Saturday was our last full day in this amazing country. It was, as usual, hot. We decided to enjoy some greenery and drove over to Johannesburg Botanical Gardens. It covers a huge area, but the part we were in didn’t seem much like a botanical garden and was really more of a park. It is obviously very popular with Johannesburg’s dog lovers as we were one of the few groups walking in the park unaccompanied by a canine. One alien aspect of the dog-walking culture was that there was no attempt whatsoever at picking up dog poo. We’re so used to that being a requirement in UK parks that its absence is quite jarring to see. You also need to be careful where you step.

After our walk, we decided to take a drive down to see the FNB Stadium – formerly Soccer City and colloquially The Calabash – home of the Kaizer Chiefs and venue for the 2010 World Cup final. It’s a shame that they don’t offer tours but it is a great looking stadium.

After that we headed back to the hotel before going back over to Nelson Mandela Square for dinner at The Butcher Shop and Grill. Since it was our last night, we celebrated with a bottle of The Chocolate Block.

As we made our way home after dinner, we started to feel a few spots of rain, so quickened our pace. The storm clouds gathered as dusk fell so, of course, Ishbel needed a photo.

That photo was taken from the hotel entrance. By the time we got up to our room on the 10th floor, the thunderstorm was in full swing.

And that’s it for South Africa. Sunday will be pretty much a dead day as we fly at 12:30pm and arrive in Hong Kong at 7:05am on Monday. At twelve and a half hours, this is the longest flight of the entire trip.

We will be taking some amazing memories of South Africa with us. The safaris; Robben Island; the Cape; the penguins; the wine; the scenery; the whales; the apartheid years; Soweto and Sipho. All of this and more. Ishbel and I spent years steadfastly boycotting SA goods when we shopped, and it took an active effort for us to re-start buying them after the introduction of majority rule. We were still a little ambivalent about the country when we booked this trip. This has been a learning experience for us. There is clearly still work to be done in managing South Africa’s vast wealth and helping those who still live in abject poverty, but the vibrancy of this young democracy is obvious and exciting. We wish them well and hope to be back.

Here in Melville there’s a large area of public green space called the Melville Koppies.

There are a couple of elevated points from which you can get a view across the whole of Johannesburg. Unfortunately, there are some security concerns with both the Western and Eastern Koppies which put us off going for a walk in them. Ishbel to the rescue! She did some online research and found that every second Sunday, there’s a guided walk in the Central Koppies – an area not generally open to the public.

The walk was scheduled for an 8:30am start and the meeting point was a 4 minute drive from us, so we arrived dead on time to join a group of around 20 people of all ages, from about 8 or 9 up to the leader, a gentleman comfortably in his 70s whose wife is the Chair of the committee that looks after the area. We split into two groups for the walk and spent an educational three hours walking round the Koppies and admiring the views of Johannesburg available from there.

We learned about the first known homo sapiens occupants of the Johannesburg area, the San bushmen, who are known to have been here about 90,000 years ago. The San lived in social groups and were subsistence hunter gatherers. The arrival of Bantu peoples in the region from about 1,500 years ago, with their advanced metalworking technologies and agriculture led to the San gradually being outcompeted and/or subsumed through inter-marriage into the Bantu culture, which was the dominant population until the arrival of the Dutch colonists in the 17th century and, with them, gunpowder and firearms.

Over the three hours of walking we covered less than three miles, but we were still fairly wiped out by the end thanks to the high temperatures. The first thing to do after we got back was to shower and change.

Monday was another moving day for us, so we started prepping some of our packing later in the day on Sunday then headed back up to 7th Street for an early dinner. Again, we took a somewhat indecisive stroll along the street, looking at the various menus that were available. We eventually decided on Hell’s Kitchen largely because as we walked past, they were playing our song. “How romantic,” you’re thinking. Our song is “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” by The Ramones. This is because when we were at Glasgow University, but before we started going out together, most women chose not to dance with me to this song as my friends and I would go nuts, pogoing all over the place. Ishbel, bless her, always indulged me and agreed to dance when asked. She was a keeper even then.

