Soweto

Soweto - Johannesburgs township attraction

Johannesburg’s twin city populated exclusively by black people is Soweto (an acronym for South-Western Townships). Soweto is the largest black township in South Africa consisting of 26 townships, each of which was designed to be independent. The township of Soweto as a whole could be called multiracial, in the sense that its residents are from all the tribes in South Africa.

The type of housing ranges from shacks to large mansions and there is one street where you can find the houses of two Nobel Peace Prize winners; Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Also located in Soweto is the Baragwanath Hospital, thought to be the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere but despite this, almost 85% of the local residents still consult traditional healers who concoct medicines in their age old tradition.

It was in Soweto that much of the struggle against apartheid was fought. On 16 June 1976 the riots, which spread through the country, started here with black children protesting against Afrikaans being used as a joint instruction medium with English in African schools. As the demonstration increased in size, the police threw a teargas canister into the crowd. This led to a wave of panic, stone-throwing and shooting into the crowd. A newspaper photographer, Sam Nzima, captured the moment when a fatally wounded 13 year old, Hector Petersen, was carried out of the crowd. This photograph came to symbolise the tragedy of that day and each year the 16 June is remembered with a national holiday called Youth Day.

Soweto, one of Johannesburg’s major tourist attractions, is situated 15 minutes southwest of the city. A number of tour operators and professional tour guides offer halfday, full day and overnight tours to Soweto. The ‘Heritage Trail’ in Soweto offers several opportunities for tourist to visit sites of historical and cultural interest. The most popular destinations include the Hector Peterson Memorial, Nelson Mandela’s old house, Winne Madikizela Mandela’s house, Ubuntu Kraal, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, the Baragwanath taxi rank, squatter settlements, shebeens and nightclubs.

HISTORICAL VIEW

History & Development Exclusion from power and white cities

At the beginning of the century the Witwatersrand gold mines attracted large numbers of Black labourers who were housed in compounds on the mines. Company and municipal hostels housed migrant workers for other industries while some, such as domestic workers, resided at their places of work. As industries developed, the need for a more settled work forces grew and in turn, the need of homes. The Miners Administration’s Inter-colonial Native Affairs Commission of 1902 – 1905 advertised against franchise rights for Africans that might weaken the supremacy of the ruling white class. It also approved the creation of ‘locations’ for urban Africans on the outskirts of ‘white’ cities. Klipspruit, south of Johannesburg, and two smaller locations within the town area, Western and Eastern Native Townships, were established in 1904. The principle of segregation was reaffirmed in the constitution of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Subsequently an increasing number of laws were passed entrenching segregation between whites and ‘non-whites’ in all walks of life. The exclusion of Africans from positions of power resulted in a storm of protest. From 1910 onwards political and labour organizations were established throughout the country to unite Africans and oppose repression. Prominent amongst these were the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), renamed the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923, the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). These organizations followed a path of moderate resistance attempting to secure change by way of passive resistance, petitions and delegations to government. Apart from a few labour related strikes, which were suppressed by force, the emphasis was on non violence.

Orlando Established, increased Urbanisation

During the 1930’s the SACP and ANC seemed to lose direction and even the All African Convention failed to prevent further repressive legislation. In 1931 the Johannesburg City Council organized a competition for the design of a new Black township for 80 000 residents southwest of Johannesburg. Called Orlando, it was the first of it’s kind in South Africa and, with Klipspruit, was to form the core around which other townships were to develop and eventually become Soweto. The winning entry called for a layout of concentrically grouped streets around cores in the form of squares, linked by diagonal streets. Several parks served as antipodes to the squares. Because of the low level of state assistance, the City Council could not provide the required community services in Orlando and the result was a mass of similar little detached houses in monotonous design. The layout reflected western ideology and ignored grassroots community requirements. Natural disasters and exclusion from farm land resulted in an increasing influx of Africans coming to Johannesburg in search of work. During the Second World War, South Africa experienced high rates of economic and industrial growth accompanied by rapid urbanization. Little attention was, however, given to housing and services for Africans and wide spread squatter groupings ensued. In 1954 the government attempted to relocate over 60 000 African, Coloured, Indian and Chinese inhabitants from Johannesburg to areas southwest of the city centre on the pretext of removing them from overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. Blacks were to be accommodated on the farm Meadowlands, west of Orlando.

