Blogs
After a fantastic visit to Zimbabwe we headed to Johannesburg for a brief two day stay. We lodged at a backpacker hostel in Soweto and found ourselves in the midst of a neighborhood of history. Soweto was formed around 1900 as a racially segregated township for the black working force and later became home to many blacks who were forced to leave their homes, as a part of the Apartheid’s forced removal law. In 1976, police opened fire on students protesting against Afrikaanas as the official language for education. Hundreds of students were killed. However, several anti-Apartheid activists came from Soweto, including Nelson Mandela, is now home to Desmund Tutu and today its residents see their township as a beacon of hope for others who resist injustice. An excellent way to see Soweto is via bicycle which is exactly what we did, along with others and a Soweto native who gave us a great history lesson. We also squeezed in a visit to the Apartheid Museum and were blown away by the widespread injustice and violence of Apartheid, but also moved by the courage of the resistance movement captured in the story of Nelson Mandella.
From Johannesburg we headed south to the mountainous country of Lesotho. Lesotho is an island country in that it is surrounded, on all sides, by the country of South Africa. The Basotho found refuge in the mountains during war and continued their herding way of life in the mountains. Lesotho is a gorgeous country with majestic peaks, green valleys, and of course beautiful people. We spent a few days hiking at Malealea Lodge, a day in Morija visiting the birthplace of the Evangelical Church of Lesotho, another day driving through the mountains to view Mohale Dam and a final two days with the Dimmock family in the capital city of Maseru. The Dimmocks are PC(USA) mission co-workers who have lived in Southern Africa for over twenty years, some in Lesotho and some in Malawi. Frank works throughout several countries as the Africa Health Liaison while Nancy works closely with orphans and adoption in Lesotho. Lesotho has the highest percentage of orphans in the world and has the third highest HIV infection rate. These statistics became real when Nancy took us to the MIS Orphanage. We were taken aback at the number of orphans in just one orphanage, not to mention the other orphanages in Lesotho. We are grateful for our time with the Dimmocks and the experience and wisdom they imparted to us, the delicious home cooked food we shared and their Christ-like hospitality. We hope to back someday to visit again.
Author: The Raskas
Created: March 5, 2010
A tale of the Raskas' journeys
Comments
Excellent statement about Apartheid Australia. Australian Aborigines sufrefed Genocide at the hands of the European invaders in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indigenous population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after the invasion in 1788, mainly through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the 1920s. Throughout much of the 20th century there was a policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their mothers, a systematic genocidal policy involving the removal of perhaps 0.1 million children. This practice ended in the 1970s. However the continued deliberate deprivation of Aboriginal Australians amounts to a White Australian policy of passive genocide. The “annual death rate” (2003 figures) is 2.2% (for Aboriginal Australians) and 2.4% (for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory) – as compared to 2.5% (for pre-drought sheep in paddocks of Australian sheep farms) and 0.7% (for White Australians). This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at 50% of what they should be; many Australian Aborigines live in Third World conditions; the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is over 3 times higher for Aborigines than that for White Australians; 1 in 5 Australian Aborigines have diabetes (mostly type 2 diabetes) which has huge attendant problems such as cardiovascular complications, kidney problems and blindness; and the Australian Aboriginal life expectancy is about 20 years less than that for White Australians. Indeed Monash University diabetologist Professor Paul Zimmet stated recently in relation to the world-wide diabetes epidemic If we don't do something, there is a real chance that Australia's indigenous community will be wiped out by the end of the century. The world needs to act now if we're to deal with this problem, which threatens to consume world economies and bankrupt health systems. We are dealing with the biggest epidemic in world history. Avoidable Aboriginal deaths in Apartheid Australia total 9,000 annually out of an Indigenous population of 500,000, this giving an annual Indigenous Australian avoidable death rate of 9,000/0.5 million = 18,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal) deaths per million of population per year in Apartheid Australia. By way of comparison, the annual homicide rate in Detroit , Michigan (the highest in the US) is 473 homicides per million of population per year (see “Body count: the awful truth”, National Indigenous Times, 14 June 2007).For the Awful Truth also see the website Aboriginal Genocide .
Siti on May 22, 2012
Share Your Comments: