Soweto continued

By Zachariah.

Soweto feels more comfortable than Randburg, despite the difficulty getting here. The streets are dirty and a little bit broken, but they feel safer than the lawns and electric fenced suburban compounds across town. The houses range from shanty shacks constructed out of brick, tin and the odd sheet of asbestos, to tiny stylised castles, to the new uniform developments complete with solar panels and satellite dishes. It's busy here, people, cars and animals headed in all different directions. Lots of chatter as people call back and forth and wave at people they know. The vibe is warm and friendly, even though we are such obvious outsiders, we feel good here almost immediately.

Lebo's is a haven of green space in the middle of this concrete metropolis. It feels like a jungle village, constructed out of bamboo, iron, concrete and thatch. They have no record of our booking (a running theme with hostels in Africa, we will discover) but that's no problem. They offer for us to stay in their tent, situated on a deck looking out over the rest of the hostel, to save us setting ours up. The stairs are not structurally sound, the deck is warped and uneven, there is a weather beaten couch sitting in the dappled sunlight. We love it.

The hostel spills across the street. An outdoor kitchen and dining area with a bar, herbs and veggies growing in an array of pots and boxes. There is scattered seating and a pool table on a slope that hardly seems possible to play on. A black and white spotted rabbit and a single chicken patrol the garden, nibbling on bits of vegetation. Children play in the park with sporting equipment supplied by the hostel. We settle in and wait for dinner time. Lunch and dinner are various stews and curries prepared in heavy braii pots cooked over the fire and served with "pap" (pronounced: pup), a fluffy white starch based staple made from corn. It's a bit like a distant cousin of mash potato. We have a drink and sit round the fire before jet lag claims us again.

Next day we book a tuk-tuk tour of Soweto and join a Brazillian couple and their toddler for the day. Our guides take us to a hill overlooking the township and explain how Soweto came to be. The SOuth WEst TOwnship was established to house (and control) black workers for white South Africans living in Johannesburg during the 1950s. It also housed the power plant (see the cooling towers in the background) which supplied electricity to Joburg, and coal smog to the lungs of Soweto's inhabitants. This stuck with me as much as anything else we were told about the injustices of apartheid. Tens of thousands of people living in what was essentially an enormous prison camp, without electricity, breathing the smoke from the cooling towers that were generating electricity for the white people in Joburg.

From there we drove through the "hostels" section of Soweto. Originally used as single men's housing, it is still basically a shanty town, largely without electricity or running water. While we are there one of the nearby shacks catches fire and a large crowd watches as twenty or so men work to put it out with buckets of water, before it can burn down half the area. There is no fire brigade here. We move on to a section of new buildings behind a fence, unoccupied we are told. When Mandela was freed he declared free housing for all as reparations for unpaid wages. Thirty years later this has proved difficult to implement and the current government is seeking rent for the new housing developments. This has lead to a stand off with the Zulu's (mainly, by the sound of it) who refuse to pay because of Mandela's decree. So many of these developments stand empty or are partially occupied by squatters, but are kept free of long term tenants by a combination of government security guards and Zulu heavies.

We then visit the Hector Pieterson memorial which commemorates the Soweto uprising in 1976, where ten thousand students marched against the enforcement of education in Afrikaans (the language of their oppressors). The police opened fire killing twenty-three people on the first day, the protests continued and estimates range from 176 to 700 people killed throughout the uprising. One of those killed was Hector Pieterson, a fourteen year old boy who became the symbol of the uprising when a photograph was taken of him being carried by another boy after he had been shot. Our tuk-tuk driver, Mister Isaac, marched on that day. We finished the tour with visits to Mandella house (now a museum) and the home of Winnie Mandella, who had died two weeks earlier. The path outside her house was a shrine of flowers and cards.

Back at the hostel we are befriended by "Uncle Vince" who takes us up the hill to Lebo's overflow camping and festival space. There are some funky sculptures carved out of tree roots, a little bar, and braii areas set up all over the place just in case you feel the need to bbq anything. It also houses some of the staff, a large veggie garden, several chickens, a small herd of goats, and a pair of turkeys. The view is fantastic, we can see half of Soweto from up here. Vince also gives us a taste of his mango atcha, a South African pickled mango chilli concoction that tastes amazing. Later we will buy atcha from a store in Joburg and be incredibly disappointed. Our day finishes back at the bar, sitting by the fire with a couple of drinks, soaking up our Soweto experience.