6. Parilament and Dennis

Today was another long day and I have to go to bed and be up again in three and a half hours so I will keep this one short. I will however update it when I have more time to. I have some lovely piccies but the camera is flat, so await edits when I next have internet access.....

Today we went to the South African Parliament, to the University of Cape Town and had an evening with Dennis Goldberg. The morning was quite lovely, the buildings of the South African Parliament once again fabulous and the guide accommodating. Due to the specialist interests in Parliamentary structures held by most of the group, I was somewhat left behind in the discussions which  allowed me to appreciate my surroundings. Such a magnificent building, with the customary dark woods and marbles, aged artifacts and leather doors, it would have been a shame not to have had the time to become immersed in the colours and textures. As we wandered through the buildings, I saw amazing works of art; tapestries made from seed beads, so intricate that I had to take a second look to ensure that it was not a trick of the eye and actually was beads. Downstairs was a gathering for women in Parliament; the South African Parliament has approximately 200 female members. It was amazing to see the different styles of dress, from the modern to the more traditional; there was even a woman in a yellow crochet style skirt and matching headdress; beautiful. One thing I noticed about this gathering was the smell in the room; a gathering of hot people, perfumes mingling in the air......the colours in the room too - just a happy assault on the eyes. It made me think of Parliament at home....and just how different the atmosphere would be.

The afternoon was spent at the University of Cape town, where we met with the students union.  I found it interesting to understand how South African students are facing the same kind of issues we faced when I was first at uni; things like fees and barriers to learning... higher education can be expensive and elitist anywhere.

The evening was spent at the home of Dennis Goldberg, a white man who spent 22 years in prison for his involvement in the fighting against apartheid. Anyone who knows me will know that I was somewhat apprehensive about this meeting, as I was unsure how I would feel about meeting someone who was part of a violent protest group. I had no preconceived ideas about him, but wondered what kind of man he would be. We spent the evening in his home, chatting with young, deprived black Africans.  I helped in the kitchen. Dennis sent me out to talk to some of the young people. I love meeting new people, but I felt awkward; a bit like being at a house party full of sober strangers. After a mix and mingle, we sat in Dennis' front room, and listened to him talk about his part in the struggles, the injustices - and his time in prison. He noted how his treatment as a while man had been marginally better than Mandela's.  I won't go in to great detail about what he spoke about as it will take a long while for me to process the depth of his words. For now, know that social justice means a lot, big business needs keeping in check and most of all, keep fighting for right. If you would like to know more about him, have a look here. He also happens to have fabulous taste in art and a magnificent view from the kitchen. I washed up.

Swaziland next; we're flying there. If you are following this, google it and see what you can find out. I probably will not able to write for a few days as the net connection is apparently a bit dodgy, but in Arnie style; I'll be back..........

5. Robben Island

Today we went to Robben Island; the notorious prison where many famous political prisoners were held during the times of apartheid. I won't go into massive detail about the prison; it was a prison and a brutal one at that. Let your imagination fill in the gaps for you.

Robben Island is beautiful; the lanscape interesting and the flora and fauna astonishing. The contrast posed by the beauty of the island and the brutality of the prison is enough to make anyone wonder what kind of world they live in. We were guided through by an ex-inmate with a deeply resonating voice and an expressive face; he talked us through what life was like for the people incarcerated there. He brought to life what could easily have been hidden in the sands of time; more than a guide, he was an educator.

We were also given a tour of the whole island; the graves of a previous lepper colony, the village in which ex prison officers and ex inmates still populate and the limestone quarry where the hours spent toiling in bright light caused prison inmates to lose their sight.

So many things shocked me today, from the sheer coldness of the prison buildings, the size of the prisoners cells, to the inhumane treatment, but the thing that stuck with me the most was the prison menu. That may seem a strange comment, but look at the picture and make your own opinions.

(Coloured=non white ie. Asian, mixed race etc. Bantu=Black African)

The parting shot from our guide was that we should spread the word about what happened here and ensure it never happens again and quite rightly so.

