Sanbonani!!!
This is TA Jeff Sternberg reporting in from Johannesburg, where it has been 8 full days since our Professor, 25 students and I departed last Thursday morning. It has been one jam-packed, assumption challenging, and eye opening week, replete with both tremendous insights and a certain jet-lagged manic energy. From our first day exploring Melville, the neighborhood in which we are staying, to today exploring illegal mining camps in informal townships outside Soweto, students have been exposed to first hand experiences with the issues that others can only read about.
From our home base at the Life on Third guest house, and under the leadership and guidance of Professor Liza Weinstein (or as Hamoud calls her "Professor!") and our charming tour guide Sibu-Sissou, we have snaked our way all around the city, from the Maboneng arts District just outside the Central Business District, out to the informal settlements and RDP Government constructed houses of Soweto (the South Western Townships) on the urban fringe which used to house the segregated black community under apartheid.
Before traveling to all of these sites, students read articles touching on the social issues and dynamics taking place in these specific physical locations before visiting them the next day, experiencing them first hand and testing for themselves whether they agreed with the conclusions drawn in these academic articles.
To understand these locations, and the issues they face, in their historical context, students received lectures from distinguished scholars in the Johannesburg area such as: Prof. Alan Mabin (lecturing on apartheid and the steps made forward in housing and urban planning under the post-apartheid Mandela government); Prof. Trevor Ngwane (talking about recent national politics and the Rhodes and Fees must fall social movements); Prof. Margot Rubin (lecturing on housing schemes and large scale residential planning conducted since 1994 to redress racial segregation, evaluating its successes and failures); and Geography Professors Sian Butcher and Alex Wafer (taking us on a bus tour of the recently constructed mixed income housing development "Cosmo City").
The students have also had the opportunity to visit and tour areas that most tourists are not such as the informal housing settlement "Kliptown", meeting with local activist and social center founder Bob Skye, and the rehabbed former largest vertical housing settlement in the world "Ponte Tower", guided by a local social enterprise committed to challenging negative perceptions about the tower and neighborhood.
The students also had the privilege to go on rounds with a former member of the liberation movement, former government official, and current labor and environmental activist David Van Wyk, lead researcher at the Benchmarks Foundation as he made his way through mining settlements, measuring radiation and environmental pollution levels in communities adjacent to Johannesburg's gold mines, which has caused large amounts of health problems and devastation in these already underprivileged communities.
The group is approaching the weekend where they will take a visit to cradle of human kind on Saturday and then go on a game drive (safari) early on Sunday. The students will be closing out their time in Johannesburg with visits to Santon, Melrose Arch, Yeoville, and the Gauteng Regional Observatory before leaving for Cape Town on Thursday for another 20 days of experiential learning, exploring the city nestled on a mountain abutting the ocean.
Stay tuned for updates from our students themselves, recounting and reflecting on their experiences thus far.
This is TA Jeff Sternberg reporting in from Johannesburg, where it has been 8 full days since our Professor, 25 students and I departed last Thursday morning. It has been one jam-packed, assumption challenging, and eye opening week, replete with both tremendous insights and a certain jet-lagged manic energy. From our first day exploring Melville, the neighborhood in which we are staying, to today exploring illegal mining camps in informal townships outside Soweto, students have been exposed to first hand experiences with the issues that others can only read about.
From our home base at the Life on Third guest house, and under the leadership and guidance of Professor Liza Weinstein (or as Hamoud calls her "Professor!") and our charming tour guide Sibu-Sissou, we have snaked our way all around the city, from the Maboneng arts District just outside the Central Business District, out to the informal settlements and RDP Government constructed houses of Soweto (the South Western Townships) on the urban fringe which used to house the segregated black community under apartheid.
Before traveling to all of these sites, students read articles touching on the social issues and dynamics taking place in these specific physical locations before visiting them the next day, experiencing them first hand and testing for themselves whether they agreed with the conclusions drawn in these academic articles.
To understand these locations, and the issues they face, in their historical context, students received lectures from distinguished scholars in the Johannesburg area such as: Prof. Alan Mabin (lecturing on apartheid and the steps made forward in housing and urban planning under the post-apartheid Mandela government); Prof. Trevor Ngwane (talking about recent national politics and the Rhodes and Fees must fall social movements); Prof. Margot Rubin (lecturing on housing schemes and large scale residential planning conducted since 1994 to redress racial segregation, evaluating its successes and failures); and Geography Professors Sian Butcher and Alex Wafer (taking us on a bus tour of the recently constructed mixed income housing development "Cosmo City").
The students have also had the opportunity to visit and tour areas that most tourists are not such as the informal housing settlement "Kliptown", meeting with local activist and social center founder Bob Skye, and the rehabbed former largest vertical housing settlement in the world "Ponte Tower", guided by a local social enterprise committed to challenging negative perceptions about the tower and neighborhood.
The students also had the privilege to go on rounds with a former member of the liberation movement, former government official, and current labor and environmental activist David Van Wyk, lead researcher at the Benchmarks Foundation as he made his way through mining settlements, measuring radiation and environmental pollution levels in communities adjacent to Johannesburg's gold mines, which has caused large amounts of health problems and devastation in these already underprivileged communities.
The group is approaching the weekend where they will take a visit to cradle of human kind on Saturday and then go on a game drive (safari) early on Sunday. The students will be closing out their time in Johannesburg with visits to Santon, Melrose Arch, Yeoville, and the Gauteng Regional Observatory before leaving for Cape Town on Thursday for another 20 days of experiential learning, exploring the city nestled on a mountain abutting the ocean.
Stay tuned for updates from our students themselves, recounting and reflecting on their experiences thus far.
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