Think of Soweto and images of the violence and poverty of South Africa’s apartheid era leap to mind. But a small tour company is working to change that perception.
When my host in Johannesburg first suggested I visit Soweto, my thoughts were of chronic crime and poverty – not features I normally look for in travel destinations. She was also suggesting I go on foot.
“When my wife and I first went to Soweto in 2004,” Cedric said when he picked me up the next morning, “we were amazed at the magic we found there. We tried setting up jazz bars and art galleries, but they didn’t work, and it took us years to figure out why. We’d been trying to create packages and products, but the amazing thing about Soweto is just the people themselves, really.”
Rather than guide tours himself, Cedric found local Sowetans who were willing to invite tourists to share their homes, conversations, food, buses and lives for a day. The result is a unique kind of tourism.
Although the name Soweto (short for South West Townships) only came into use in 1963, settlements for mine workers were first established in the area as early as 1934. With the introduction of apartheid laws in 1948 and the subsequent resettlement of black workers, the population surged from a few thousand to the millions who live in the city today.
My guide is one of them, and her story is typically Sowetan. Sibongile was born in Northern Transvaal, but unable to find work there, she left her children behind to attend school while she went in search of a job.
Her home is a single free-standing room, built in the back garden of a simple concrete house. Inside her 14sq m she cooks, sleeps, washes, entertains and watches TV. Her clothes hang on wire coat hangers above her bed. When her children visit for school holidays, they share her bed, and she sleeps on the floor next to them.
After a half hour talking, we head out for a walk around the neighbourhood, and I realise how unusual this tour is going to be. Forget sites, museums or photo opportunities; today is not about “doing” Soweto as much as being in it.
Soweto is enormous; the local hospital the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Although the population size is hotly contested (estimates range from 2.5 to 4.5 million inhabitants), Soweto is undoubtedly one of the largest urban areas anywhere in Africa, larger than Nairobi, Casablanca or Dar es Salaam.
And although it looks poor, it’s a long way from some of the barrios I’ve seen in Asia or South America. The houses are simple stone and brick structures, and generally well tended.
Entire swathes of Soweto are dominated by identical so-called matchbox houses, four-room workers’ cottages built under apartheid. With the introduction of democracy, title was gifted to the residents, and the better houses now sell for respectable prices.
People seem genuinely pleased to see us. Women wander over to chat, men laughingly invite us for beers and even most of the young toughs nod their heads as we pass. It doesn’t feel faked or coerced, but entirely natural and spontaneous.
I’m struck by the blur of languages. Sibongile tells me she speaks seven languages, and that in Soweto Zulu is used as the lingua franca, despite the fact almost no one we meet is actually Zulu.
“It’s too hard for Xhosa people to speak Venda, for example – so with each other we mainly use Zulu. It’s only when I meet someone else who comes from my area that we switch to Ndebele.”
At the nearby Barra bus station some of the stories we hear from people are not what I would have expected. “Under apartheid you knew what to expect,” says Innocent, who works on a fruit stall. “Providing you understood you were nothing, you could get quite a long way under that system. Everyone knew the rules. Now … there are no rules.”
For someone raised in the era of anti-apartheid protests and boycotts, this is humbling stuff.
From Barra we head by local minibus to Klipspruit, not only the poorest district in Soweto but probably the poorest anywhere in South Africa. Here are the makeshift huts, filth and mud I’d expected to see, with thousands of residents cramped into an area the size of a couple of football fields. There are 15 taps for 40,000 people, and although local authorities have supplied toilets, there is only one per 50 residents. The only electricity is from car batteries, and the constant stink of refuse and diesel is nauseating even in the cool season.
But directly across the road from Klipspruit ordinary middle-class houses are protected by high walls and razor wire; even within Soweto the divisions between one neighbourhood and another are almost as defined by class and income as they once might have been by colour.
Later in the evening, my host helps me put it into perspective. “For 50 years, the only white people Sowetans saw were police. Anyone else needed a permit just to go in. When apartheid collapsed, they thought everything would change. Some probably thought white people would move into Soweto and vice versa. That hasn’t happened, but the fact that white people even visit maybe gives them some sense of change.”
Only blocks away, Walter Sisulu Square marks the spot where the ANC signed the Freedom Charter in 1955, now an impressive memorial. Although the words “The people shall govern” have been beautifully etched on silver plaques, the clash of the message against the grinding poverty across the street is hard to miss. Given the choice, I imagine the people of Klipspruit might have preferred water and electricity to statues.
After lunch at a local “buy & braii”, we head to Orlando West, the Beverly Hills of Soweto. One-time home of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu (the only time two Nobel laureates have ever lived on one street), this is also the spiritual heart of the city.
During the 1976 student protests, 12-year-old Hector Peterson was shot dead. Needless to say, he was unarmed, and simply walking down the wrong street at the wrong time. Another boy, Mbuvisa Makhubo, picked up the body and tearfully carried him away, the photograph of which has seared itself into the soul of every Sowetan. The monument is a sombre reminder of an era this city will never outlive.
Strange, then, that this is clearly the wealthiest neighbourhood in Soweto, with late-model cars parked inside brightly painted garden walls.
Mandela’s house looks like any other matchbox house, except that this one is surrounded by buses and tourists. In the cafe opposite, black and white tourists rub shoulders over lattes, a mere hundred metres from where Bishop Tutu prayed for their right to do so.
But the whites will be gone by nightfall. A full 16 years after the end of apartheid, not a single white person lives in Soweto.
Soweto has come a long way – streets are now paved, businesses operate freely and trees have been planted to green the otherwise arid city. But progress is slow, and too many of the ANC leaders seem more interested in cars and Swiss bank accounts than addressing poverty.
It may be years before people like Sibongile can afford to buy their own homes, and years more before everyone in Soweto has water and electricity. But although Mandela’s vision is not yet complete, Soweto does have hope.
Taste of Africa tours can be contacted at: info@tasteofafrica.co.za.