Asst Professor Dr Steven A Martin

Assistant Professor of Asian Studies in Sociology and Anthropology

When I contacted universities in Cape Town and Durban to talk about studying in South Africa for a semester, I discovered that completing the enrollment process was nearly impossible for people who did not have South African citizenship. The universities at that time just were not set up to welcome independent overseas students looking to study abroad. It looked like I would have to blaze a new trail through this bureaucratic jungle.

School for International Training | 1997

Fortunately, at this point I heard about the School for International Training (SIT) at Cape Town, South Africa.  They offered a pathway to a six-month student visa through enrollment in their program in Arts and Social Change.

SIT is a globally-respected institution, based in Vermont, USA, with a philosophy based around intercultural exchange and experiential learning. They're the result of a 1932 project called “The Experiment in International Living”, from which one participant, Sargent Shriver, would ultimately develop the Peace Corps.

"Just to travel is rather boring, but to travel with a purpose is educational and exciting." – Sargent Shriver

The SIT Cape Town program included homestay accommodation, and classes at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The day my SIT acceptance letter arrived, I packed my clothes and surfboards for the trip of a lifetime to South Africa.

It was longest commute to school I ever had, the better part of two days and nights.

Kona – Honolulu – Chicago – Washington, D.C. (Dulles) – Frankfurt – Johannesburg – Cape Town.

Once I got to the university, I was pleased to find that the campus offered spectacular views from the top of the gently sloping city, at the foot of the city’s iconic landmark, Table Mountain.

• University of Cape Town | South Africa | Website

South Africa: Multiculturalism and Human Rights

During Nelson Mandela's 18-year imprisonment on Robben Island, he drafted Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela.

Visiting the prison, now a living museum, I met an ex-inmate who knew Mandela personally and told me about Mandela's commitment to education and learning, especially reading books, as exemplified by his famous remark, "We'll turn this prison into a library."

• South African History Online (SAHO) | Robben Island
• Long Walk to Freedom Prison Manuscript | View or Download

Cultural Homestay

My host family lived in a Cape township named Surrey Estate.

The father of the family was originally from Durban, of Indian ancestry, while his wife was from Cape Town and of Malaysian ancestry, and they had two daughters in their early twenties.

The family were Muslim, and so this was a great opportunity for me to learn about Islam. I studied the history and events of Islam specific to Cape Town, focused on Cape Malay traditions and culture.

Twenty years on, I am still in contact with the family, and I still have fond memories of Mrs. Ramjan's home cooking.

Cape Town

My first impression of Cape Town was of an Atlantic coast, multicultural city, with sandstone mountains towing over picturesque white sand beaches, reminding me of Rio de Janeiro.

Over the course of time, I discovered much more about the city, taking public transportation to school, visiting townships, and eventually living within walking distance of Glen Beach. Surfing the waves at Glen Beach connected me with Cape Town's surfing culture and from then on I felt like a local, with a tight-knit group of friends and opportunities to travel to other surfing spots.

I surfed some of the best waves in the world with the Cape Town crew, including Elands Bay, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, north of the city, and Jeffreys Bay, on the Indian Ocean coast, east of the city.

Around the Western Cape

Eastern Cape | Addo Elephant Park

The Addo elephant is a unique sub-species of elephant, which is slightly smaller than most African varieties.

Visiting the park for myself, I learned that they had been protected through the work of British naturalist Sydney Skaife, who founded the Wildlife Protection and Conservation Society (currently the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa).

• Addo Elephant Park | South Africa National Parks | Official website

The Trans-Karoo and Voortrekkers of yesteryear

Before the semester abroad was over, I felt that I needed to see and learn more of the country and its rich history, so I bought a ticket on the Trans-Karoo, South Africa’s cross-continent rail system linking Cape Town with Johannesburg.

I was intent on experiencing Xhosa and Zulu cultures, seeing Durban and the Indian Ocean Coast, and visiting the country’s legendary game reserves to see the wildlife I heard so much about for myself.

The Trans-Karoo was the modern-day route of a much older story in the European quest to push east and across the continent, namely the 1837 Great Trek undertaken by the Voortrekkers, South Africa's Dutch pioneers.

After arriving in Johannesburg, my first stop was the Voortrekkers monument, a focal point in South Africa's historical geography which I had studied at UCT (see photo below).

The Voortrekkers (Afrikaans for the ‘first pioneers’) are comparable to the American pioneers, zealous Christians who ventured across a continent in search of a new land, encountering native peoples, and facing challenges and dangers. Whereas the American pioneers headed west in their covered wagons and encountered Native Americans, the Voortrekkers headed east and encountered the Xhosa, Zulu, and other large tribes already occupying the land – and poised to defend it.

