All right - so it's been a long time with no posts - I'll try to make this one extra fat to make up for it.
After leaving Brazil, we had 8 days at sea. Since this ship goes so fast we probably coulda made it in half that time, but they had to make some room for all the classes. So, for the first leg of the trip we were haulin' ass, but then the captain slowed us way down after a couple of days, and we just putt-putted into Cape Town. I spent the time mostly editing webumentaries for GNG.
I'd just like to make a statement about time zones - during our Atlantic crossing we lost 5 hours in 8 days. That's five 23 hour days. 23 hour days suck - the day isn't long enough to begin with, and then you go and shorten it by an hour? Why the heck aren't we going the other way? Then we'd have 25 hour days, which would be so much nicer. I tried explaining this to the captain and the dean so that they'd turn the boat around, but it seemed like they weren't listening - they just stared at me and asked me what kind of medication I'm on.
The cool thing though was we had an archbishop on board with us, the Nobel Peace Prize winning Desmond Tutu. This guy is so cool - just a really happy guy. I didn't really talk to him, but he hung out in the staff lounge a lot checking his email, and sometimes he'd get up to go to the bathroom... I'd never seen an archbishop checkin' email before, or getting up to go to the bathroom for that matter, but rest assured, it was pretty cool.
I'm still singing in the choir, and we sang the South African national anthem for him the night before we arrived in Cape Town. This fired him up so much that he gave everyone in the choir a hug and a kiss. That's the first time I've been kissed by an archbishop, and I hope it won't be the last.
This is the good archbishop encountering Scott's bagpipe playing the morning we arrived in Cape Town - he always plays when we come into port, much to the chagrin of many on the ship and off. Bishop Tutu seemed to dig it though.
This next shot was taken just after sunrise, as we approached Cape Town. It was a cold morning, with a very dramatic sky.
The large mountain range you see there is called Table Mountain. Here we are a little closer:
Here we're just about to enter the port, and you can see the city pretty clearly behind.
Here we are in the harbor now, with a tug helping us into our slip.
Here's another shot from in the waterfront area:
Cape Town is named for the Cape of Good Hope, which is the southernmost tip of Africa, and popularly regarded as where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet - although there is some debate about this. Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to discover the cape in 1488. Nine years later, Vasco da Gama rounded the cape for the first time on his way to India. The Dutch set up shop in the area in 1647, and they were taken over by the British at the start of the 19th century - after Napoleon made quick work of the Netherlands in 1795, the British figured they were so weak they could take what they wanted of theirs, and so they did. The British ended the slave trade in 1808, and emancipated all the slaves in 1833, about 30 years before slavery ended in the United States. The bubonic plague gave the government the excuse to introduce racial segregation in 1901 - blacks were moved away from the city. Apartheid was introduced with the National Party coming to power in 1948. Apartheid means "separateness" in Afrikaans, the language spoken by the Dutch descendants (and one of the 11 official languages now recognized by South Africa).
Incidentally, "yeah" sounds really cool coming from someone who speaks Afrikaans - it's spoken low and drawn out, like yaaaaaaaaah.
Back to my history lesson - up until 1948, there had been a looser system of segregation, which a government commission recommended ending altogether. Said then Prime Minister Jan Smuts of the United Party, "The idea that natives must all be removed and confined in their kraals is in my opinion, the greatest nonsense I have ever heard."
Too bad for everybody that there were some hard-core racists represented by the National Party that made their own commission which recommended exactly the opposite - that segregation should be strengthened, not dismantled. The National Party ended up coming to power in coalition with the Afrikaner Party, even though they lost the popular vote (sound familiar?). They immediately instituted the policy of Apartheid, which classified all individuals by race, and set up a classification board to make official rulings on questionable cases.
The classifications were "Whites" (European descent), who of course were at the top, followed by Indian, then "Coloureds" (mixed race), and finally "Blacks" (African descent). All public areas were separated, including beaches, buses, hospitals, schools, restrooms, and even park benches. Blacks and Coloureds had to carry identity documents and were prevented from being in towns without permission. Interracial sex & marriage was outlawed, and existing mixed couples were forbidden from living together. Voting rights were severely curtailed for Blacks & Coloureds, who were given separate voter rolls. Racial discrimination was formally legislated in employment. Supposedly independent homelands were set up for black people, and the inhabitants of these homelands were stripped of their citizenship. Non-whites could not hold a position in the national government. In the 1970's, the government spent 1/10th of the money educating black children as it did whites, and a college education was basically impossible for a black person to attain. Cinemas, restaurants & hotels were prohibited from admitting blacks, except as employees. Opposition parties such as the African National Conference were made illegal. Entire black neighborhoods were forcibly relocated, their land bulldozed and rebuilt upon by new white owners.
On top of this, an extremely conservative regime ruled the country which, among other things didn't allow the introduction of television into the country until 1976, because of its perceived immorality. Yet the government had no moral problem with killing 69 protestors during 1961's Sharpeville massacre, or 566 peaceful students during 1976's Soweto uprising.
