SOWETO AGAIN AND CAPE TOWN
SOWETO AGAIN AND CAPE TOWN: Actually, I think I've got it about Soweto. It's not so much a set of disadvantaged suburbs of Johannesburg. It's not so much an entire sister city. It's more like a whole parallel universe out there.
Today we went back to the edge of Soweto once again. This time we were visiting "17 Shaft", a project run by a former MK (ANC military) leader called Steve Corry-- well that's his present name, not his nom-de-guerre. The project provides skills training to former MK fighters and family members thereof. Steve himself wasn't there, but we sat in his amazing office with one of his assistants who told us about the project and brought in an interesting ex-combatant to talk to us.
Steve Corry is white.
Anyway, 17 Shaft is located between three of Johannesburg's enormous great goldmine slag heaps. Nicky, the woman who showed us round a bit, did say that when the wind blows the dust comes off them pretty badly...
We had also had a good meeting this morning with a political science professor who gave a very well-authenticated account of how the TRC's failure to deal with issues in particular of violence between the ANC and Inkatha, in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, had left a nasty legacy of ANC-IFP violence in that province which has claimed >2,000 lives since 1994.
That's an angle of the story here that is really of interest to my project.
We also had an interesting lunch today with our host here, Shirley Pendlebury, her colleague in the Wits Education School Penny Enslin, and our friend and colleague Peter Maselwa, who has been amazingly helpful during pur time in South Africa...
Anyway, this is a little random as a list. But the day has been full, and now we're in Cape Town. The sea air smells great but we arrived when it was already dark. No idea where Table Mountain is in relation to us.