4. Cape Town Journey of Remembrance

After a mammoth journey, which included a (surprise) delayed First Great Western Train and an 11 hour flight, we made it to Cape Town. Stepping off the plane into typical British summer was a surprise, as I wasn't really expecting mist and rain. My first impressions of Cape Town were that it was not too dissimilar from home; a generic European looking place, with greenery and spatterings of Victorian and Georgian looking architecture and even palm trees, just like home; not too much of a shock.

After a hot shower and a quick change of clothes, we met with our guide for the day; a pleasant man with a face which had his life written on it. Our first stop was to be District 6, Cape Town. For those unfamiliar with what happened in District Six, you can read about it here.

It was emotive having a man who had lived through the history explain it to us; the forced removals of black people because they were not white, the total destruction of homes and the eventual return of the land to the people who lived there.

After District Six, we headed for Langa and on the way through, passed through a place named Pinelands.

Pinelands is an area of Cape Town filled with large and stunning houses; sadly it was built on a lie. Originally, Pinelands was intended to be a "garden village" for for the local communities to use, but ,after tonnes of sand was removed and fertile soil imported, Pinelands was turned into a Wisteria Lane of sorts, filled with prosperous white South Africans. The further through Pinelands you go, the closer you get to Langa and with that closeness comes a largely increased presence of razor wire and electric fences intended to keep the black majority and the coloured communities at bay. Even the infrastructure in the vicinity is designed to aid separation; large highways intersect the landscape, isolating the different communities from each other.


On arriving in Langa, we had it explained that once, these areas were run almost as prisons; I can say that as today I saw the guard house on the corner of Langa; a community originally for migrant workers. If you wanted to visit someone in Langa, you had to have a permit. If you wanted to work in the area, you had to have a permit. If you did not have a permit, you could be arrested and someone would have to buy you out. Women, whose partners went to the area to find work often tried to find them and by doing so, also got arrested. They got out when white South Africans went to the (what can I call them but prisons?) prisons and choose a domestic help; once they had completed their time in servitude, they were allowed home, often without finding said husband.

In Langa, we visited a set of dwellings; I call them dwellings rather than houses as they are seriously dilapidated. Originally, they were the dorms in which migrant workers slept, but now are filled with the unemployed and the skint. The first thing that hit me when we went was the smell of chicken cooking on a metal drum, the second, the unmistakable smell of urine. Next came the wave of horror, that I was even there, camera in hand, thinking about taking pictures of it. I took pictures so you can see what I mean and I can tell you I did not feel good about it. We were welcomed into a gentleman's home so that we could look around; I can only assume that as family of our guide, he understood that we needed to see what the legacy of apartheid is in reality; that poverty in this part of the world is suffered mostly by those who are not white. The juxta-position of the beauty of the Pinelands with the dorm buildings is unreal; I struggle to believe that the two can coexist in such close proximity.

Our guide took a few of us to a shebeen; a sort of township bar. All I need to say is look at the photos. I really want to go back one day and have a pint and share the reality, as I sense that these places help to create community, as inns once did in our culture.

After seeing the homes of these people, I imagined I could not feel much more today. After an 11 hour flight and such a culture shock, I thought I might have a bit of a clue about what had happened in South Africa; The Dutch and The British were cruel, over time caused people to fall into abject poverty through enforced racial segregation,broke yup marriages, stole land and generally ruled the roost in a Hitleresque fashion. Cue a visit to the site of the Trojan Horse Massacre. Heard of it? Nor had I.....

15th October 1985

"On this day, a railway delivery truck driven by security force members and South African Transport Services employees drove down Thornton Road. Hidden in wooden crates at the back of the vehicle were Security Force Members, South African Railway Police, South African Police and members of the South African Defence Force. A group of onlookers and protesters who were angry at the Laws of Apartheid prevalent at the time, had gathered at the corner of St. Simon's Road. As anticipated, someone in the crowd threw a stone towards the truck as it passed. The next moment the security force men arose from their hiding place and, without any warning, used automatic shotguns to fire shots into the crowd. People scattered. Michael Miranda, Shaun Magmoed and Jonathan Claasen were gunned down, and died as a result. A further thirteen adults and two children were also injured in the shooting. "

(See here).

