Very interesting trip yesterday from the airport to our boutique hotel, The Peech. The driver was from the Venda tribe, which is better known as the “magic” tribe because they do not use guns or other weapons, they simply beat a tune on a drum and their enemies “fall”. The South African government had been run since the 90s by the Zulu tribe, but in May, the new President is a Venda (which implies peacemaker). As an outsider, NOT a politician, he is attempting to clean up the corruption in the government. Many of the “establishment” hate him and are making his life miserable. He is also trying to get their illegal Immigration problem under control. For a few minutes, I actually thought I was back in the good ole USA.

Today was a full day exploring Johannesburg and it proved very educational. Amazingly they speak 11 different languages and our driver spoke 7 of those. He seemed to know at least a million of the 57 million in South Africa 😜of which 45 million are black. We drove thru the old downtown area of Johannesburg where there are armed police on the streets. Our driver asked us to count the number of white people we saw. In 30 minutes we saw 6.. and they were all near the courthouse. And the worst news ….he 36% of the population in South Africa is unemployed! That’s almost 21 million people! Whoaaaa

When I think of South Africa, I think of gold mines, safaris, and Nelson Mandela… but truthfully, I wasn’t really clear on the whole Mandela deal. I did know he was in prison, but I definitely didn’t realize he was named as a “terrorist” by our own CIA in the early 60s and originally sentenced to 5 years by white supremacists for using guns against their new government. This period of history is called Apartheid …and lasted from 1948-1994. It was a system where the educated “whites” who came over from England and Australia to control the “blacks”. The goal was to separate the people by race, religion and tribe. The white minority ruled with their guns … and the rights, movements, and freedom of the black people were suppressed. They figured if they separated the tribes, the groups would fight among themselves and not against the government. While Mandela was still in prison, he was sentenced another 22 years because they discovered he earlier had burned his documents and used another identity to go around the country building the ANC that would go against the “white” government. He finally got out of prison in 1990 and continued to fight against separation of the races…succeeded… and by 1995 he had became President of South Africa, later going on to win the Nobel Peace Award. We visited his original home and also his museum where we learned he was originally born to be the chief of his village in his father’s footsteps, but at the age of 9 his father died and he was then raised by an uncle. He ran away to Johannesburg as a teenager and later became a lawyer. He was married 4 times and had 13 children. He died in 2014…which you might remember Obama came to the funeral.

And that’s an interesting deal, they do funerals only on Saturdays, and an average of 300 people attend. They buy living goats or a cow on Friday and they slaughter it for the funeral the next day. The street corners were full of living goats today …being a Friday.

Speaking of food.. the local BBQ is warthog, ostrich, and lamb …and instead of potato salad, they serve Grits with it. Now comes the good stuff…we’re driving around and kept smelling smoke and seeing campfires on every street corner. Turns out they are cooking lunch for the locals. They take the meat off the head of a cow … and cook it in a big pot of water & salt over an open fire, and the locals walk by and grab some for lunch. YUMMY!

The kids here are much like ours, they live in front of a tv or on their phone and play video games. They can’t drive until 18, but can also drink at 18. They can vote at 21.

All buildings, hotels and nice residences are gated and guarded. The neighborhoods are still divided by race, not by law, but by preference. And, when they say “Colored”, it is not referring to black people…they mean half white, half black…and they live in their own separate neighborhood. We visited the poorest of black neighborhoods where the metal shacks were built in the early 1900s, and then the next step up was the neighborhood with the metal shacks that ALL had satellites on the roof tops for cable and WiFi. Eventually we ended up in “Beverly Hills” …primarily white “heavy weights” (rich) and saw the multiple heavily guarded mansions and St Johns high school … a private boys school built in the 40s and costing over $1000/month.

Tomorrow we fly further south to the Kruger National Park to spend 5 days on safari. Not sure they will have WiFi but will write soon.