Afrique 1 – JOHANNESBURG

 

Le circuit en Afrique du Sud

In Paris we have the luck that Philippe, a cyclist from CCI-asso bring us in his car, with all the luggages and the two bicycles, to the Roissy airport. Everything works perfect for the check in. then we have six hours flight to join Djedda. Here we have ten hours waiting in the airport. As we are in Souadian Arabia all the women are in black and bring the traditional chador. then we cross again the customs, and there are two queues, one for men and one for women. we take an other flight, seven hours and we arrive in Johannesburg airport. It is midday. We pick up the luggages and we get out in the hall. Here a few men propose them as taxis, but we dont trust them, and we ask to the tourist information point to call us a taxi. He is a nice right man, it cost us 50$. We are now in the backpacker in Melville district, in our cosy room. After a rest we go to the neighbour supermarket, and we go to the street with restaurants. We take a drink of wine in a jazz bar listening the musicians. In that place the customers are mixed. Then we have a glance at the restaurants. We avoid these with only white customers, and by the way we have a delicious tipical dinner in a place where we are the only whites, but noone cares about.
First day we go to the mall, Martine needs shoes and me a tarp, and some other things.
The next day we take a taxi to Constitutional Court and visit the old fort. We dont have time to visit more. Steve, a friend of Martine, joins us and bring us to Soweto, the famous township where is the house of Mandela. We visit it and then have a traditional lunch in the front restaurant. A township is a suburb with little cheap building houses all the same where the blacks were lodge during the apartheid. Well we have too a lot of township in Europ, for poor or for migrant origins, but the rule forbiding the entrance is in our head. I could say I live in a township in Malaga. Anyway we go back to the lodge then.
Third day we go back to Constitutional Court and we visit all. The court is a new building. The door is in wood, all carved. In the hall the roof is maintained by oblic stakes which remember the trees where local people met. And large butterfly looklike mobiles are the leaves. On a side is the old jail for the guilties waiting for judgement, open now. Then there is a long stairs down to the library, decoratd with paintings, which tell about local people. The second part of the visit is the carcels where mostly blacks were, politics and criminals mixed. Well it is like all the jails before, overcrowded dormitories, cold comun showers, isolation jails very small, and poor food. The worst prisonners become the bosses of the dormitories, and rob and ill treat the others. No help and no mercy in here. The objective was to punish, not to help reintagrate the honest life. Of course whites had better treatement, there own room and better food, then come the hindus, and the worst for the blacks.
Fourth day we visit the apartheid museum. It is a new building in concret, looking like a jail. Inside are movies photos and stories telling step by step the history of apartheid, from the the stat of Joburg, till the writing of the Democratic Constitution. All that is insteresting, but sad. By the evening we have dinner with Steve in the Jazz bar.
Fith day we take an early taxi to the airport, to take our flight to Cape Town.