Just 51 years ago the leaders of the South African Liberation Movement were arrested at Liliesleaf...

I apologize for the lack of exciting blogging - the past few days we've been working on a large research protocol for the study we will be conducting this summer.  So it's been a lot of early mornings and working all day.  Luckily though, we've been working from home so we do have the benefit of working in our pajamas.  We have been staying in a bed and breakfast while we were looking for another apartment - so a maid comes in daily to clean.  She's been laughing at us because at 12pm, we are still in bed, in our pajamas, clicking away at our computers.  We've been wildly productive though - and the research protocol is due to the ethics committee by tomorrow, so we are hoping it's good enough to pass through them with few edits!

Today, we submitted our additional protocol for edits and decided to go out for the afternoon while we waited for feedback.  Michelle eagerly looked up the "top things to do in Johannesburg"- isn't Google fantastic?  Seriously, how did people travel before Google... I should send those guys some fan mail.  We landed on Liliesleaf Farm, which was a home bought by the SACP (South African Communist Party) in the late 50s to act as a safe house for members of the South African liberation movement.  The white nationalist party was quickly pushing forth Apartheid policies and by the 1950s, made both the African National Congress (ANC) party illegal and anti-Apartheid protests illegal.  That caused the ANC and SACP to move underground.  An SACP leader chose to buy Liliesleaf farm to host the underground liberation movement.  Goldreich, a member of the movement, posed as a rich white man living in the farm with his family.  They had several black farmhands, who were often key members of the liberation movement who were hiding at the farm.   The facade of a rich white family working a farm with black farmhands would not cause much suspicion during this time, so the party was pretty darn smart!  There was a main farmhouse, where most of the meetings took place and where Goldreich lived with his family.  Then, they had a lot of farmhand cottages off of the main house where they would hide many liberation leaders (and also hold more secret meetings).

They also had documents stored all over the farmhouse and the surrounding land. 

The main farmhouse

The surrounding living quarters 

The thatched house where a lot of members of the liberation movement met

Nelson Mandela even stayed in Liliesleaf farm before he was arrested in 1962 - and we got the see the quarters that he lived in.  It was incredibly poignant.  Children had even left letters from before he passed away, telling him to "get well soon." 

Before this time, the African National Congress had a strict non-violence policy, and protested the white nationalist Apartheid ideals.  However, after the Sharpeville massacre, a large massacre of non-violent protesters outside of a police building, the liberation movement chose to adopt a violent response to oppression.  They even created an underground military wing called the  Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), or "Spear of the Nation.

At Liliesleaf, the liberation movement held a meeting in July of 1963 to draft and sign a plan to violently overthrow the current government for the liberation of South Africa called Operation Mayibuye.  The police came in a laundry van, posing as laundry workers, and raided the entire farm.  They arrested major liberation movement leaders that they hadn't even been looking for and found an unbelievable amount of incriminating documents, books against the Apartheid that had been banned in the country, and the like.  They were actually trying to find the ANC president, Chief Albert Luthuli.

They ended up finding a lot of incriminating documents hidden in the coalshed.  Here is a typewriter that was used to write a lot of documents used by the liberation movement.

FUN FACT:  Chief Albert Luthuli is the first African recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for supporting a non-violent resistance.  

Then, the government held the Rivonia Trials - where Nelson Mandela and other resistance leaders were sentenced to life in prison.  Although Mandela was arrested a year earlier and sentenced to 5 years in prison, they found many documents at Liliesleaf Farm connected to him, so they tried him along with the others in the Rivonia Trials.  

Needless to say, the perseverance of the human spirit is absolutely incredible, and we had the opportunity to walk through a place where some pretty outstanding people once opposed a terrible movement.

This has been more like a history lesson than anything, but it was incredibly interesting to me and amazing that all of this happened in 1963... and that Nelson Mandela was only elected President in 1994.  Apartheid was something I always heard about in school, but it's different to hear about it and see it first hand.  And to be in a place that was a huge part of South African history.  

We went to dinner at a place in Rivonia that was recommended to us by our new landlord - called Rockets.  We had a couple of fancy cocktails (that were only around R44 each which is about $4 - so cheap) and pizza.  

After that, we went to get the keys to our new apartment (yes we are moving yet again) and it is fantastic, affordable, safe, and finally.. perfect.  We really like the bed and breakfast like place where we are staying now and the owners are very nice, but, the place where they were going to put us didn't have a full kitchen.  We planned on mostly cooking these three months in order to save money - so we wanted more space!  Also, this new place is much more affordable (B and B's aren't cheap y'all!).  

On a side note, they do this thing in South Africa where they burn crops once they get old because they believe that it will rejuvenate the land for more crops, even though it's actually terrible for the soil.  So we saw this on the side of the road tonight...

This weekend we are going to a documentary film festival, Soweto, where Nelson Mandela's house is, and the Apartheid Museum in Joburg, so stay tuned for more!

Sorry I'm such a nerd, but hey, if you read this, you learned something.