Freedom Charter, Sharpeville

Campaign against the Bantu Education Act and Western Areas Removal Scheme were overshadowed by the ANC’s Congress of the People at Kingtown, south of Orlando, in 1955, where the Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future was adopted. The authorities interpreted the acceptance of the Charter as sedition and arrested and charged 156 supporters of the Congress Alliance with treason. The case dragged on for four years. None of the 30 accused who were eventually tried were found guilty. The Africanist wing of the ANC in their pursuit of a purified African nationalism found passive resistance, multuracialism and co operation with whites and communists unacceptable. Determined to take the lead in the protest movement, they broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in Orlando in 1959. The PAC’s anit-pass campaign of 1960 culminated in a country wide work stay away and demonstrations on March 21. At Bopholong and Sharpeville near Vereeniging police, who claimed to have left threatened, opened fire on the crowds. Sevety one demonstrators were killed and 180 wounded. The Sharpeville crisis had far reaching effects. The government refused to make any concessions and banned the ANC and PAC, which they blamed for the crisis.

Greater Militancy, Apartheid Entrenched

Driven underground, African leaders were now determined to meet violence with violence. The PAC formed a military wing, POQO (pure), and the ANC it’s equivalent Unkhonto we Sizwe (‘Spear of the nation’), also known as MK, under Nelson Mandela’s leadership, both followed a programme of sabotage. The police’s discovery of MK’s headquarters with documents detailing plans for sabotage and revolution, led to the arrest and imprisonment for high treason of many of the movement’s high command, including Mandela, in 1964. The various resistance movements, now operating in exile, became allies in a campaign to isolate South Africa from the international stage. In South Africa itself, apartheid was becoming more entrenched. The establishment of Bantustans or self governing homelands for the various African groups, was meant to reduce the flow of Africans to the cities. They had to attend schools in the homelands and only children living ‘legally’ in urban areas could be educated there. Implementation of the policy was impossible. Rapid population growth in both urban and rural areas created a shortage of schooling facilities. In addition, poor education for the majority of the country’s population was leading to an acute shortage of skilled labour. Of the estimated four million skilled jobs South Africa would need by 1980, only half at most could be filled by the small white populations. Secondary schooling for Africans was expanded and between 1972 and 1976 the number of secondary schools in Soweto doubled while the number of secondary pupils trebled.

Student dissatisfaction, language issue

Overcrowding and poor facilities drove students into open conflict, adding to the long standing language dispute between the African community and the education authorities. Since 1959 mother tongue instruction had been used only at primary schools. Official policy determined that both English and Afrikaans be used in secondary schools. The policy was never fully implemented due to the shortage of teachers proficient in both languages. In 1974, however, the government decided to impose the use of Afrikaans in mathematics, Social Studies, Geography and History at secondary school level. As Afrikaans was perceived to be the language of the oppressor, the measure triggered a violent reaction. The Afrikaans language issue was the detonator, which led to the explosion of Black anger and frustration about the interior position of Africans in South Africa. Early in 1976 students started boycotting classes taught in Afrikaans. In May Orlando West Junior Secondary School started a general class boycott which spread to other Soweto schools and led to sporadic clashes with the police. On Thursday, 10 June 1976, students from Naledi High and Morris Isaacson suggested a mass demonstration. On Sunday, 13 June a meeting attended by 300 – 400 representatives from Soweto’s schools, was held at the Donaldson Community Centre in Orlando. An Action Committee comprising elected members and two delegates from each school organized the demonstration. Routes were decided upon and placards prepared. ‘Down with Afrikaans’ became the rallying cry against the whole system.

