Sandy and Tom: CAPETOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

APRIL 1-2, 2014

Cape Town is truly a beautiful city. It is built at the very tip of Africa where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. Its backdrop is unusual shaped volcanic mountains, one called table top. It has a very flat top and several times a day the clouds come down and lay over the top and the people say the table cloth is now on it. Within the 50 kilometer radius that makes up Cape Town today there are four million people living there.

A Portuguese navigator came around the Cape in 1488. The Cape is not a natural harbor so there was not an interest to colonize until 1652 the Dutch decided to colonize. The Dutch East India Company conscripted laborers from their Javanese colony to help work the vineyards they planted. Soon this area was a growing port town, with immigrant from France, Portugal and Southeast Asia along with local Khoi people. The British eventually took control in 1806. In 1834 they banned slavery when it was banned in England. After that diamonds were discovered and a period of unrest began including the Boer Wars in the nineteenth and early 20^th centuries.

The period of Apartheid period started in 1948 when the National Party wrote into law that blacks and whites could not live in the same section, they could not marry except other blacks, and they couldn’t be educated. They had separated rules for colored which were mixed blood people. They could have a modest education. Blacks had to carry documents on their person that had all their information about them. If they did not have it, they were arrested and might never return. The next 50 years were terrible years for blacks but there were four men that were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by their efforts to show the world that people should not be treated differently because of the color of their skin. The first one was Albert Luthuli 1960. He worked for equal education for all. Second one was Archbishop Desmond Tutu 1984, he not only spoke from the pulpit about equality, and he also put himself in harm’s way to save lives. The last two were co-recipients in 1993: F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. deKlerk had been President of South Africa for only nine months when the riots were so bad he saw no way but to free Nelson Mandela and the political prisoners. Mandela had been in prison on Robben Island 27 years. Then de Klerk and Mandela worked on a Reconciliation plan for South Africa. South Africa is healing and they are getting the peace they deserve.