Anyway, Hell’s Kitchen was the dinner choice and we both had Skillet Fillet, which is a fillet stuffed with feta, basil and chili paste in a jalapeno sauce. Really tasty. Also, the music they played in here lived up to the promise of the Ramones track that drew us in. And, they’re delivering festive greetings…

I had a couple of pints of their very tasty Devil’s Peak IPA with dinner and then we headed home. We got back to the apartment about 15 minutes before Johannesburg was, once again, drenched by a huge thunderstorm.

One of the reasons we selected this particular AirBnB was its location in Melville. I had read that this was the happening, Boho area of Johannesburg. Given that we had arrived in the city with little by way of concrete plans, it was surprising to realise that we had been so busy that we hadn’t yet spent much time locally. We decided to fix that on Saturday.

Earlier in the week, we ate in a little Italian restaurant, Cafe Picobella just a couple of blocks away in 4th Avenue at 5th Street but we had previously driven down 7th Street which is the hub of Melville’s restaurant and bar area. We decided that we would start the day with brunch there.

After the overnight storms, the day had dawned bright, clear and hot. We walked up to 7th Street and strolled up and down to see what grabbed our attention before settling on Bread and Roses where I enjoyed an omelette with smoked salmon and cream cheese and Ishbel went for the steak and eggs.

The restaurants attract a lot of people from all over Johannesburg, not just the locals. The influx of people inevitably attracts street vendors as well. Our eye was caught by these ladies selling baskets.

After brunch, we had a short wander but the temperature was already up in the 30s, so we headed back to relax at the apartment. We’re pretty much down to two meals a day at the moment, and that’s particularly true after such a large breakfast so we took some time to review our Soweto photos from the previous day, had some communications with friends and family back home, and played our instruments for a while.

In the early evening, we decided we would venture out again to find a dinner venue. Again we strolled up 7th Street but we were sold on Poppy’s by the sound of cool jazz music floating out of it. We managed to grab a pavement table that allowed us to hear the music and see the band.

 It turns out that these three cats had all played in Hugh Masakela‘s band. Masakela was known as the father of South African jazz and built a global reputation as a musician. When he was a young man playing jazz in South Africa, Louis Armstrong sent him one of his own trumpets as a gift. He died at the start of 2018, but Ishbel and I were lucky enough to have seen him play in Brighton a few years ago. He was wonderful. As you can imagine, stumbling across musicians of this quality in a neighborhood restaurant in Johannesburg was a rare and unexpected treat for us.

We enjoyed our meals accompanied by a couple of pints of Soweto Gold then, after the band had finished, made our way home at the end of our most laid-back day of the trip so far.

We booked our first ever AirBnB Experience for Friday. It was called One Day in Soweto and was hosted by Sipho. If you recall, we had already met one Sipho in South Africa: our guide for our tour of Robben Island jail. This time, Sipho was younger.

We had arranged to meet at the Hector Pietersen museum and memorial. Sipho recognised us as soon as we parked the car and reassured us that someone would look after it until we got back. Another couple was joining us on the tour and they arrived dead on time for the noon start. Sipho started with an explanation of the circumstances of Hector Pietersen’s death, but then put the story into the context of the unchanged geography of the place where we were standing and walked us along to the point where Hector was actually shot, and where the first of an avenue of commemorative olive trees was planted by Nelson Mandela. We then walked down Vilakazi St, the street of two Nobel Prize winners. Nelson Mandela’s house is now a museum, but Desmond Tutu’s daughter still lives in the same house her father occupied.

 At the end of Vilakazi St we climbed a small hill at the back of the houses which gave us an extensive view over Orlando West, which is the part of Soweto we were in, and Orlando East, which was our next stop.

We walked down and crossed the busy main road which divides the two Orlandos, named for Johannesburg’s mayor of 1925-6, Edwin Orlando Leake. As we crossed the main road, we spotted the commercial signwriters at work in the picture at the top of the page. There seems to be less graffiti in Soweto because blank concrete space is rented out for local businesses to paint advertising signs on. We then strolled uphill to our lunch spot: Nkukhu Box. Ishbel had chicken and pap with hot sauce, and I had a hot kota:

After lunch we continued our stroll. There are a lot of streetside vendors of both goods and services and we were particularly taken by this gentleman offering clothing repairs and alterations on the verge at a busy junction.

