Soweto

Much has been written and talked about Soweto because of its connections to South Africa's (RSA) history.  Today I took a tour of Soweto, which stands for South West Township.  Black South Africans were drawn to the Johannesburg (JNB) area to work in the gold mines in the late 1800s' and early 1900s'.  But they were accommodated in separate areas outside the city and were settled in areas called townships.  During the apartheid days, blacks were not allowed to live in the city so at night they were forced out of the city into these townships.

We took this mini-bus for the tour

Soweto is only about 15 mins from Johannesburg

In 1976 there was a riot that brought the world's attention to Soweto.  This was known as the Soweto Uprising.  It started when black Africans were forced to study in the Afrikaans language instead of English.  Afrikaans derived mainly from the Dutch language and was introduced by the early Dutch settlers.  It is still widely spoken today.  The blacks felt that there was no future in the Afrikaans language, compared to English becoming the dominant language of government and commerce.  Over 100 died that day, including a kid by the name of Hector Pieterson.

Memorial to the 1976 Soweto Uprising

Picture of Hector Pieterson being killed and carried away

Souvenirs sold outside the memorial

If there is any easy description of Soweto, it is a sprawling slum.  However, you can find houses that cost in the millions to shacks.  Our tour guide told us that the population of Soweto is about 5 million!  We drove around in a van and it's not difficult to see the conditions of the houses (or shacks) that the people live in.

Typical Housing and "restaurant"

Roadside food stands

With this many people, you find things that are unique to this community.  One of them is transportation.  A lot of the residents use private mini-buses to get around.  But the mini-buses don't have numbers on them;  so in order for a resident to let an approaching mini-bus know where he wants to go, he uses certain hand-signals, as demonstrated by our driver below.

I want to go to Orland East (a suburb of Soweto)

I want to go to the city

One of the claims to fame about Soweto is that this is the only place in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners used to live on the same street (Vilakazi St):  Desmond Tutu (1984) and Nelson Mandela (1993).

Nelson Mandela used to live here.  It's a museum now.