region to visit a place as tourists for just a few days. So we rarely take as long as a week or two to see a single country. We did this a couple of years ago one summer to see Norway, but this makes for a long (in our opinion) vacation, and it can be a tiring trip, given how we tour. Our definition of a vacation is not waking up late every morning, sitting around reading books, or lying on the beach. We try to pack in a lot of site seeing every day and are out the door by 9:00 every morning and back in our hotel room sometimes as late as 9:00 or 10:00 at night (before we had a child to worry about getting to bed).
So because we were gone a full two weeks, and because we toured in our usual way, packing a lot in every day and covering a lot of ground over our many days in South Africa, there is no way I can describe every place we visited in the detail I sometimes provide in my trip reports. We simply saw too much for me to talk about – I just don’t have the time for that now. But I still do have some things to say – some general things about the country. OK – I’ve got plenty to say, even apart from describing each location we visited.
First, let me say that I have always loved South Africa since the first time I visited while an exchange student in Zimbabwe in 1989. Those were the days the country was still under apartheid, when it was at its height. That system was about to topple a few short years after that, although nobody knew it would and would happen so quickly. I returned to South Africa in 1998 with my parents, the last time I paid a decent visit as a tourist. I went there for work in early 2004 and visited a few of the major tourist destinations, but spent most of my time in new areas to me – rural areas – and also visited Swaziland and Lesotho (two small neighboring countries). So it was very fun and eye-opening to pay a thorough visit again to many of the same places I had not been to in a decade and to see what changes had taken place. The most visible changes I noticed were more monuments, museums and tributes to Nelson Mandela the individual and other anti-apartheid leaders and in honor of the whole struggle against that system. More about that below. But I’ve always loved South Africa because it is so much like my own country. It’s very Americanized, but also marches to the drumbeat of the U.K. in terms of culture. So it’s quite cosmopolitan as a whole country, more so than the U.S., because it has adopted the modern cultures of two dominant countries of the world. But on a more subconscious level, despite being a racist regime until the early 90s, I guess I admired South Africa because it had developed itself into a powerful country, economically and socially, and was a leading country in Africa in many ways, much like the U.S. had developed itself. I also like the country because it is modern and American, and one could live exactly the same type of lifestyle and at the same level of comfort as one does in the U.S., but the typical offerings of Africa – game parks, open land, beaches, etc. – are also close by in the same country. So you get the best of both worlds in one place.
Sarah declared to me several times while there, “This is not Africa!” I hate to say it, but compared to Kenya, it was so nice to return to a “normal” country where there is not so much dust outside and where the streets are orderly and have curbs and sidewalks (and not a pothole in sight!), and where the traffic and pedestrians move in a more orderly, reasonable fashion and speed.
The urban centers – Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria – that were the anchors of our trip this time were places I had visited before as a tourist. But there were many changes in these cities – most notably new (or replacement) museums. We rented a car two times and drove outside these cities and visited some places that I had been to before, but some places were new to me, most notably the Winelands, South Africa’s answer to California’s wine-producing region. The most notable changes I noticed were the apartheid-related museums in the cities that we visited, all new in the last ten years. South Africa has done a marvelous job of not turning its back in shame on this awful, oppressive, racist past (a period that ended so recently), which would be easy to do because it could weigh so heavy on their conscience as a nation, but it has acknowledged its past in appropriate ways and lifted it up as an example of a history that they never want to repeat.
Everywhere else we have gone in Africa (with the exception of some places in Kenya), the museums are far below the standards of those in North America and Europe and have not been maintained (or even dusted!) since the colonial era ended – sometimes decades ago. But the museums in South Africa – especially the new ones we visited – can compete with those in the developed world. The explanations are in English (and often additional language/s) and are clear, concise and informative. The displays are professionally done and are modern and often multi-media, using traditional text explanations but also photos, videos, audio recordings and other interactive activities. Many buildings are modern – a combination of wood, glass and steel – and all are handicapped-accessible, which impresses me. And again I will say what a marvelous job the country has done in the last ten years in portraying its apartheid history in its museums and now its civil/government buildings in appropriate ways that allow South Africans and non-Africans alike to delve into that past with some guilt, granted, that we as humanity allowed apartheid to happen, but with the appropriate recognition of this wrong-doing and with the hope that we can overcome these differences and build cultures, countries and systems that are more democratic, just and fair. One new government complex to me that we visited was in downtown Johannesburg and is called Constitution Hill. There they’ve combined historical sites from the distant and recent past with a modern civic building. The site has an old fort as well as two prison complexes for men and women who were held as political prisoners during apartheid. All of these places are open as museums or historical sites now. But the centerpiece of the complex is the new Constitutional (supreme) Court, a very modern building full of symbolism (well, all the new parts of the complex used for current purposes are very full of it). Some walls of the main court chamber as well as a walkway between the court and the old men’s prison are made with bricks from the now-demolished Awaiting Trial Block (and the stairways from this old block are preserved as well; one is incorporated into the courthouse). They are very clear to visitors in explaining that the symbolism of this is that you are walking (on this walkway) between the past and the future and that these buildings were built with the old bricks from this building as a way to show that, from structures that were used in unjust systems, new forms of justice and equality can be built. Very powerful stuff – a powerful and haunting but inspiring atmosphere is created – intangible ideas and ideals expressed with tangible things like brick and mortar.
