Nobel Laureates & Apartheid

It's interesting how nice things can be paired with such horrid things. Today we visited Vilakazi Street and then the Apartheid Museum.

First, we went to an area referred to as Soweto (the official name given to the "South West Township"). There, we visted Vilakazi Street, famous for being former homes of two Nobel Peace Prize winners: former president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Next, we stopped at the Apartheid Museum. At the entrance, they gave us cards that assigned each person as either "white" or "non-white." Based on our identity as given by the arbitrarily handed out cards, we had to go through a particular door. I was given a "non-white" card and walked through the right-hand door.

The awful thing was that my Liberian-Canadian classmate had been telling us that circa 2007, she went to a nightclub in a small German town where she was required to use a seperate entrance to the club, solely based on the color of her skin.

The apartheid exhibits were fascinating and disturbing. I've been to such exhibits before ie: World War era and holocaust museums, but the strange thing about this one was that such unconscionable treatment of humans occurred so recently, even during my own lifetime.

There were, of course, pictures with antiquated clothing and hairstyles, but there were also pictures with permed hair and awkward trousers from the 80s and 90s.

In fact, during our last class, one of our South African classmates brought in his pass book to show. He had been required to carry this as proof of documentation during the apartheid era, or else risk being brought to prison or worse.

I realized how little I know about South Africa, apartheid, and Mandela - and how much I would like to know.
Therefore, next on the reading list: A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.