Bill Seney's

Semester at Sea: Rock 6

26 Sep 2005

We arrived in Capetown about 0800 in the morning. Archbishop Tutu was up on deck to watch home drawing closer and posed with some of the students for pictures. We docked at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, which was redeveloped into a tourist area in the last 5 years. (Note that it is Victoria and Alfred, NOT Victoria and Albert, as it was named after Queen Victoria and her second son, Prince Alfred who visited South Africa in the 1860s.) The waterfront has a shopping mall, several hotels and souvenir markets.

After docking I took the city orientation tour, which took us by the Fort (established by the Dutch in 1652), St. George’s Anglican Cathedral, the Company (Dutch East India Company) gardens and a cluster of museums. I spent about an hour in the Jewish Museum. Apparently most of the Jewish population came to South Africa from Lithuania via England in the early 19th century. From there we went to Signal Mountain for a view of the city, then back to the ship.

I went to the mall at the waterfront shopping for books, then back to the ship for the evening. On arrival I found out our revised travel plans. We would be spending 2 extra days in South Africa, then have 3 days in Mauritius on the way to India instead of visiting Kenya as originally planned. Terrorism warning for the East African coast made our original plan to visit Mombassa problematic, and while I might have been willing to risk it if traveling on my own, I can see why Semester At Sea decided to play it safe.

27 Sep 2005

I had the morning free so I took a taxi back to St. George’s Cathedral for the morning service, then walked through the Company Garden to the National Library, then on to the Natural History Museum before returning to the ship.

In the afternoon I went on the District 6 Museum and Township tour. District 6 was a poor but vibrant multi-racial section of Capetown that was destroyed under the Group Areas Act of the SA parliament in the mid 1960s. About 10 thousand people were moved from the ea to either white districts of the city or to the townships, depending on their racial classification, and their homes demolished. There were plans to redevelop the area as a white only district but protests and blockades slowed the process considerably and there are still areas that are undeveloped. The museum commemorates the district, the struggle against the eviction and demolition of the homes and what happened to the residents.

After the museum we went on a township tour. These tours were started shortly after 1994 (the end of apartheid and the first democratic elections in SA) by one of the first black South Africans in the tourist industry. She held public consultations with the communities and convinced them that tourism would not only bring economic benefits but publicize how they lived and facilitate government action to remedy matters.

Our first stop was a vocational training center where township youth learned pottery and metalworking. Unemployment in the townships can exceed 40% so the training also covered the basics of starting and running a business, as jobs are rare.

From there we toured some of the housing in the townships.

Our first visit was to a former workers hostel. Under apartheid male workers were not allowed to bring their families to the cities so they stayed in single sex hostels. These buildings would be divided into units with a common kitchen, a bathroom and beds for 16 workers, 2 to 3 beds per small room. These beds were basic – a mattress on a concrete pad. There was electric lighting but no plug-ins. With the end of the pass laws families came to join their husbands, so there are now 2 or 3 families per room. The government has added electricity meters, for which the residents have to buy prepaid power cards, but they now have plug-ins for microwaves, TVs, etc.

Our next stop was at a renovated hostel, which has been converted into small apartments, with each family getting one or two rooms. They are small but much more comfortable than the unrenovated hostels. These conversions progress as money is available, but must be matched by new construction as a renovated hostel will not hold as many people as an unrenovated building.

Finally we visited the squatters’ shacks that surround the townships. These lack even the meager amenities of the hostels but the people still have hope of a better life.

We also saw but didn’t visit semi-detached housing that was originally reserved for blacks working for the government under apartheid. They were originally renters but the new government compared what they had been paying in rent to the original value of the dwellings and realized they had been paying more than what mortgage payments would have been so transferred many of the titles to the residents. As finances permit many of the residents are building extensions to their homes.

One thing that separates the townships from a slum or ghetto is that there is a strong sense of community, and that when they progress economically residents tend to stay in the community instead of leaving for the suburbs. This means the townships do not loose their natural leaders and have a stronger social structure than some US inner city districts.

We were there during a school holiday (there are schools in the townships and most get at least some education, though their schools are still underfunded) and we were greeted by lots of children. There was little or no begging, but they were excited to meet new people and many of us took pictures. One of the benefits of digital cameras is that you can show your subject the photo immediately, and the children were very excited to see themselves.

We also passed the site where 7 ANC activists had been ambushed and killed by South African Security Forces, as well as the place where Amy Bhiel died. Amy Bhiel was an American Fullbright scholar who had come to South Africa to work with the opponents of apartheid in the early 1990s, and was caught in a civic disturbance in the township. She was pulled from her car and stabbed to death. In her memory her family established a foundation to continue her work of assisting South Africans, which continues to work for economic development in the townships to this day.

28 Sep 2005

I took the cablecar to the top of Table Mountain, about 1000 metres (3300 feet) above the city. Befitting its name, the top of the mountain is flat and covered by roucks and low shrubs. There were some marvelous views of the city and I got to see a Rock Hyrax, a marmot like creature that inhabits the mountain.