Descended from the Dutch East India Company's original settlers, the Voortrekkers were hearty adventurers left behind from an early supply station at the Cape of Good Hope. They were Boers, Dutch pastoralists, dissatisfied with British rule, choosing instead to make the “Great Trek” and face untold dangers and bloodshed in the African heartland.

They camped at night with their covered wagons drawn in a “Laager” – That is, they formed their wagons into a tight circle to provide security. Laagers were more than a campsite; they represented an isolationist mentality, first from the church in Europe, then the English church in the Cape, and on the frontier from the Khoi-San, Xhosa, and Zulu.

To the Voortrekkers, the African interior was terra incognita – a foreboding land of savages and wild beasts – but the Voortrekkers pushed east with great South African pride, “Ons vir jou Suid-Afrika,” which meant “We for you South Africa.” Outnumbered by large and powerful Zulu tribes numbering in the thousands, they nevertheless pressed on into Kwa-Zulu Natal, where they were narrowly victorious at the Battle of Blood River in 1838.

Armed with a doctrine of supposed racial superiority supported by religious belief, their guns were loaded with "Bullets with butterfly wings," a modern graffiti I saw spray-painted on nearby street-corner by local youth targeting ideological connections between the Voortrekkers, the institutional segregation employed during Apartheid a century later, and the residual challenges they face today.

Soweto | The South West Township

Soweto represents a group of South African townships, appropriately named for its location southwest of Johannesburg, where residents took to the streets in 1976 to protest of the government’s implementation of Afrikaans language into the school system. The residents were, and still are, mainly speakers of Nguni languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, and they fought to retain their own languages as media of instruction in local schools.

I was fortunate to tour Soweto with Max Maximum Tour Company, run by a Soweto local named Max, a Xhosa man about my age with first-hand experience with the sufferings of Apartheid.

In 1976, as a young boy, Max witnessed the force of the apartheid system against unarmed children of Soweto: “They opened fire on us with live rounds and ran us down with mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles called Casspirs, ominous war toys named after the South African Police (SAP) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).”

The Casspir I saw looked like a truck straight out of a Mad Max movie, with tall military tires, armored plates, bulletproof windows, and the only entrance through a hatch on top.

• South Africa History Online | Soweto
• Casspir | Mine resistant ambush protected vehicles

Max took me to see the monument and small museum honoring Hector Pieterson, the first student killed in the riots which began on June 16, 1976. He showed me a group of white storage containers, with black and white photos on the walls illustrating the chaos and violence that had claimed somewhere between 200 and 700 lives.

I walked around, practicing what little isiXhosa I had learned at UCT, meeting people, and exploring squatter shacks as well as some newer parts of the city with electricity and improved roads. People were friendly with me, especially when I said, "Molo!" (Hello!) and "Unjani wena?" (How are you?) in isiXhosa.

My camera was a great tool to break the ice when I asked residents if I could take pictures of houses and families.

KwaZulu-Natal | The 'Dark Continent' and Durban's sunny coast

Other than the draw of surfing some of the best waves on the planet, I chose South Africa for my African study abroad experience as there was relatively less chances of catching malaria than in other countries in the region.

But this wasn't always the case.

It was diseases like sleeping sickness and malaria that would echo the name “Dark Continent” behind the very mention of Africa. I learned that malaria came from Italian words meaning “bad air,” because it was believed to be an airborne disease, which was partially true considering that mosquitos are definitely airborne.

The TseTse fly was actually the greatest single factor for the name “Dark Continent,” causing sleeping sickness in man and ‘Nagana’ in livestock. The fly made much of central Africa, and Zululand in South Africa, virtually uninhabitable for the Europeans.

In 1945, DDT spraying wiped out the fly, but a recent outbreak was reported during my stay, just north of the South African border.

For me, the fun was in Durban, a 'surf city', like Waikiki, Hawaii, but with date palms and waves breaking on sand bars, compared Waikiki’s coconut trees and coral reefs. Durban had a flavor unlike anywhere in the world, a sandy beach town and cultural mosaic of African, Islamic, Indian, and European food, faces and architecture.

Thank you for visiting my South Africa Learning Adventure page.

I hope you enjoy my photos and the information in the links provided. If you feel motivated to learn more about this amazing education abroad experience, or would like to arrange for me to give a public talk, please let me know – I’d love to hear from you.

–Steven Martin

Online resources

• Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela [original prison manuscript]
• School for International Training – South Africa: Multiculturalism and Human Rights
• South African History Online – SAHO
• South African Map Presentation – PDF Slideshow
• South African National Parks – SanParks
• University of Cape Town – UCT
• Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa – WESSA

Other Learning Adventure Pages

Amazonia | Batanes Islands | Cambodia | Galapagos Islands | Great Wall | Jewel of Travel | Mekong Delta | Pakistan | Silk Road | Spain | Surf Experience | Surfing Thailand | Taiwan Studies | Tibet | Water Safety