It's a protest march.

Wednesday, April 12

Took a drive to Pretoria today with the mission of seeing the Voertrekker Monument and the Union Building with the statue to Nelson Mandela.  The Voertrekker Monument is the largest monument in Africa and has the world’s largest frieze.  The frieze is a carved in granite depiction of their trek in the mid 1800’s.  Quite beautiful.  I noticed that white men fight (and defeat) Zulu men, but the Zulu men are killing women and children.  Propaganda is always alive and well, even in the 1930’s when the momument was erected, but even they had their limits as one of the original casts had the Zulu warrior swinging a baby, not the torch as is now depicted.  This was an excellent visit and a very well developed museum.

As close as we could get to Mandela statue.

Next we were off to the Union Buildings.  Our drive kept getting diverted by road blocks, and we soon discovered there was a major demonstration and march going on to put pressure on the South African president Jacob Zuma to step down.  We ended up walking in the city centre and also noted that the many businesses were closed up, and a very large police presence.  Not sure if there was going to be violence or not, we elected to avoid the protest and went for lunch.  We made another attempt to go to the Union Buildings after we heard that the march was over.  Police were putting away all the razor wire.  News video after showed a packed square.  Everywhere we have gone in South Africa certainly seem to want Zuma gone.  Guess when you use government money to buy friends birthday presents, like summer homes, people lose their faith in you.  Who knew?  Elections are not until 2019, but the feel is that Zuma can do lots more damage in those two years.  Zuma is remaining vigilant that he is staying on as leader.  Interesting politic times in South Africa continue.