Broadway in South Africa

Day 2 Joburg

I’m still reeling from the close to such an incredible and whirlwind week. Very few moments go by without thinking about those kids and the last day of camp. Such an inspiring thing to be a part of…watching those kids get up in front of their family and community members en masse to dance and sing with us AND to even do some of their other work from class — playing scenes from their improv lessons and acting out some of the stories they wrote in playwriting. One especially about a monster who ate people and cows in China, but he couldn’t find anyone to eat because all the people were thin and hungry, with no meat on their bones. Then one day he found a girl with meat on her bones but couldn’t eat her because he fell in love with her. She asked her father, the king, for permission to marry the monster, but the king said no because they were from different kinds and they ran away. But the king was so brokenhearted that his daughter ran away, that he begged her to come back and gave permission for the to marry and live happily ever after. And they acted it out on stage. So special.

The house was packed which was really important for the kids as support. Some of that was because the staff and people who helped us put this camp together at JL Zwane worked so endlessly. Nceba, our facilitator to whom I forever indebted, actually drove out an hour and a half before the performance to PICK UP parents and family of kids from Khayletsha and Nyanga who couldn’t afford to travel to Gugulethu and see their kids. So sad to leave them, but I have a feeling all those hugs and tears will last me until the next time I see them…

Huge tangent there, I’m supposed to be talking about our day today in Joburg. Jen is blogging about last nights incredible concert at Montecasino so I won’t be a spoiler (but it was great) and today was another really humbling day of learning experiences and cultural immersion.

This morning we departed the hotel en route to the Apartheid Museum, but first did a city tour. So interestingly, since we arrived yesterday in Johannesburg I haven’t really felt like I understood why everyone says it’s so dangerous, etc etc. Honestly, driving from the airport yesterday I turned to Stanley and said, “This looks like LA.” Huge, rolling, endless suburbs, I thought “where’s the REAL Joburg?” Well, that didn’t last long.

We drove downtown which was quite a shock I wasn’t prepared for (especially after driving through some beautiful suburbs with mansions, including one of Mandela’s huge homes). Apparently, when apartheid crumbled, all the whites left downtown to escape retaliation or sold apt and hotels for cheap without repairing them just to get out. The ensuing effect was that the dowtown crumbled into chaos. And driving in was like entering a post-apocalyptic world of shattered windows, trash, people burning campfires under overpasses and in parking lots, and drug dealers shouting, pointing, and glaring at us from the street corners. It was frightening to see. We also drove past Ponte City, a huge skyscraper that was written about for our benefit concert back in NYC in October. It was a mecca of metropolitan whites during apartheid but afterword turned into a massive slum where people threw trash into the massive center airshaft core until it piled up about 5 stories. They also robbed people in the corridors and then threw them to their deaths in the core. Strange to drive by it and think about its dark past (though it’s now trying to be restored)

After downtown we made it out to the Apartheid Museum which was an epic experience on so many levels. It was so fascinating and sad to learn more about the history of South Africa, especially BEFORE apartheid. Everyone was always fighting or killing everyone else — the British fighting the Boers, the British fighting the Zulus, the Boers fighting the natives and making them their slaves and servants. Just crazy stuff. And then of course, to see the world of inequality and segregation that was designed here which lasted into the 1990s. What I can’t comprehend is why the rest of the world stood by for so long without doing a thing. It took until the late 70s for America to boycott South African products in protest. At the end of the museum, there is a room with stones and a giant South African. Every visitor can pick up a stone from the corner of the room and place it on a massive pile, in recognition of their horrors of the past but in reconciliation for a better future. May we all strive for that regardless of our country of origin.

So now we are all together in the hotel again celebrating our own momentous event in history: the inauguration of Barack Obama. Time to say goodbye to the last dark 8 years, have a glass of champagne and celebrate a new beginning for us all.

-Zach Bandler, Co-Executive Director, Broadway in South Africa