We reached Johannesburg by mid morning after a long and rather tiring flight. Having left a cold and grayish Paris we were unexpectedly made welcome by the "warmth" of South Africa.
Soon after having left the airport we headed towards Soweto so as to have lunch at Wandies, a one time illegally operated shebeen dating back to 1981. The overall atmosphere was warm and cosy. The walls of this rather unique restaurant were entirely covered with cards and all sorts of memories from its previous visitors and as I was having my first meal in South African territory I couldn't help but looking at history embedded in those walls. The canteen-like food was exceptionally good and had it not been for the overburdenned visiting schedule we might have easily hanged around for a much longer period of time.
On our way to Nelson Mandela's House Museum located in Soweto we could see the Orlando cooling towers in the distance - the prominent landmark of Soweto, which were decommissioned in 1998 after 56 years of service. Driving through this black township mostly composed of "matchbox" houses and whose political uprisings I associated it made me get a completely different perspective from the one I had expected. Whether it was because it looked like a rather organised community now or the fact that we just drove by without walking along its streets, something clearly altered the image I had constructed in my mind. A short stop at the meaningful Hector Pieterson square brought about the harsh reality of the past. Named after the South African schoolboy who was shot during the the Soweto uprising in which the Police opened fire on students protesting the enforcement of teaching in Afrikaans, this square stands up as a permanent reminder of lost inocent lives.
A few metres from it the nº8115 single-storey red brick matchbox where Nelson Mandela lived prior to his arrest and some time after his prison release. Its inside displayed the original furnishing and a huge amount of memorabilia which helped us further get into his personal story. According to his own words "(...) for me nº 8115 was the centre point of my world, the place marked with an x in my mental geography".
From there we headed towards the apartheid Museum, which we unfortunately visited in a hurry because of the closing hour. The building itself was quite interesting because every little detail bore a significant aspect - the pillars of the Constitution located in the courtyard, each of which stood for the seven values enshrined in the South African Constitution; the large photos of descendants of a wide racial diversity, which could be seen outside the Museum called the attention to those who came to Johannesburg in the aftermath of the discovery of gold; the race classification upon which Apartheid was built could be felt right at the white and non-white visitors' entrance doors, not to mention the 22 individual exhibit areas covering major events and human stories that were part of the state orchestrated system and the struggle to overthrough such epic saga.
By the time we finished the visit, which we all agreed might have taken longer under different circumstances we felt we had been introduced to the meaningful story of South Africa throughout this first day and many of those events were still lingering on when we reached the out of town guest-house we would be spending our first night at. I loved it from the moment I walked into its gardens and more so when I was given an appartment bedroom on the right hand side building overlooking it. We had the priviledge of dining out and as the evening drew in I had one last cigarette in "my" private balcony unaware of the barbed wire that protected the whole property.
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