Apartheid Museum

Today we visited the Apartheid Museum. If you don’t understand the horrid history of South Africa, then a trip to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is a must when visiting the country. I knew a bit about it, but I won’t lie, I didn’t know too much and certainly still don’t feel well enough educated to go into the details but now at least I understand way more than before and it was sickening! It’s also a very sobering experience from the minute you walk through the entrance, which is separated into black and white to demonstrate how it used to be.
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For me the museum added a lot of details, facts and stories to my knowledge of the black and white divide in South Africa and it is heart wrenching to watch and read the info in the museum. Similar to the Killing fields in Cambodia or the Agent orange museum in Vietnam, it’s deeply saddening but we both felt it was vital to learn and understand more about the country we are staying in.  It’s a totally excellent museum, and contains a permanent Nelson Mandela Exhibition as well, so for the 100Rand entrance fee ($10NZD) I would highly recommend it, even if you can’t take photos indoors (I managed a sneaky few)

​From there, I was so hungry I felt I could chew my arm off but from also being jetlagged I chose to sleep the whole way home in the car like a child. Jet lag has ruined me the past 2 days, I don’t think the rain helps either but knowing we were heading for dinner and to watch a band that night made everything much less hazy. Despite the weather, so far we are having an absolute BLAST!

Oh, something else I learned while on the tour which actually nearly made me cry was:

When Mandela turned 90 years old, a celebration that the public started was by devoting 67 minutes of their time on his birthday – one minute for every year of Mandela’s public service – here people can make a small gesture of solidarity with humanity and a step towards a global movement for good. Meaning that every year each and every person here will take 67 minutes to do community work, help at a shelter, feed the homeless, teach a class, clean up trash and so on. This is not a public holiday but something that is now ingrained in the population and when I heard it, it made me think how wonderful a human this man was. We really had such a rich and fulfilling day today – I loved it despite it being so upsetting in parts.
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‘’Nelson Mandela has been making an imprint on the world for 67 years, beginning in 1942 when he first started to campaign for the human rights of every South African. His life has been an inspiration to the world,”
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Read more here : https://www.mandeladay.com/pages/what-can-i-do