Soweto

Day one of my stay in Joburg started ay 9 catching the City Sightseeing bus around to the south to catch their Soweto tour.

The SOuth WEstern TOwnships were created in the 1930's after the Urban Areas Act of 1923 and the Pass Laws prevented blacks from living in Joburg proper. The population swelled to over a million, mostly in slum conditions. Soweto became world (in)famous in 1976 after days of riots sparked when junior and high school students marched against new laws requiring instruction in Afrikaans, a language which most did not speak at all. The police opened fire and several students killed, sparking days of riots in which at least 575 were killed. The event was one of the defining events in the struggle against apartheid.

We were taken in a minivan with commentary by a very amusing and expert young man, a resident of the township himself, to get a quick flavour over two hours of the history and current life. We stopped briefly (although had the opportunity to linger and catch the next circuit of the bus in each case) at the Hector Pieterson monument to the 12 year-old boy who was one of the victims on the first day, and the street where both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu lived at various points -- the only street in the world to be home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners.
After democracy, the lives of some residents were allowed to improve, but the economic situation in South Africa remains so poor that many residents still live in poverty, and even as some native South Africans move out, they are replaced by recant immigrants to the country. other residents stay and improve their homes, so you get nice looking homes next to shacks, and there are squatter camps by the roads. Crime is a problem, and our guide did not sugar coat the problem of gangs and drugs, revealing that he himself had been treated for a knife wound in the hospital (the largest in Africa and the leading centre for trauma treatment) the previous week.Read more