For years now I have had two cyber-friends in South Africa. Brian is a schoolteacher in Johannesburg, and his brother Clive is an attorney in Pretoria. In 2012 I finally got the chance to go and visit them, and between the two of them, they were gracious enough to share their homes with me and give me a guided tour of South Africa. So here are some of the photos I took in Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Church Square, Pretoria.
Church Square. Voortrekker monument, to dead white Afrikaner racists.
Pretoria street scene
Pretoria. Changes in street names. Under the apartheid regime, these streets were named "Verwoerd" for one of the architechts of the apartheid system and "Voortrekkers" for the Afrikaner settlers. Now, the streets in Pretoria are being renamed for people who were active in the anti-apartheid struggle, such as Steven Biko And Johan Heyns.
Pretoria. Virtually every building and house in Pretoria and Johannesburg is surrounded by barbed wire or electric fence. The crime rate is very high.
Johannesburg. Most of the city is made up of newly-built apartment complexes which provide housing for people who had been living in corrugated-tin shantytowns under apartheid.
But the shantytowns still exist on the outskirts of the city.
Origins Centre museum at the University of Wittwatersrand
Replica Australopithecine skulls
Bow and arrow quiver by the indigenous San people. Because the arrows were poisoned, the bow was not very strong.
San rock painting.
Rock painting depicting the Europeans attacking a San village and taking them away on trains
Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
Apartheid Museum entrance
Replica of Nelson Mandela's jail cell
Armored car used by South African security forces
Display of international signs and posters demanding that companies and nations cut off all economic ties with the apartheid regime. I was part of the "divestment" movement in the US.
Shopping mall in Centurion, a suburb of Johannesburg
Pretoria Zoo
Green mamba
South African penguins
Two American alligators
Wild African birds in the Caribbean flamingo pond
View from the aviary walkway
Cape wild dogs
Australian emu