We tipped as we went for photos that we took. Sipho pointed out to us that, because of the areas we were visiting, locals were pleased to see tourists making the effort to visit. In fact, at one point, someone approached Sipho and asked if he could get his photo taken with Ishbel and me. He produced his mobile phone, handed it to Sipho, and put his arms around us. We all three grinned broadly and he went off happy with his snapshot of old white Sowetan tourists.

We continued our walk to the Orlando Stadium, home of the Orlando Pirates and the place where Nelson Mandela addressed the people of Soweto shortly after his release from captivity.

Orlando East is the home of the Orlando Pirates. Orlando West is the home of the Kaizer Chiefs – a football club long before they were a band.

From the stadium, it was time for a break from walking. For our next leg of the tour, we were taking a minibus taxi. These things are ubiquitous in South Africa and are used as a cost efficient way of getting from A to B. At least, they’re used by people who understand how the system works. There are a range of hand signals whereby you indicate where you want to go and the driver indicates where he is headed. You actually need to know in which direction your destination lies before you can even contemplate this. Luckily, Sipho knew that the relevant signal for us was pointing straight back over your shoulder, so we got the right minibus. This took us up to Bara, the area around the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, the third largest hospital in the world.

It is also home to a frenetic market and what is probably the largest minibus taxi rank in the world. The couple who were with us on the tour decided to have an interesting chat with one of the vendors: a doctor of traditional African medicine. Declining the opportunity to acquire a potion that will provide a man with all-night vigour, they eventually bought some herbs which can be burnt together with chicken blood to enable communication with one’s ancestors. He was a robust Norwegian chap, so I’m not sure how his Viking ancestors would react to being summoned in such a way.

From the market, we continued our stroll heading down towards the Soweto Towers, the decommissioned chimneys of the Orlando Power Station which now act as giant advertising banners as well as a bungee jumping hotspot.

More importantly by this stage of the day, there is a bar at the base of the towers. We all welcomed a cold beer as we had walked a fair distance by this time and the day had been blisteringly hot. We could see some storm clouds in the distance but they didn’t trouble us as we relaxed over our drinks.

After quenching our thirst, it was a walk back up to Bara to the rush hour frenzy of the minibus taxis going everywhere across the city – and beyond. There were minibuses, with luggage trailers, headed for Zimbabwe and Lesotho among other places. We managed to get on the second taxi to arrive and went back to the start point at the museum. Although advertised as a four and a half hour experience, we had been on the go for a full six hours. And we had loved every single minute of it.

Sipho has an insta account that you could check out if you want to see more of what he does. I’d recommend it, and I’d recommend his tour if you find yourself in this part of the world.

All that remained for us was the easy drive home. Except, remember those storm clouds I mentioned earlier? About halfway home, I heard a loud clunk on the roof of the car. Followed by several thousand more. We got caught driving in an outrageous summer hailstorm. We tried to follow the example of a number of other cars and pull onto the verge under the shelter of the trees. Except I somehow contrived to miss the trees entirely. I decided it was abating after a couple of minutes and got back on the road. It had turned out that the other couple on the tour were staying at an AirBnB just along the road from us so we had driven them back to their place before heading home and parking up for the night. The thunder and lightning continued throughout the entire night.

On Thursday, we decided we would visit the Apartheid Museum, so we had a gentle start to the day before driving across Johannesburg to get there. Interestingly, the museum came into being as a result of the process for granting casino licenses. To be awarded a license, bidders had to demonstrate how they would improve tourism and the local economy, which is why the museum neighbours a casino.

The first sense you get of the impact of apartheid is at the ticket office, when you are handed these tickets…

…and you’re forced to use separate entrances to the building. As you pass through the opening exhibition, you are bombarded by an astonishing array of signs designed to keep the races apart. The sheer volume of signage required is actually a demonstration of just how artificial the segregation policy was.

When we got to the museum proper, the first thing we encountered was a temporary exhibition on the life of Nelson Mandela. This was very interesting and covered everything from his being named Rolihlahla at birth to being given the name Nelson by his teacher on his first day of school, through his growing political awareness and founding of the ANC youth wing, all the way up to his inauguration as president. As a Glaswegian, I have always regarded it as a matter of civic pride that we were one of the first places in the world to name a street in his honour.

