Obama for President! Our traveling mate Sally had the foresight to bring Obama for President buttons on this trip. It's been a great equalizing conversation starter in urban settings. The Sowetoans we met shared our enthusiastic endorsement of Obama.
Soweto is home to 4 million South Africans from nine different tribes with a rich history in the struggle to abolish Apartheid. Our guide Queen, a resident of Soweto, showed us the "good, the bad and the ugly." We drove past gated exclusive homes (a small section) as well as varying neighborhoods and stopped at Sakhumzi for a down-home African lunch on Vilakazia St., the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners have lived. (Nelson Mandela's former home is just up the block from Rev. Desmond Tutu's Soweto house.)
According to Queen, Soweto is a very safe township due to the vigilante efforts of private citizens who work in cooperation with local police. This is not the case in Johannesburg. The Stock Exchange and virtually all of the other office buildings have been virtually rebuilt just north of Joburg in Sandton. There are no hotels left downtown and many office buildings have become refugee squatter camps. Queen was robbed at gunpoint last month after a trip to the bank in Joburg. She described her ordeal in a matter-of-fact way and commented: "So it's better, they don't take our lives."
Our afternoon was spent at the Apartheid museum adding emotion to a sobering day. No pictures allowed but I did sneak one in while imagining the terror one must live with when stripped of all dignity and recourse
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