My Journey to South Africa: Part I - First Impressions

I just got back yesterday from a work-related trip to South Africa, where I spent almost 2 weeks. Since it was only my second trip overseas (the other one was to Geneva, Switzerland), I obviously was excited about having such an opportunity (and admittedly, a little bit frightened as well, because I had no idea what I'd be confronting once there). I promised myself I'd write a diary about this trip before I left, upon my return.  

Well, I decided I'd need more than one diary to cover my impressions. This is part 1, which goes into my first impressions after landing at the O.R. Tombo airport in Johannesburg, and what happened the next few days. Follow me below the jump.

A taxi ride to Pretoria

The flight from the U.S. to Johannesburg was a very, very long one: 14:50 to be exact. I flew South African Airlines, and was unfortunately for me, in coach. Two nice meals, a dinner and a breakfast, with too little sleep in between. As I walked through the airport, I heard many languages; English, a Dutch/German sounding language (Afrikaans), and multiple tribal languages (all derived from a common Bantu language) and dialects. After I went through customs with my work laptop, I got to baggage check and my taxi driver located me.  She was a diminutive black woman who was the personification of energy, even trying to take my 25-kg bag and throw it into the back of the Renault that she was driving. I found out later she was 50 years old! (as many African-Americans, including my partner, say in the U.S., "black don't crack")

We got to talking on the way to my guesthouse in Pretoria about the landscape and how things are in South Africa. She was very proud of the fact that she now owned her own business, something that was illegal away from the black "homelands" before 1994. From her, I got a sense that things were moving along pretty well, given that it had only been 13 years since the ending of apartheid.

Speeding up the superhighway between Tombo Airport and Pretoria, there was little to see that would indicate otherwise. Fields were being prepared for the annual crop of maize, grassland with scattered trees, with an occasional development of nice, California-style homes could be seen as one gazed across the rolling terrain. What for some reason I didn't notice among these symbols of prosperity, were what I found out later the government called "informal settlements", more commonly known as squatters' towns. More on those later.

White South Africa

Traffic was heavy as we approached Pretoria, which is about 50-km from the airport (and from Johannesburg). The first guesthouse I was in during my stay was only a few hundred meters from the exit. And here is where I first actually noted what I would later consider symbolic of the challenges still facing South Africa: the guesthouse was walled in, with an electrically operated gate with sharp-ended metal posts a few cm apart. The white marble wall surrounding the property was topped with electrified barbed wire.

After entering the compound (this is what owners of such properties call them) and paying my driver, I met the proprietor of the guesthouse at his office: a pleasant young white man, probably in his early 20s. I asked him about the barbed wire, he claimed it was necessary as a result of crime. This was my first encounter with the fear of the minority of the majority in South Africa.

My first reaction was that this fear was at minimum overstated. Why would one want to live like this ... emprisoned behind the wall of one's compound? I watched TV for awhile afterward, noting that behind the wall, life seemed to be very pleasant and not terribly different from life in the U.S. I'd not eaten though, so after a quick nap I walked down to a pizza place not far from the guesthouse. While walking there, I passed some black men and women waiting at the bus stop for transportation to their homes. There were no white people on the streets (I didn't know they only constituted 10% of the total population of South Africa at the time.). I didn't feel terribly uncomfortable or that what I was doing was unsafe...but I live in a racially diverse area of Prince George's County, MD. I got a sub, and returned to my room to eat and rest up for the next day, when the workshop I was attending and helping to run was to begin.

Why I'm writing about this trip

The rest of my trip, at least when I wasn't working, involves the development of my thinking about how South Africa works today and will evolve, given what I learned about what white South Africa seemed to be feeling. I had notions on what I thought should happen, though I had no idea how long it would take for them to get there. But this first bit of information on how white South Africa seemed to feel, didn't seem to bode all that well.

I'll weave my perceptions about how South Africa may inform (and is different from) our experience in this country with minorities, into my writing on this experience over the following 12 days. I'll welcome your comments and discussion, especially those who have traveled to South Africa or actually have lived, or currently live there.