Mandela was awarded the freedom of the city in 1981 and the following year Glasgow’s mayor launched a global petition for his release from prison which was ultimately signed by 2,500 city mayors worldwide. In 1986, St. George’s Place was renamed Nelson Mandela Place. Largely because it was the postal address of the South African High Commission in the city.

After the Mandela exhibition, we went to the main apartheid exhibition, which didn’t pull any punches. Although apartheid was officially implemented by the National Party government elected in 1948, the seeds of the policy had been sown much earlier through the housing policies that existed for, in particular, native africans who had migrated to the cities in search of, usually manual, employment in heavy industry. Segregation was strictly enforced through an ever expanding set of legislation which began with the pass laws. Everyone was classified according to what an assessor determined their race was, but appeals were possible…

The growth of the black political consciousness in response to these unjust laws and the absence of the vote, led to the creation of political movements, most famously the African National Congress. The ANC was promptly banned by the South African government and it became a crime to be a member.

Apart from an examination of the roots of apartheid, there were also various videos of newsreels from the various periods. The one I remember from my youth was the Soweto Uprising when schoolchildren began protesting at the government’s decision to start teaching many subjects in Afrikaans, regardless of what the teaching language had been previously. This had the effect of stunting the studies of many bright and capable students. Much as if the British government decided it would start delivering lessons in French. Police fired tear gas at the schoolkids and, when they did not disperse, started firing live rounds into the crowd. There’s an iconic photograph from that first day of protests that shows a young man carrying the body of a 13 year old boy, Hector Pietersen,  accompanied by his sister.

As a schoolboy myself at the time, I couldn’t imagine the terror these kids were facing, And it continued for another 15 years.

The exhibition overall is extremely powerful and, I would think, a must-see if you are going to put South Africa in context. Particularly moving was the last video room, where they show actual footage of victims’ families confronting their relatives’ murderers. It’s both riveting and chilling. The museum says they expect a visit to take between one and a half and three hours. We spent four and a half hours there.

Wednesday was our first full day in Johannesburg. We have a fairly short list of things to do here so we’re going to be playing it by ear somewhat. One thing we had come across in our research was the Sterkfontein Cave Complex, and the Cradle of Humankind Museum at Maropeng. Google Maps advised it was a 45 minute drive away so we decided to give it a try.

We went to the caves first as the website advised it got busier as the day wore on, and arrived there in time for the 11am tour. Ishbel was absolutely delighted to get her first ever experience of a discount for seniors. Now that she’s over 60, she qualifies. She was even more delighted when the lady in the ticket office assumed I would also be entitled and I had to vigorously defend my youthful right to pay full whack. My boyish good looks may well be on the wane.

Everyone on the tour as issued with a hairnet, to prevent transfer of hair-dwelling bugs, and a crash helmet. It felt like overkill, but I was glad of it the couple of times my head bumped against the roof. There was a long staircase to descend into the caves and a reasonable full size walk for most of the way. Towards the end, there was a section that required quite a bit of stooping and some crawling, so the warnings at the start about claustrophobia should be taken seriously. We were glad to get to the end and the upward section back to the surface.

There have been quite a number of hominid fossils discovered in the caves over the years, and our guide was very knowledgeable in discussing both the palaeontology and geology of the area. I assumed he must have had a geology degree, but he didn’t. Very impressive.

After the caves, we went to Maropeng where they have an excellent exhibition on a recent (2013) archaeology/palaeontology dig where they found bones of 15 individuals from a hitherto unknown hominid species. They also had a display of the various hominids that have been known to exist over geological time. Well worth seeing.

After completing our tour, we had a cold drink. Temperature was in the 30s, so we were feeling the heat. Thereafter, we headed back to our apartment in Jozi, which I believe is the locals’ preferred abbreviation rather than Joburg. Ishbel has been navigating on this trip and has been doing a pretty good job, despite the sometimes difficult to follow road signage we’ve encountered. We decided to come back via 7th Street here in Melville, which seems to be the restaurant hub for the area. It certainly looked like wall to wall restaurants as we drove down it. We decided for tonight to start slow and take the easy walk to an Italian restaurant in 4th avenue, which is only three blocks away. We had a nice pizza – thin crust is the preferred base over here. Afterwards, we had a nightcap in a Mexican bar/restaurant just along the road from there before calling it a night.