The rest of the day was filled with similar tales of police and authority brutality. Rather than write, I will just show you the pictures of what we saw.......

When the day ended we thanked our guide for leading us through the Journey of Remembrance. He thanked us for giving him a day outside the townships. We should have thanked him for everything, as he was a young man once, who gave up dreams of an education and a career for dreams of freedom.

testing technology.

does it work from a mobile?

Let's talk about carbon.

Strangely enough, no one I have spoken to about this trip has questioned that me, an environmental rep fro Prospect, is flying to South Africa for two weeks, with apparently no thought to the environment.

As I am sure everyone knows, flying is a pretty carbon heavy activity; figures vary greatly, but lets go with the BBC's; aviation currently accounts for approximately 4% of greenhouse gases, [but] scientists believe that figure will rise to over 60% by the year 2050.

I did one carbon calculation here, which gave me CO2 emissions of 3.11 tonnes ( I did use the DEFRA reccommended radiative forcing of a 1.9 multiplacation). The question is, what do I do about it? I do not believe in "offsetting" in the traditional sense, because I feel that there is too much uncertiantly in "funding an equivilent carbon saving somewhere else." I would rather just reduce my emissions full stop. In this case, I think I do need to do something to offset the carbon I will benefit from in flying to South Africa. The question is how? Carbon offsetting as a largely unregulated industry. There's also the problem that if I buy a tree, someone is going to have to make sure it stays alive, forever, otherwise, it just releases more carbon and I can't handle the guilt. I may go with Equiclimate, a bunch who friends have supported for a few years and one of the four (yes FOUR) projects who subscribe to the Government's voluntary standards on Carbon Offsetting. (This means that anyone else may do whatever they like with your money). I might not, I might donate directly to a charity who work in related fields. Do any of you have suggestions for me?

Some more info for you, taken from here.

There are three gases emitted by aircraft which contribute to global warming: H2O, CO2 and NOx The most obvious is the water vapour which forms condensation trails. Since the air in the upper troposphere is naturally very dry, water vapour emitted by aircraft can make a big difference.

Although these contrails reflect a little sunlight away from earth, they reflect back to earth much more invisible infra-red radiation which would otherwise escape to space -and therefore they have an overall warming effect. This is hard to measure accurately, because the contrails eventually spread out and become indistinguishable from natural cirrus clouds.

Jet-fuel - kerosene - is a mixture of substances produced by distilling crude oil, which can be represented by C13H28. The chemical equation for burning it is as follows:2C13H28 + 40O2 =>26CO2 + 28H2O

So you can see, that for every 14 water molecules produced, the aircraft must also emit 13 of CO2. This is also a greenhouse gas and will stay in the atmosphere warming the earth for an average of 100 years, some of it for 1000s of years. There's no way that you can get the energy from such fossil fuel without producing that much CO2. It's not a by-product that can be "scrubbed" from the exhaust.

A Boeing-747 can burn over 200 tons of fuel in one flight. A simple "rule of thumb" to remember, is that a plane uses about as much fuel, and therefore produces about as much CO2, as would every passenger driving one car the same distance. So next time you're thinking of flying thousands of miles, think how much petrol you would need to put in a car to go so far. Since take-off uses a disproportionate amount of fuel, short-haul flights emit a bit more per passenger-kilometer, and long-haul flights a bit less. Note: the car comparison is for typical European cars, not for the less efficient American gas-guzzlers. Trains produce, on the other hand, about 1/3rd as much CO2 per passenger-kilometer and could potentially be run from renewable sources of electricity.

3. Go MMO!

The lovely bods at the MMO have advertised my trip on the staff intranet and office notices. One of my friends and colleagues Rebecca Korda is going to Africa too; to climb Kilimanjaro for Medicines Sans Frontieres. Support her if you can!