I also went by the tourist information centre to see about the possibility of a safari to replace the one I had been planning for Kenya. There are a number of game farms near Cape Town, but these are artificial environments not much different from what you can see at Disney World. There are a number of parks in the East Cape and Kruger National Park in the NE part of the country, but with the school holidays these were booked. A Safari will have to wait for some other day.

In the evening I took the township music tour, where I got to here some traditional drumming, ate a traditional South African meal, then spent a couple of hours at a township jazz club.

29 Sep 2005

The day started with a bus tour of the Cape winelands. We went out to the town of Stellanboch where we toured the local museum, which had a number of historic buildings from the period of Dutch settlement, then to a winery for a wine tasting and a tour of the gardens and manor house.

Back in Capetown I went to High Tea at the hotel near where our ship was docked, then off for an evening at the opera.

The current director of the Capetown Opera had been an instructor with Semester at Sea in 2004, and our current theatre arts director had set up a visit that included not only the current production (Carmen) but included a chance to meet and speak to the director before the show. It was well attended (over 100 students) and received much positive comment from the student body. For many of them it was their first opera and I heard many positive comments.

30 Sep 2005

The morning began with a visit by fast catamaran ferry to Robbens Island. Located about 10 kilometres (6 miles) off the coast, the island has served as a prison for the Dutch, as a leper colony, as a WWII costal defense fortification and again as a political prison before assuming its current role as a museum.

On arrival we were given a bus tour of the island, followed by a tour of the prison complex itself, led by a former political prisoner. The tour included the cell where prisoner 466-64, Nelson Mandela, was kept. The island was bleak and the facilities for the prisoners were, to put it politely, minimal, but the gentleman we talked to was optimistic about the future of South Africa and spoke of reconciliation between the ethnic groups.

We returned to Capetown by lunch-time, and I had a chance to visit the Rooti, a Cape Malay restaurant in the V&A waterfront. Cape Malay cuisine mixes Malaysian and European elements, and I had Calamari, Keema Curry and crepes with strawberries and ice cream. The menu indicated that the food was Halal and they did not serve alcohol.

After this I wandered over to Chavonnes Battery. This was a defensive position originally built in 1720, which was demolished in the 1860s when the harbour was rebuilt. When the V&A Waterfront development started a few years ago the remains of the battery were fond while a bank building was being constructed. Part of the basement of the bank has been devoted to a museum where you can see the foundations of the battery and learn about its history, while a section of the battery that was just outside the bank has been rebuilt.

For dinner I went to a restaurant in the waterfront complex that served a variety of venison. I enjoyed the Springbok, which I followed up with Cape Rum Cake with ice cream.

01 Oct 2005

This day was spent at the V&A Waterfront. First I went to the Aquarium of the Two Oceans. Established in the last 5 years with assistance from the Monterey Bay aquarium in the US, it takes its name from the position of South Africa between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The west coast of South Africa has a north-bound cold current while the east coast has a south-bound warm current, so there are quite different ocean ecologies located within a hundred kilomtres (60 miles) of one another. The aquarium is not huge but it has a nice collection of exhibits based around this unifying theme, including tanks with seals, sharks and a kelp forest.

I also spent a little while in the Maritime Museum. This was not impressive but as it was a Saturday admission was free and I was able to spend some time there.

I finished off the day doing some shopping, and managed to pickup a couple of African shirts. They should be suitable for many of the places we will be visiting and for conventions, although not for work.

02 Oct 2005

I started the day off with a visit to St. George’s Cathedral. The service was High Church (smells and bells), and I was one of about a dozen people from the ship. We went out for lunch afterwards, and then I toured the South African Gallery. It did not compare to the Met in New York but then few art galleries do. There were both old masters and work by contemporary artists, as well as an interesting display on art conservation.

This was followed by a shopping expedition at the local supermarket to stock up on junk food (fruit chutney potato chips – yum!) for the next leg of the voyage, then back on ship for departure later in the evening.

We were joined on board ship by a township choir who gave a performance of traditional African music, which ended with the singing of the South African National Anthem. In this they were joined by the ship’s choir which had learned the words and music on the voyage to Capetown.

On a sadder note we arrived with 684 students but sailed with 681. Three students were expelled for repeated violations of the alcohol abuse policy and will be flying home from Capetown. This was a drastic step, but the consequences of repeated violations of the policy (I heard, from usually reliable sources, that this was a FOURTH violation for at least one of the three students) were spelled out before they sailed and Semester At Sea is responsible for their safety.

I am sure this was a last resort for the program and followed both informal and formal counseling by trained mental health professionals. I am aware of at least two other cases where students drank to the point of needing medical attention but are still on board, having mended their ways, so I am sure these three were expelled as a last resort.

We were scheduled to sail at 2300 (11PM) but with everyone on board we departed half an hour early in a successful attempt to avoid rising winds that would have complicated maneuvering in the harbor and are on our way to Mauritius.

- Bill Seney