Soweto Day

16 June 1976 was chosen for the demonstration. The students wanted a peaceful protest and although primary schools were asked to send children home on that day, many young scholars eventually joined the march. Over a dozen assembly points were chosen at various schools in Soweto. Students started gathering at 07:00. To confuse the police, each group had a set time of departure. The plan was to gather en masse at Orlando West and march to Orlando stadium for a mass rally. Leaders repeatedly called for calm and peaceful protest.

16 June 1976 Riots

From Thomas Mofolo, the column, which started at Naledi High but was now almost doubled, marched down Mphatlalatsane Street on the southern part of the township. They chanted freedom songs and the raucous rallying cry: POWER! POWER! Some older people and younger school children stood watching fro the sides, with some of the kids swelling the march. Tebello, flanked by his lieutenants, some wielding sticks and knobkieries, led the column. Across the rivulet within the hollowed open space cutting Naledi from Tladi, the column swung left. It moved northwards through the grassy veld at the bottom of Tladi, then right into Ligwale Street. It turned eastwards. A little above, but below Tladi Clinic, waited three police cars. The column approached. The police officers slowly drove ahead. They turn left at the Zola / Ligwale T junction, but the march turned right towards Moletsane. The pupils, still singing and waving, taunted motorists traveling in the opposite direction. They hit cars with open hands nad some motorists, frightened by the marching throng, turned back or fled into side streets. At the top of Moletsane, the march once again turned right towards Molape, where they collected other students from Molapo Junior. Cavorting in the streets through Jabavu and Molofo South, they headed towards Nancefield Station. Then they swung left at the bottom of the vocational training centre, moving towards Dube Village, the famed tourist attraction with posh houses, some of them double storied, on the way to Phefeni Junior beyond the rugged ridge ahead. Thousands of other students from other schools – Musi, Mnchube, Sekano Ntoane, Morris Isaacson, Meadowlands, Diepkloof, Orlando North – were already converging on Vilakazi Street outside Phefeni Junior. Phefeni Junior pupils and those from nearby Orlando West High streamed out, some jumping over fences to meet them. The huge crowd blocked the entire street. It stood almost half a mile deep down the road, awaiting thousands more from Naledi, Moletsane, Molapo and Emdeni. A policeman stood with a sten gun cradled next to a van full of police dogs. More police arrived in vans and trucks. They were armed and also accompanied by dogs. They climbed out of the vehicles and moved behind five officers, walking side by side towards the singing throng. Opposite bothe the Phefeni Junior and the Orlando West High schools, the massive animated crowd standing deep down the road, blocked the street entirely. Impish, buoyant, they sang, waving placards. Five white police officers in blue uniforms stood side by side in the middle of the road about fifteen paces away. They found the sea of black faces below. Behind them more and more uniformed police, most of them black, and members of the riot squad alighted from police trucks, armed with rifles and accompanied by howling dogs. They strode down the tarred road towards the officers and the amassed pupils. They joked among themselves as they moved on. Several women, some with babies strapped to their backs, watched in groups from the roadside. Eeriness hung in the air. ‘Are you really going to kill our children?’ a woman in a group asked an African police sergeant as he strode past. ‘No there’ll be no shooting’ the officer said calmly. ‘The children are not fighting anybody, they are only demonstrating’. He was still talking when the white officer on the extreme right quickly stepped to the road, stooped down and picked up what seemed to be a stone. Then he hurled the object into the huge crowd. Instantly, the kids in the front of the column scattered to the sides. They picked up stones, then hurriedly surged back into the street. ‘POWER! POWER!’ they screamed, hesitantly advancing towards the police. Bang, a shot rang out, then another and yet another in rapid succession. The throng broke up with the pupils fleeing in all directions to the rugged ridge behind the two schools, into alleyways, side streets and into homes. Some collapsed in their tracks as they fled, some ran on. Some remained petrified in the middle of the road. Police paid no attention to them. They stared at those running away. A police dog charged at the diminishing group in the street. And the group stoned it to death. Police fire stopped just as suddenly. A kid and, a man lay dead, with several other wounded. It seemed everybody was terribly shaken, but much more so the students themselves. They were grim, sullen, baffled. Dumb founded they stood in groups all over the area while the wounded lay groaning on the ground. For a moment even the onlookers who had watched the singing and placard waving and then the bloody spectacle were petrified with fright. The peaceful protest march had turned sour. In a davastatingly cruel sort of way, an unprovoked show or power. Police climbed onto their vehicles. They drove away and camped on an open ground across the Klip River which runs between Orlando West and Orlando East townships. For a while, the scattered pupils stood as if in a trace. Then they regrouped, returning to the streets. Helped by motorists and reporters, they collected the dead and wounded. Some were driven to Baragwanath Hospital about three kilometers away, some were carried to the nearby Phefeni Clinic. By 21 June, 130 people had been killed and 1118 civilians and 22 policemen injured. These clashes were the first in what became the most prolonged and violent confrontation between Black protesters and the white government in South Africa’s history.