International pressure against the regime mounted in the form of sanctions, both military and economic. Massive campaigns were launched to pressure people not to invest in South Africa or companies that did business with South African companies. The South African regime reacted by becoming more and more of a garrison state, actually building nuclear weapons with help from Israel, and launching military destabilization campaigns into the countries that bordered it, which were viewed as a threat. These campaigns started civil wars in Angola & Mozambique that killed hundreds of thousands, not to mention the millions made homeless.
The atrocities reached their peak in the early 1980's under the leadership of P.W. Botha. Police & soldiers patrolled the streets in armored vehicles, destroying black squatter camps and detaining, abusing and killing thousands of blacks and coloureds. Media coverage was heavily censored by law to conceal the severity of the situation. Despite this though, cracks were forming in the walls, and the white leadership began to admit the need for change. In 1984, Botha told white South Africans to "adapt or die," some reforms were introduced, and many of the apartheid laws were repealed. Yet many considered these cosmetic changes, and the opposition group United Democratic Front, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Allan Boesak, called on the government to abandon its reforms and instead abolish apartheid all together.
Economic pressures from international sanctions caused the value of the Rand to collapse, and in 1985 the government declared a state of emergency, which was to last for five years. Thousands were incarcerated without trial, tortured or killed. Security in the country deteriorated and thousands of whites fled the country. Under pressure from the US and Britain, in 1989 Botha stepped down and was replaced by FW de Klerk. In 1990, de Klerk repealed discriminatory laws, lifted the ban on opposition parties, and released all political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was released that year after 27 years in jail. A new constitution was written explicitly forbidding almost all forms of discrimination, and in 1994 a new rainbow flag was raised over the country, with a new president, Nelson Mandela.
As you can see, South Africa has some crazy history to it. So I was most impressed with the students of Pinelands High School, the guys we did our teleconferences with. These people were really cool - very intelligent & very opinionated, and they spoke English way better than any of the American students we teleconferenced with. Plus, as you can see they were all different races and they seemed to be getting along splendidly.
The teleconference on the first day went very well. The South African students commented on how lackadaisical the Americans seemed, like they were in detention or something, which I thought was interesting. They also seemed astounded by a Texan owning 3 guns, and were totally disturbed by the idea of "cow tipping."
One thing I will say about you Americans - some of you say the word "like" way too much. Like, you'll use it like 10 or 12 times in like one sentence, and it's like totally out of control and makes you sound, like, stupid. So like, get over it, please.
Next day we were supposed to have a teleconference at a youth HIV center called Love Life. It was in the middle of a black township area, a shantytown with a population of 1 million. Here's Jason on the roof, sprayin' down tha hood with our videocamera. This was our big plan for the conference - shoot the surroundings from the roof, and then cut to the conference.
Here's what he was shooting:
Being an AIDS center, it had medical rooms and free condoms and awareness literature & posters. Check it out:
We somehow had a problem with our satelite hookup. I'm not privy to what the problem was, but this was the scene while Chris was trying to sort it all out. Note the satelite dishes right next to the basketball/soccer court, with Chris there on the phone with mission control.
Could almost be an ad for EMS, no?
I dunno. Maybe the fanta can was screwing things up? I got bored so i shot the soccer game instead of the teleconference that wasn't happening. This is how the game is played in a Cape Town township:
Eventually it hit home that the teleconference wasn't gonna happen. But then Chris had a bright idea: we had a bunch of American girls from the ship checking out what we were doing - why not just have the Africans converse with THEM!! And so we did - here's some of the Africans, forming a segment of the in-tha-round discussion we had going:
wish I had better pictures of this but running sound for the camera documenting it all was my main priority, so the picture taking kinda fell by the wayside. This little conference was cool, and the Americans from Semester at Sea, which came planning on being mere spectators, were thrust into a participatory role, being quizzed by the Africans on everything from HIV to pop culture. In for more than they bargained for, I gotta say the Americans pulled it off pretty well... Afterwards, everybody exchanged emails and talked about how much Bush sucks. Then we took silly pictures like these:
Here's us sayin' goodbye to the semester at sea girls - from L to R that's Jason, Chris, Karen, Liz, Brianna, Molly, Dave (obscurred), and the back of Krista's head, who has some really great hair, doesn't she?
Driving back home to the ship from the township, we passed this painted fence:
Scarey, huh?? After this, I got sick from a bad cold, and I was pretty worthless for the rest of my time in Cape Town. I got some cool pics from the top of Table Mountain though, which I visited by riding a cable car on the last day in port. Here's a shot looking up the mountain at the bottom of the ride:
And here are some views from the top, which is at an elevation of about 4500 ft.
Here's downtown Capetown. At the top you can see our ship, the MV Explorer. She's got some back!
When the clouds rolled in, it almost felt like a moonscape up there or something.
Here's some black eagles floating into the sunset.
Nice way to end a visit to South Africa.
Thanks to Wikipedia for all the historical information on South Africa and apartheid. Click any image to make it bigger. PEACE!
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