Today in Trust member Kate Thompson’s South Africa diary, Kate attends a concert and then heads to Johannesburg & Soweto
Day 30: Thursday, 8 July 2010
I thought I’d see if I could get a bit more sleep before going to breakfast but after a bit I went to eat before having a much-needed shower. I then spent quite a bit of time catching up with e-mails and the appointment of City’s new manager, Paulo Sousa – surely the worst-kept secret in football!
This evening I am going with one of the other guests to hear the South African trumpeter, Hugh Masekele, who is performing in Sandton. I had lunch at ‘Il pomodoro’ [the tomato] in the shopping centre, then bought a sandwich and some apples for later. I managed half-an-hour’s kip, so hopefully will be able to stay awake this evening! It is a lovely day so I sat outside in the sunshine for a bit, reading a book – now there’s a novelty for me.
The concert was due to start at 8.00, so we had a taxi booked for 7.15; in the event it took longer to get there than I had been told. Montecasino is amazing; it is just like bits of Las Vegas, complete with artificial sky. It is designed to look like bits of every Italian town you have ever been to and I regretted not arriving earlier and not having my camera with me. There are lots of theatres and we had quite a walk to the right one. Mark’s brother had booked the tickets online for us, so we had to queue up to collect them.….
Despite announcements that the concert was about to start, it didn’t in fact do so until 8.20. It was supposed to last for two and a half hours, with a 20 minute interval, and I had asked Jacob (the taxi driver) to come back for us at 10.30. At just before 10.00 I concluded that there wouldn’t be an interval, but there was, so that the second half didn’t start until about ten minutes before the concert was due to finish! I put Jacob off until 11.00 but at 11.15, when it still hadn’t finished, we decided that we would have to leave. It was an interesting experience, although I would have liked Hugh Masekele to have played his trumpet more. He had some support acts who were very good; a young violinist played so hard you could see the broken strings on his bow drifting in the air!
It is not often that I feel staid and British, but I did on this occasion. The largely black audience obviously knew several of the songs he sang or played and were literally dancing in their seats. It would have been better suited to a nightclub or similar, as several people carried on conversations throughout, including the two young women sitting next to me. Certainly not what you’d get at the Albert Hall! It was almost as interesting watching the audience as watching the performance.
Day 31: Friday, 9 July 2010
The Johannesburg & Soweto trip was due to leave at 1.00, so I had a lazy morning – a leisurely breakfast, catching up on e-mails and football news, reading the paper, etc. I went to ‘Pick n Pay’ for a sandwich and some bananas and then waited for the transport. He arrived only a few minutes after the scheduled time and there were about a dozen of us in a minibus; all English except for a young German girl who had been working here and who (of course!) spoke excellent English.
We started off by a tour of downtown Johannesburg, which not surprisingly is dominated by financial institutions. I was sitting in the front seat and it’s a good job I’m not a nervous passenger, as the driver and tour guide (Wonga or Alfred!) was what you might call a very positive driver! On one occasion the car in front was very slow to move when the lights changed and we certainly knew that Wonga had a loud horn! Some of the buildings looked interesting, such as the City Hall and Supreme Court, and obviously dated from the colonial era, but we only drove past them. We then went onto Soweto, stopping briefly to take photos of Soccer City, where the World Cup final is to be played on Sunday. Incidentally, we learnt that Robert Mugabe is to be at the final, which disgusted us, and there is now a queue of Brits wondering how to get hold of a gun!
Cooling Towers
Soweto is quite unlike any of the other townships we had seen, with some very smart houses – double garages, imposing walls and gates, etc. By contrast we saw some very poor dwellings. The government is slowly replacing some of the hostels for single men which were put up to house those working in the gold fields. En route we had seen enormous gold slag heaps, which are being re-sifted and then landscaped.
In one of the poorest parts of Soweto, there were pigs running around! We were then taken to see Winnie Mandela’s house, the one where Nelson Mandela lived after he was released from prison, and Archbishop Tutu’s house – all of them quite smart and Winnie’s being protected by security cameras!
Soweto
The final stop was at the Hector Peterson museum; he was the young boy who was shot in 1976 when the students demonstrated against the forced introduction of Afrikaans and who was photographed being carried away by a fellow student. It is a famous photo which I had seen before, but I didn’t know that the man who picked him up disappeared without trace. The museum was interesting and I learnt a lot that I hadn’t appreciated before. Sadly, there was no guidebook (the lady in the shop said they had sold out) as I would have liked to have read more about the incident.
Unlike Alan, Richard, Gail and Chris we got the four hours scheduled but the tour did not include an area known as Hillbrow. Had I realised sooner, I would have mentioned it to Wonga, but I rather suspect that most of the trips omit it, perhaps because the locals are not particularly proud of it. It was inhabited by well-to-do whites before the end of apartheid, but they were replaced by poor blacks. One couple had seen it and apparently it is a dreadful place, full of gangsters and other disreputable types; I would have been interested to see it, though from the safety of a locked bus!
I ate in the hotel and heard all about Gill and Geoff’s trip to the Victoria Falls; they had really enjoyed it as I knew they would.
Part eighteen of Kate’s diary will appear tomorrow