Day 8 - September 6, 2006

Again, we woke up today at 7am. I decided to wash my hair and felt quite refreshed afterwards. We missed the Jammie shuttle again and thus had to walk to class. We timed ourselves better this time around and took 30 min to get to UCT, all uphill. We had lectures for several hours until 11am on South African history during the last few years before the '94 election.

At 11am, we had a Xhosa language teacher from UCT teach us a few phrases and grammar structures. It was lots of fun trying to learn a new language, and we did relatively well with it, even though the clicks were hard on everyone. Then, we had a break for lunch. A group of us went to this sandwich stand (again all halal food), and I had a thai chicken sub - pretty good. When we finished up, we noticed that a large group of students was setting up for a protest. Apparently, it was a health awareness week, so they had invited Zackie Achmat, the chairperson for the Treatment Action Campaign - the most successful AIDS NGO in the country - to speak. After, they planned a march to one of the Deputy President's home.

We resumed class at 1:15pm and had a short session about our research projects for the end of the seminar. Then at 2pm, we packed up and got ready to meet the Premier of the Western Cape. The Premier is similar to a state governor, since the job is head of the provincial government, except the Premier has a lot more power. It was really cool b/c the Premier of Western Cape was a Muslim man named Ebrahim Rasool. One of Joel's friends Tahir Salih, assistant to the Premier, helped set up the meeting. We drove downtown to the Premier's office and went to the meeting. They had us meet in a very nicely appointed conference room, with chilled sparkling drinks, cookies, candy and tea waiting for us. The Premier also gave us all gifts of outfitted planners.

We got food and drinks, sat down, and then the Premier came in and gave us a thoughtful speech on race and identity in South Africa. After, we had the chance to ask him questions and some of us asked some pretty hard hitting questions. It was really refreshing to have the Premier not skirt the questions but answer each one in a complete manner. I really liked how he discussed health in relation to the empowerment of women. Then, he took a group photo with us and ran off already late to his next meeting - with Russian President Vladimir Putin! We made the Premier late for his meeting with a president!

After, Tahir sat and talked with us and answered more of our questions. He then gave an extensive talk on the history of Muslims in Cape Town, which was fascinating, as many are in positions of skilled labor and are holding government rankings. He then discussed how South Africa doesn't have the same problems with Islamophobia as the rest of the world and how they have integrated the Muslim population well into the country.

We left downtown around 4:30pm and drove back to Ivydene. We got stuck in traffic on the way and reached Ivydene around 5pm. I had a little time to relax and wash up, before the caterer Katherine came to set-up dinner. For dinner, we had a casserole, vegetable dish and salad, with lemon meringue pie for dessert. We had a discussion afterwards on the day's event. Then, we all ended up chatting for a bit, blogging in our wiki sites, and getting ready for bed, as tomorrow would bring another busy day.