Bryan recaps week #3

This Blog will cover the trip from January 31^st- February 7. This week marked our first real work week in Cape Town due to the fact that we not only started our internships, but we also took classes and finally got a full experience of the work that we have ahead of us.

I want to first talk about my Internship. I am currently interning at Right2Know or R2K for short. My organization focuses on activism in many different ways including the right to protest or things like the removal of the Secrecy Bill proposed by the South African Government. I have to say that it is completely different in a good way from what I originally imagined it would be like. For example I expected that my internship would have already been structured around a task that I was interested in, but I realized that it is actually quite the opposite the internship is 100% in my hands and I now have to shape it into the best possible experience, whether that means joining different tasks groups on issues or focusing on one main issue that I truly feel passionate about. In my organization I was asked which program I wanted to work on and I was assigned to Secrecy. This meant that my task was to research the South African Arms deal, which originally was made in 1994 and was finalized in 1999 the deal was in actuality very corrupt and spent over R30 Billion, which was taken out of taxes and spent on armored corvettes submarines and various fighter planes. All of the information on this case was just reviewed by a commission and the final report will be out soon. This means that once I am up to date I will be able to help plan and organize the next actions taken by my organization.

As I mentioned before we also had an opportunity to go to our classes, which included our History and Politics class at UCT. This class was really interesting, because it explained a lot of the history that we were told the first week, but it offered far more detail and context as to why this history is so relevant to current events. I also liked how this class gave us two different points of view in history. The first point of view was the “White” version of history, which focused on the achievements of white people and the people in power while slightly only mentioning people of color, but never really offered a glimpse into what the other side felt and progress/achievements they made. The second point of view was the “Black” point of view which focused on Colored/Black activism and showed the impacts made by Colored/Black in the White dominated society. I believe that this is similar to the way I was taught growing up, because I would always receive these two stories on history/politics and typically the White version is the more commonly known version and usually makes everything sound more appealing, than the Black point of view which is usually filled with more detailed experiences of violence while always using a key theme of Unity in order to provide hope. For example while in Marita’s class we talked about this and it seems like most of the class received the white version when they were younger while I received both versions especially when it came to learning about individuals who were made out to be heroes, but did terrible things to groups of people. This includes prominent figures who owned slaves or did nothing to combat slavery, the colonization of the Americas and what was done to the indigenous people, and even gender roles throughout history.

I must also mention that this week I was finally able to start back up my passion of Powerlifting/Bodybuilding at the UCT gym, which is completely outdated but it has the right equipment that I need and it’s never packed. I have been waiting for the first week of tourism to end to see if my passion would actually be feasible after long days of classes and work.