🇿🇦 South Africa | Where I Understood Half of Humanity

As a child reading about Mandela's legend ✊🏿 and the Cape of Good Hope 🌊, I always dreamed of visiting South Africa. Years later, I finally made it—though this time to Johannesburg. 🌆 The Glamorous City 💎 Days 1-2: 🛍️ Explored Sandton City, dazzled by luxury brands (and left with a big bag of H&M!) 👗 🗿 Stood in awe before Mandela’s statue at Nelson Mandela Square ✨ 🍲 Tasted the best braised meats & bitter melon soup in Chinatown 🍜 (SO GOOD!) 🎵 Listened to a soulful Black street performer singing All Too Well at Rosebank Mall 🎤 (Chills!) 🚗 Saw rows of luxury cars & sprawling villas in the suburbs 🏡💸 ⚖️ Two Worlds Collide 🌍➖🌍 Just as I marveled at "So South Africa was once a developed country?"—Day 3 took me to Soweto, the Black township from the apartheid era. 🏚️ Faded, box-like houses stacked under the sun ☀️ 🚌 Overcrowded minibuses and dusty streets 🏙️ 🪧 A hand-painted sign: "We will buy the cars"—a stubborn, almost naïve hope 💭 It reminded me of Nairobi’s Kibera and Dar es Salaam’s markets—poverty wears the same face across this continent. 😔 I asked our local manager (an Indian-origin white Muslim): "Isn’t such inequality unfair?" 🤔 He sighed: "40 years ago, we couldn’t even enter Soweto. Now they have homes, clinics, schools. Maybe in two generations…" ⏳ ☠️ The Shadow of the Old CBD 👻 Our colleagues warned: "Robberies happen weekly." 😨 The city center? Abandoned. We only skirted its edges—streets eerily empty. 🚧 🎢 We passed Gold Reef City (a gold-mining theme park, still open but nearly empty). 🎭 ❤️ Why Stay? 🏡 I asked a white South African why he hadn’t left despite the economic decline. "I’ve been to London, Dubai, China 5 times… but nowhere feels like home." 🥺 Perhaps this land’s magic lies beyond simple judgments. In its winds, it carries both wealth and want, love and loss. Every visitor leaves a mark—and takes a piece of it too. 💔✨ #SouthAfricaDiaries #TravelReflections #TwoWorlds #MandelaLegacy #Johannesburg