Road to democracy

The impact of the June 16 uprising was sweeping. The killing of children galivanished the parents, who joined the pupils. Violence became an everyday occurance in Black townships throughout the country. Many of South Africa’s black youth left the country to seek education overseas and to join the liberation movements in exile. The world wide flood of sympathy strengthened the anti apartheid campaign. Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at schools was dropped. Whites in South Africa became aware, many of them for the first time, of African grievances and aspirations and the attitude of employers changed. Various bodies were created to improve the standard of living of Africans in the cities and to shape a more just society. Government attempts to stamp it’s authority over the next decade by way of further banning orders, declarations of states of emergency and detention without trail were met with increasing resistance from all sectors of society. Soweto Day redefined the relationship between Africans and the state. The sense of hopelessness was replaced by determintation and increased political initiatives. Although it took more than a decade by way of further banning orders, declarations of states of emergency and detention without trail were met with increasing resistance from all sectors of society. Soweto Day redefined the relationship between Africans and the state. The sense of hopelessness was replaced by determination and increased political initiatives. Although it took more than a decade to reach fruition, a new democratic South Africa grew from the ashes brought about by the rampaging crowds of Soweto on that terrible day. After nearly a century, the end of the freedom struggle was heralded by the release of Nelson Mandela and other political detainees in 1990, South Africa’s first democratic elections and the inauguration of Mandela as the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

Avalon Cemetery

Many activists, including Helen Joseph and Joe Slovo are buried here.

Ekhaya Soweto Neighbourhood Museum

Exhibits of social and cultural material normally associated with township life.

Ekujabuleni Kwa Badela

An old age home in Orlando East next to the Orlando Police Station

Hector Peterson Memorial Square

Named after Hector Peterson, the young schoolboy who was the first to die of gunshot wounds during the June 1976 Soweto uprising.

Mandela Museum

Situated in Nelson Mandela’s four roomed Soweto house where the he lived after his release from prison. The museum’s theme centres around the struggle charting South Africa’s turbulent path to democracy.

Morris Isaacson School

A school where many of the preparations for the 1976 student uprising were planned. Many prominent South African political leaders are products of this school.

ATTRACTIONS

African Fantasy Vacations

African Fantasy Vacations is a South African inbound travel and tour operation that offers: arrangements of accommodation and meals in quality South African hotels. Guided tours of national, regional and local sites by registered tourist guides. Ground transportation on luxury and semi luxury air conditioned buses and mini buses. Participation in cultural, musical and artistic events. Interaction with South African in social settings to absorb the vibes of the local scene (business, society and politics).

