So the time came for our final day 😦
Waking up in Johannesburg we were greeted by a buffet breakfast so fill us up for our long journey back home.
Our day started with a journey down Africa’s busiest motorway towards Africa’s biggest sports stadium; Johannesburg’s Soccer City. Here we stopped for a few photos at the site of the 2010 World Cup Final, before heading towards the township of Soweto.
Soweto proved to be a real change, and an eye opener to the ‘other’ side of South Africa. Here we saw many shanty dwellings of homemade huts, with rubbish strewn all around, animals running freely and people working on homemade stalls. This really did show to all of us the lifestyle differences across just one city in South Africa.
Once in Soweto we drove towards the only street in the world with the home of two Nobel Peace Prize winners on it – Vilakazi Street. Here we had a tour around Nelson Mandela’s house, which has been preserved and has now become a memorial to the former president of South Africa. This provided a real insight into the struggles South Africa faced in the 20th with Apartheid.
The hard hitting emotions of this struggle were really brought to the fore at our next stop in Soweto; the Hector Pieterson Memorial.
Hector Pieterson was photographed in 1976 being carried by another student while his sister ran next to them. He was killed at the age of 13 when the police opened fire on students protesting against South Africa’s apartheid regime. This hard hitting image stands alongside a fountain and a museum here in the heart of Soweto as an emotive reminder of this struggle.
St Ivo South Africa 2014 