Day 7 – Cape Town to Johannesburg and Soweto

Today we were up early (we woke up far earlier than we needed to) to get ready to transfer from our hotel to the Cape Town Airport.

We have been staying at the Portswood for the last 5 nights. It has been a lovely hotel, the staff were excellent, the food was lovely (breakfasts were great) and very well located near the V&A Waterfront and of course very safe – security and cameras all around you felt safe walking around the hotel.

Our flight to Johannesburg was at 9:20 and landed at 11:20 and was smooth (the Captain had said there might be a few bumps but we didn’t really feel anything).

After we landed we had to chill at the airport for a little while until our bus could pick us up. We go some snacks and drinks and then headed to our bus for our trip into Soweto.

We got to the Hector Pieterson Museum where one of the local women took us through the 1976 student riots. The museum is named after Hector who was 12 when he was shot during the riots. The picture below is of him being carried out by Mbuyisa Makhubo with his sister Antoinette next to him.

Mbuyisa had to flee South Africa to Botswana and hasn’t been heard from in decades people still would like to know what happened to him.

We heard about the education system under Apartheid (the Bantu Education Act which ensure black African received an insufficient education and assured their place as a working class), the lead up to the riots and what triggered them. After this we met Miss Antoinette who rode with us on the bus and told us her story as we retraced her steps on the day her brother was murdered. Miss Antoinette rode with us until we got to Nelson Mandela’s house.

The street Mandela lived in had two Nobel laureates liver there Mandela and Desmond Tutu. We had a guided tour of Mr Mandela’s house with a young guide who was interning there and training to become a tour guide. The tree below is where the Mandela’s buried their children’s umbilical cords and has been maintained as part of the museum.

After we’d visited the house we have been brought to our hotel in Rosebank where we will meet up with two additional people that are joining us for Kruger.