Our Visit to Soweto:

Our ESC team was taken on a tour of Soweto during our first week here.  The approach to Soweto from Johannesberg proper, takes you via the world cup soccer stadium. The approach is vast and majestic. The ultra modern Soccer City (now called the FNB stadium) that propelled South Africa in the mindset of the world, is at the gates of Soweto. The Stadium is shown below. 

Soweto itself lies beyond the man-made plaeaus of spent ore called mine dumps (Johannesberg was first settled as a large mining township )that have been piled high as if to hide the former black township from the rest of the city. The soil in these man-made plateaux is contaminated with heavy metals and blows towards Soweto on windy days.  The man made terraced pile called  is seen the  pictures below 

The welcome to Soweto sign with our team members in the foreground

(l-r : Subu I, Vania C, Renee D, Patricia G, Christel V, and Ron D.)

The entrance to Soweto is actually quite impressive. The houses on the outskirts are very impressive, with some unique architecture and in some cases flashy BMWs parked outside or in the Driveways. (BMWs are sometimes called Black Man's Wheels - nod to the progress made by some blacks after the dismantling of apartheid) . See a somewhat fancy house we saw through the bus window soon after we entered Soweto.

A relatively new fancy house on the outskirts of Soweto

However, Soweto is itself a very diverse place. As we enter into the main township we are greeted with the hostels. These are gender segregated dwellings with communal bathrooms and kitchens that used to house the miners. Even today these are considered somewhat rough places and are reputed to be hotbeds for the crime syndicates that operate throughout Joberg.

A view of the Hostels from the main road

We were headed to the Apartheid Museum. But our trip was punctuated by a stop at a roadblock where our driver was interrogated. This was taking a while and our accompanying city official felt it necessary to get off the bus and intervene. A police officer came over and greeted us and welcomed us and we were soon on our way. I would very much have liked to know what the official told the policeman.

The Apartheid Museum in Soweto is a fitting memorial and chronicles the important landmarks in the fight against apartheid. 

The Apartheid Museum: Note the black and white lettering at the entrance

To give you a feel for apartheid, your ticket is randomly coded for a "BLANKES" or a "NIE-BLANKES" (Afrikaans for white or non-white). You then have to enter through the appropriate door and you get a feel for how it must have been in the days of apartheid. There are pictures of passes which for whites had an entry for nationality (South African) but did not have nationality for non-whites and there were a host of other subtle and not -so-subtle differences.  A good part of the museum is devoted to the struggle against apartheid and details on some of the key personalities and events.

Language is a very potent flash point and a key turning point was the forcible instruction of black children in Soweto of Afrikaans. This was the language of the oppressors which the blacks had no desire to learn. This led to student peaceful student protests. The police however opened fire with live bullets and killed scores of unarmed students. The first to die was a black boy called Hector Petersen and there is a museum dedicated in his memory that details these protests and the lasting effect it had in the struggle for apartheid. This was the famous Soweto Uprising which I remember reading about (in 1976)  in the papers when I was in high school. 

One of several murals depicting the student protests that led to the Soweto Uprising

We also saw Mandela's House in Soweto - a small two room house that is now a national landmark

In front of Mandela's House in Soweto. 

Soweto is key to not only South Africa's past but also it future. Many of the officials I have met these last two weeks trace their roots to Soweto. It is there that they experienced apartheid and it was there that they rebelled against it.  Today while parts of Soweto would look like any middle class area in the world, there are parts of Soweto that are comparable to the worst slums anywhere in the world.  These informal settlements as they are often called exist in many parts of Joberg and present a key challenge to the administrators of Joberg as they try to make Joberg a smart and world class African city.