I might venture that perhaps the country has gone a bit overboard in naming things after Nelson Mandela. One won’t be able to tell all of them apart before long: “Where should I meet you – at the Mandela bridge, square or office building (I can’t be that accurate because they’re all in the same complex!)” In fact, we missed seeing the man himself by just one day in unveiling yet another new statue of himself, this one at the entrance to the prison where he was released from his 27 years of detention as a political prisoner. We just happened to discover that this prison sat among the vineyards in the gorgeous wine-growing region and drove by it on the morning after the statue had been dedicated with Mandela present along with our tour guide from a few days before at Robben Island in Cape Town, who was also a political prisoner for many years there.
Another highlight was visiting the Cape of Good Hope and the adjoining Cape Point, those famous world landmarks made legendary by explorers and the southwestern-most point in Africa. I had been to both places before, however, with my parents in 1998. But I had not visited Cape Agulhas, the southern-most point in Africa and truly where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. We drove there while visiting some areas east of Cape Town. So within the span of just a few weeks, we had stood on the equator in Kenya and at the very bottom of Africa – gone to the ends of the earth – at Cape Agulhas.
We spent a couple of days visiting some wineries and tasting wines in the area east of Cape Town. We chose the most popular ones recommended by Lonely Planet. The ones we visited were over two or three hundred years old. They’ve maintained many of the original buildings and are on gorgeous estates with beautiful mountain scenery as a backdrop. And this was during the country’s winter when the vines aren’t growing and much of the land is brown and dormant.
One of our final stops was a town we stayed at while visiting Mpumalanga Province in the northeastern part of the country. I had us stay in an old gold mining town from the late 1800s that has been preserved (many buildings are from the turn of the century or later, however). We stayed in an old 1920s mining cabin high up a hill above the town. This truly did not feel like Africa to me. It felt more like a historical American mining town in the Old West. When we were there, we were nearing the end of the trip, and a couple of times I had the urge to go outside to look at the stars in the dark night sky, to drink in the African sky. I had actually forgotten that I live in Africa now – that’s how far mentally I was removed from Africa on this trip. I had forgotten that I was returning only to Kenya, still in Africa, and could go outside anytime at home and see the dark, starry African sky. As I have written earlier, it still feels a bit strange to come “home” to Africa, even while visiting other places on the continent, which in my mind is still an exotic, far-away location that one must travel great distances to get to from one’s “real” home – it’s always a “strange” place to visit and to experience only for a short time before one returns to one’s real place of residence.
I enjoyed several favorite South African foods during our visit. These include koeksisters, a sticky, sweet donut/coffee accompaniment which are basically a twist donut soaked in sugar water; Appletizers and Grapetizers, which are sparkling apple and grape juice soft drinks; and rusks, another great coffee accompaniment like biscotti. The foods I get to taste and experience on trips are one of the most fun parts of travel for me.
Overall, it was a full and rich trip – mostly because it was so long. It had something old – returning to places I had visited before – but also plenty of new things to see and changes to observe. As I have said after all my other previous trips there, I would love to live there some day for reasons I have previously mentioned. But the crime, especially in Johannesburg, the biggest city, is still driving whites away in droves. Many are moving to Australia. So the insecurity is a big factor. At this point as well, with a young child, I would also not want to live so far from family, and South Africa is so far south in Africa and about as far from the U.S. (and Europe) as one can get. So we will not live there for a long time, but it is something I will keep in mind as a possibility for many years down the road.
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