Johannesburg at Night

From jazz clubs to exclusive restaurants of your choice (Leipolds, The Train, etc) and exclusive restaurants Kippies, Soul to Soul, Enigma, Lyavaya, the Nut of Africa, Waterfront, Mama’s joint, Illovo Blues Room, Shebeen, Carnivore.

Johannesburg Shopping Tour

Take a tour of Jewellery and Diamond City to see South Africa’s largest diamond market. A shopping tour of Johannesburg’s flea markets, Bruma Lake, Randburg Waterfront and the Rosebank Rooftop Market.

Soweto Day Tour

Visit historic Soweto and see the largest township in Africa with diverse cultural traditions, historic sites, including Mandela’s house, Hector Petersen’s memorial and finally have lunch or a drink in a typical Soweto shebeen or restaurant.

Soweto Progressive Dinner

This is an evening tour where you are hosted by the people of Soweto. A driving tour of Soweto with stops at key historical sites. Dinner and entertainment is provided.

Pretoria

Full day tour of historical Pretoria, the nation’s capital, and a cultural village. Visit the Cullinan Diamond Mine, the Cheetah Research Farm, Kruger House, Melrose House, Church Square, the Voortrekker Monument and Union Buildings (seat of Government). Minimum three people.

Sun City

One day trip, an afternoon game drive through Pilanesberg Game Reserve, and gambling.

Blue Fountain Saloon

Restaurants, Shebeens, Bar Food, African dishes, buffets and set menus. The famous ‘wall of fame’, friendly, safe parking.

Club 707i

Restaurants and bar, fully licensed, catering for private functions and weddings, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Friendly service and safe parking.

Freedom Square

Freedom square is located in Kliptown, the site where the Freedom Charter was presented to a mass gathering of the people. The Freedom Charter: ‘We the people of South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people. That our people have been robbed by their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a from of government founded in injustice and inequality. That our country will live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities. That only a democratic state based on the will of the people can secure to all their birthright without discrimination of colour, race, sex or belief and therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together, equals, countrymen and brothers, adopt this Freedom Charter and we pledge ourselves to strive together sparing neither strength nor courage until the democratic changes here set out have been won’.

Jimmy’s Face to Face Tours

Soweto - The Good, the Bad & the ugly

Pretoria City Tour - Historical city of South Africa

Sun City & Lost City - International fun palace in the heart of the African bush.

Ndebele Village Tour - Raibow colours of Southern Africa

Johannesburg City Tour - City of gold

Johannesburg Night Tour - The night life capital of Africa

Mini Safari - Game, caves and gracious country living

Ma – Africa Art Gallery

The first and only art gallery in Soweto at Regina Mundi (Catholic Church). All works are original and produced by internationally recognized artists – having exhibited in countries such as the USA, UK, Australia, Botswana and Egypt. The artworks depict township scenes from sadness to happiness, from the Apartheid and post Apartheid era. Ma Africa Tours & Travel will cater to your sightseeing needs as well.

Oppenheimer Tower

Popular tourist attraction offering a unique vantage point from where most of Soweto can be viewed. Built from the ruins of the old shantytown, the tower is set in unusual gardens.

Residences of well known Activists

These residences are in the vicinity of the Hector Peterson Square and include Nelson Mandela’s house, the Sisulu residence, Zeph Mothopeng’s residence, Desmond Tutu’s house, Winnie Mandela’s house. Fredo Mutwa Village.

Soweto Cappuccino

Coffee, light meals, good service and safe parking. Dr Fingerprints Beauty Centre.

Tee Dee’s Inn - Shebeen, pub, restaurant, meals, friendly atmosphere and safe parking.

The Joint -Shebeen, pub, good music, light meals, friendly environment and safe parking

Ubuntu Krall

Tourism Johannesburg information office. African Cultural venue. Facilities for hire. Animal farm.

Accommodation in and around Soweto