Day 6-University of Cape Town, Emma Harvey, & Parliament

Today we started the day by embarking on a trip to the University of Cape Town (UCT) located just outside of the city center. The beautiful campus is situated on the side of Devil’s Peak, part of a mountain that dominates the skyline of the bustling Cape Town. The university is made up of three levels that cascade down a slope, each with several school buildings and student residence halls that sprawl over a large amount of land. UCT was started in the 1800s and many of the original historic buildings are still a vital part of the everyday life of the campus. The gorgeous backdrop to the University is the famous Table Top Mountain, which makes UCT’s location even more enjoyable. The student body is quite diverse with people from many of the countries surrounding South Africa as well as a large population of international students. Our group was very fortunate to be able to finish the tour of campus with a discussion from a well-known South African gender studies political activist named Emma Harvy. Many of the students in the group are conducting research on issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, but it appeared that everyone from the group had greatly benefited from Emmy’s wealth of knowledge on various issues that the Republic of South Africa currently faces, namely its ever-present problems of race relations.

Following our intellectually stimulating lecture by Emma, the group had a tour of the South African Parliament buildings and a brief discussion where we learned about how things are carried out in Parliament. We also learned general but interesting facts about South Africa, in particular we learned about the nature of the country’s flag, its national crest, and the creation of its national anthem. All of these three things are comprised by incorporating as many of the diverse aspects of the country as possible. For example, the country’s anthem is comprised of several languages that are broken into different sections of the song due to the fact that the country recognizes 11 official languages. The highlight of this visit for some of the group was being able to sit in on a live hearing of the education committee of the Parliament. Speakers, educators, lobbyist from all over South Africa came to lobby the government to improve the education system by increasing the current level of funding for all schools throughout the entire country. The day ended with free time for the students to branch off into smaller groups and see more of the city’s sights, markets and museums, with which Cape Town has quite a lot to offer. Yet again, another great day for the Marist group in South Africa. Tomorrow we start an exciting part of our journey; we begin our community service projects. Everyone is very excited to roll up our sleeves and get dirty; it’s a metaphor for working very hard within the township of Vrygrond.