South Africa with Reality Tours of Global Exchange

For a visit to South Africa, Oct. 7-21, ’03, we took one of the Reality Tours of Global Exchange (2017 Mission St., Ste. 303, San Francisco, CA 94110; phone 415/255-7296 or visit www.globalexchange.org). The land cost of the trip was $2,500 and included all breakfasts and most dinners.

These tours are not touristy but rather examine emerging issues in host countries. One can travel to Iran to understand the role of women in Muslim society or to Argentina to look at land management and food production. Our trip to South Africa was to study the question of whether the black majority can and will achieve economic independence.

Global Exchange sends reading lists and videos recommended for viewing before departure so one has at least a small background before going. Our in-country guide was Clive Newman, who organized the agenda and scheduled all the meetings throughout the country. We met with leaders of the African National Congress in Johannesburg, visited the Constitutional Court in Pretoria and met other leaders who are redefining their roles in the future of the country.

We spent most of our time in the black townships around Johannesburg and Cape Town, and it became clear how bizarre the apartheid government was. We learned it spent untold millions of rand separating and keeping people apart, uprooting neighborhoods and splitting families and that its security forces maimed and killed citizens with apparent impunity for years.

What amazed our group was the candor with which people spoke to us and their passionate determination to make things better for the larger population.

Anyone who is interested in seeing the inside of a country should seriously consider one of Global Exchange’s Reality Tours. I felt that this trip was stimulating, wearying and enormously informative.

LINDA FIGUEROA
Carlisle, PA