Days 4-6 in Cape Town

Those 3 last days have been a bit more laid back. Here is a little summary of the interesting things I did!

 

Apartheid Tour

I went on a free walking tour focused on the Apartheid in the city centre of Cape Town. The tour and the information provided were super interesting. During the Apartheid (from 1948 to 1990), people were classified in 4 ethnic groups: White, Black, Asian and Coloured ("mixed races"). The point of having several groups of non-white was to divide the population even more, to avoid having everyone rebelling against the white privileged minority. When the ethnic group of a person wasn't obvious, there was a special tribunal meant to determine "scientifically" the race of the doubtful cases.

Benches in front of the court judging the "doubtful cases"

To determine whether one was white or not, the court was checking how much money the people had (a white person had to be rich!), their table manners, culture... and the last test, extremely scientific, was called the "pencil and hair" test. The concept was simple: one puts a pencil on the top of your head, you have to wiggle a bit, and if the pencil falls to the ground straight away, you are white! This was linked of course to the more curly texture of the hair among black people.

The tour was very interesting and showed so many absurdities in the rules of the apartheid ; for example there was actually a 5th ethnic group, called honorary white! This was created to allow non-white people into white areas in rare occasions, like for very wealthy black people.
Furthermore, because of Japan's economical wealth, japanese people were all considered as honorary whites, while the rest of Asia such as Chinese people, were all considered as Asians. Go figure...

Today, the apartheid is officially over, but the transition from it is still ongoing... while in theory white and black have the same rights, in practice the inequalities are still huge (South Africa is the most unequal country in the world!!), and the gap between the rich, privileged white population and the poor black one, is blatant everywhere you go.

 

Completely unrelated, but look how cool those clouds are looking, moving on top of the Table Mountains... it looks like an avalanche!

 

 

Sea and Beaches tour

Today I went all around Signal Hill and Lion's Head, but from the coast line. Cape Town has a very nice walk along the sea, with beaches towards the end. After so much reading about the apartheid, you deserve some nice pictures to look at!

The view on Lion's Head from Sea Point

At some place they built a swimming pool right next to the sea... And filled with salted water too apparently:

 

You can tell this area is rich! The buildings on the picture below are all luxury hotels. Needless to say, you mostly see white people here... except for the security guards and personnel! 

I then reached a nice beach area, Clifton Bay... With a gorgeous view on the mountains:

 

Beautiful white sand on those beaches, but the water is too cold at this time of the year to swim! It's still the Atlantic Ocean here, once I move to the East and reach the Indian Ocean, the water temperature will increase.

Unfortunately after this, a fog coming from the sea started covering the coastline. By the time I reached what should be the prettiest beach, in Camps Bay, I was in a thick fog and couldn't see anything anymore. So much for my sunset on the beach! I'll try to come back some other time.