Goodbye India and hello South Africa.

Well we've arrived safely in South Africa in a simple one flight transfer in total contrast to the New Zealand to India journey (oh yes we're still having nightmares about that one!!).

Now this blog entry is going to be quite heavy because, quite frankly, for tourists Johannesburg is a heavy place. It was central to the apartheid system and the battle against it, so a lot of the sightseeing revolves around this fact. So here goes…

Our first impression on arriving in Johannesburg is that it is a wealthy town. There are wide, well maintained roads, big properties, shopping malls and lots of big, new cars!! In fact I haven't seen this many car sale showrooms in one town since I left the shores of the lovely UK.

The next thing that hits you is the severity of the security measures which are used on domestic dwellings - 10ft walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire, huge electronic gates with spikes and windows and doors secured with metal grilles. It all seems so extreme - so is it all really necessary or is this a legacy system? I actually posed this question to a local who informed me that it was a combination of paranoia and the security requirements of the insurance companies. So there you go!

Whilst in Johannesburg we went on a Soweto tour with a wonderful guy called Mandler, but before we headed out of town he drove us around Johannesburg town centre and took us to the 'Top of Africa', a viewing deck on the 50th floor of the Carlton Centre. Whilst up there he pointed out three areas that are classed as dangerous parts of town, where muggings, gun crime, prostitution and car jacking are common. Whilst of course, just as in every country, you have lawless home grown citizens, a lot of Johannesburg's problems are actually caused by the unemployed illegal immigrants who have flocked to the town from other African countries, Nigeria in particular. Johannesburg is safe during the day but as night time descends you do have to be very careful, completely avoiding the CBD and keeping your wits about you everywhere else. These are exactly the same words of caution we've been told all over the world but there is something about the way they say it here that makes you realise this is a genuine warning.

A good starting point for our trip to South Africa was a visit to Johannesburg's 'Apartheid Museum'. It is an excellent museum, and after 4 hours we still hadn't managed to read all the narrative or watch all the film footage. As a child I was aware of the troubles in S Africa as they were on the news daily but it wasn't until we both visited this museum that we really understood the history behind the country! Just to enter the museum they have replicated 'petty' apartheid and separated the entrances for whites and non-whites. Segregation had been in existence in South Africa since 1910, when the Afrikaans and British came together and drafted a constitution for a unified country which largely excluded blacks, but apartheid didn't come into force fully until the late 1940's. Designed to uplift the poor unskilled white Afrikaans, apartheid became an exercise of containment, to preserve white supremacy and prevent racial assimilation. Over 10 years 1.5 million people were relocated to townships suitably removed from 'white' areas and law after law was introduced to control and suppress their every move. The museum also takes you through the history of black resistance looking at the political parties, their leaders and all the key events from 1912, when the ANC was first formed, to 1994 when the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. It is a truly great museum and comes highly recommended to anyone passing through Johannesburg.

Whilst in Johannesburg we spent a really interesting day touring around Soweto. As you approach the area the first thing you see are the 2 brightly painted cooling towers of the now redundant Orlando power station. As Soweto expanded the area outgrew the capabilities of the power station, so instead of knocking it down, it was ingeniously converted into a recreation centre complete with a bungee jumping platform - ideal for the tourists! But we weren't stopping here, we were heading for Kliptown', one of oldest unofficial townships in Soweto created in 1904. We were taken to an NGO youth project called 'Sky', where one of their young members, J, showed us around both the youth club and the township. Sky was created 22 years ago to try to offer an alternative to the youth of Kliptown other than the gang culture and drug scene. Their initial aim was to teach these kids about safe sex and drugs and offer them alternative activities in a safe environment. Nowadays the centre has expanded further and even provides a crèche and free food hall to which approximately 950 kids attend each morning and afternoon. J took us for a walk around the township and I was overwhelmed at how friendly everyone was. The unofficial townships, as you'll see from the photos, are made up of makeshift shacks, with no indoor running water, some electricity and no toilets. The government is slowly but surely building 'official' townships, rows of faceless single storey properties, to re-house the occupants of the 'unofficial' townships in. To move into one of these houses you have to join a long waiting list - though allegedly a bribe may help too! The ideal scenario would be that as families move out of the unofficial township their property is demolished and these estates eventually disappear, but the reality is somewhat different, as no sooner does one family move out than another one moves in. Only South African citizens are entitled to the new government dwellings so these unofficial townships are becoming the home of illegal immigrants. There are currently 40,000 people living in Kliptown with only 50 outdoor taps to support them all - as you can imagine this leads to some lengthy queues on a morning!

The next stop on our tour was the Regina Mundi, Soweto's largest Catholic Church which was pivotal in the township's history of resistance against apartheid. In 1976 the government outlawed any public gathering of 5 people or more so the Church became a very important meeting place, earning itself the nickname 'The Parliament'. One Sunday evening, during the Soweto uprisings, the police surrounded the church whilst it was full of students. They then stormed the church and the Chief of Police went to the front and demanded that all the students go home. When no-one moved he slammed his gun onto the marble alter with such force he actually managed to break the corner of it off. Within minutes pandemonium broke out as the police began firing both inside and outside the church and the bullet holes and damaged figure of Christ still exist as evidence of this event today.

Whilst in Soweto we drove up the only street in the world which can boast that it has had 2 Nobel Peace prize winners living on it - Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. We drove past both their houses and also took a drive past Winnie Mandela's heavily fortified house too.

Here are 2 interesting things I've learned about South Africa whilst in Johannesburg:

- It is thinking of changing its name to Azania but the final discussions and decisions required will not take place until after the world cup.

- It's beautiful new flag, which was introduced in 1994, is a peace sign on its side. The green and yellow represent the earth, black and white represent the colour of the people, red represents bloodshed and blue represents the sky.

The final destination on our Soweto tour was the Hector Pieterson Museum named after one of the first children to be killed in the Soweto uprising of 16th June 1976. The museum looks at Apartheid in general but focuses in particular on the uprising and the history behind it. In early 1976 the government announced that all Bantu schools were to be taught in Afrikaan only. This caused an outcry in the schools as the students had always been taught in their native African and English and many of the teachers could not even speak Afrikaan. Feeling amongst the students was changing, no longer were they prepared to live under white man's rule like their parents nor would they accept an education designed to make them slaves in their own country. So on the 16th June 1976 the teachers of the Soweto schools reluctantly stepped aside to let their students, dressed in their best outfits, file out in rows of 5 to start a peaceful protest against the use of Afrikaan in schools. Up to 20,000 students marched towards Orlando West secondary School where the plan was to pledge their solidarity, sing a song and then go home. As they marched they were confronted by a line of policemen who ordered the crowd to disperse, when they refused the police used tear gas, dogs, stones, batons and guns on the children. The children ran for cover but some responded by throwing stones and setting fire to any symbols of apartheid.The situation escalated and the battle continued for days eventually spreading to other parts of South Africa. The Soweto uprising marked a new militancy in the struggle against apartheid - South Africa was never to be the same again!