A Day of Thought

Now in Johannesburg, we decided to take a trip to the township of Soweto and visit the Apartheid Museum. Our guide lived in Soweto and took us first through downtown Joburg seeing the various areas, some rich some poor, not unlike any other city in the world including London. The route went past some very desirable neighbourhoods with high profile securitym multi million pound homes and on to the current Joburg home of Nelson Mandela. From there we onto Gold Reef City passing old gold mines and onto this huge playground of modern hotels, casinos and theme parks where situated to one side is the Apartheid Museum. It is certainly one of the best museums we have ever been to, lots of information, video, film and pictures explaimning how, why and what went on from the early part of the 20th century through the 1940s when the apartheid rules were brought in secregating the various sections to the breakdown in the 1970s-80s right up to the current day. A very thought provoking museum seeing how laws affected all society here.

After the museum it was on to Soweto, a huge sprawling area of many smaller areas, much much bigger than we expected. Like all areas it has its good and bad sides. The area, we were told is now generally safe as it relies on tourism so it is vertually self policing. A lot of the area now is quite rich with many self made millionaires living there in beautiful (if not slightly over the top) houses. Driving through and around we were shown a lot on our way to the main tourist sights. We had a great lunch of local food in a restaurant on one of the main streets, in fact a unique street as it is the only street in the world where two seperate Nobel Prize winners were raised. The first house we saw was Desmond Tutu's followed a few yards later by the Soweto home of Nelson Mandela. Further uo the street was the corner where the youth Hector Pieterson was shot and killed at the start of the Soweto Uprising with its many memorials and plaques explaining what went on.
After this it was on through the much poorer areas of Soweto, the shanty towns, often still with expensive cars around to areas that are being redeveloped and new housing being built. Soweto houses some very rich people but also some of the poorest.
Leaving Soweto it was a ride back stopping of at Soccer City then downtown Joburg back to our guesthouse. A very good day, something we wanted to do and see, we couldnt say it was the happiest day of the holiday but certainly thought provoking
Today is a short trip to "The Cradle of Mankind", an area where fossils of early man are being discovered before getting back to change and the long flight this evening back to UK

Miuke & Jan