Umoja – The spirit of togetherness

What a weekend it has been! Apartheid museum Saturday afternoon and the Mandoza musical in the evening. Up early today to spend the day in Soweto, first attending a church ceremony, then visiting the museum for the Soweto uprising, Mandela’s house, lunch at a Soweto restaurant and finishing with a visit to the Cotlands hospice and orphanage.


The apartheid museum gave an almost too real description of the rise and the fall of the apartheid regime, the principles behind and the cruel and unjust measures that were required to maintain it. Afterwards you can only ask yourself how it was possible to justify and build such an inhuman system.


A quote that shows how the apartheid politicians saw their role. In a TV interview one of the politicians even argued that the apartheid model had proven its worth and that it should be used in other places in the world. Let us be very happy that this never happened!

The beauty of the South African solution is that it starts and ends with reconciliation. The South Africans (at least the ones I have met, both black, coloured and white) truly believes in the ‘Rainbow Nation’ - where all colours live together as one – as the only way to a better future. I think they have gotten it so right! This picture shows the exit from the Apartheid Museum.

In the van on the way back from the Apartheid Museum.

Saturday night we attend the Mandoza musical. Also this story was build up around the freedom struggle and the liberation. It showed how the music and dance evolved with the historic events from tribal life to today’s rock stars and it described the important role music played to keep morals high when times were tough. It was an incredible display of energy and joy! We have nothing like this in Europe! The buckets on the head of these ladies says ‘Umoja loves you’. Umoja means ‘The spirit of togetherness’ in one of South Africa’s 11 languages. Don’t ask me which one.

This morning started with a ceremony in the Grace Bible Church in Soweto. The church must be able to seat at least a couple of thousand people. The ceremony almost felt like a continuation of the musical the night before; full of energy and happiness! The speeches were both spiritual and very down to earth including both the current economic crisis and yesterday’s rugby game where South Africa beat New Zealand.

We met these two guys on our way.

Our two guides for the day, Thomas (left) and Ben. Born and raised in Soweto. Ben showed us how you in Soweto tell the minivan taxis where you are going only by the use of hand signs.

Do you need a new set of tires? You can get everything done on the streets of Soweto.

What surprised me the most was how developed Soweto was. There are shopping malls, stadiums, schools, hospitals, good roads, water and electricity. Here is the local Nissan dealer. It is, after all, also a city with four million people.
By the way, did you know that the name Soweto comes from ‘South West Township’, which again stems from the fact that Soweto lies south west of Johannesburg.

This picture shows the absolutely worst part of Soweto. This was actually what I expected all of it to look like, but according to Ben it is only 10% of the people in Soweto that lives like this. This number is even decreasing as the South African government makes progress on its Residential Development Program that has build houses for several million people.

How about a couple of nuclear reactors in your back yard? They are not active anymore, but you can get a bungee jump from the top for fifty dollars.

Our guide Ben in front of the monument for Hector Pieterson at the museum for the Soweto uprising in 1976. The uprising was a protest against the government’s decision that education must be done in Afrikaans, a language that neither teachers nor students amongst the black population understood. The police opened fire on the crowd and 69 people (officially) were killed. Hector Pieterson was the first one to fall. He was thirteen years old.
‘I have also been throwing rocks at the police around here’ Ben said at one point. Another reminder of how recent all this has happened.

We paid a quick visit to Mandela’s house. There is not much too see there other than it is very small.

Lunch at a restaurant in Soweto. They apparently got our name wrong, so here are the three IMC ladies Valeria [Russia], Misayo [Japan] and Yadira [Colombia].

The last stop on the road was the Cotlands hospice and orphanage. The children at Cotlands are mostly from families where the parents are either sick with or dead from AIDS. Most of the kids themselves are also HIV positive. Although the circumstances are so sad Cotlands is a wonderful place to visit. As everywhere else where you have kids around there is lots of energy and desire to play. The older kids (3-5 years) were ready to play when they saw 70 daddies and 20 mamas walking in. For more than an hour we all played around and had some good old childish fun.

In their worst year Cotlands had 87 deaths. Last year they had one. The difference is the treatments that now are available. The children live longer, which creates new problems as they now must have support for a much longer period. A ‘winners curse’ as our Economics Professor Ralf Boscheck would call it. Although a positive problem, it is still a problem.

Cotlands had an IMD ICP team working with them last year. They mentioned several time that the team had had a major impact on them and that they still were implementing the recommendations that the team had made. We had already heard about the IMD/Cotlands project from the IMD side, but we took this opportunity to get some input from Cotlands as well. We got some good ideas and suggestions that we will bring with us to this year’s similar project with Koinonia in Kenya.

Thorsten