Take me to Soweto

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Trip Start Sep 17, 2007 Previous
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  Soweto, Gauteng, South Africa
Friday, October 3, 2008

Soweto.  If you've heard of, it's got certain connotations.  Maybe it sounds dangerous.  Maybe it's the site of huge activist actions during the 1970s anti-apartheid movement.  Maybe it's where Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela come from.  It's got history.  It's a place of the people.  It's the SOuthWEst TOwnship. 

Soweto is actually divided into different living areas.  One of these is positively middle-class.  It's like suburbs in the US (maybe smaller lawns) where kids play in the street and people know their neighbors and fences are for dogs or decoration.  One is full of "matchbox" houses, little box houses with basic amenities, formerly without toilets or electricity, currently remodelled for modern man.  One group consists of clusters of shanty towns, which are made up of corrugated iron in any unoccupied land until someone decides the town needs to be torn down.  Finally there are the hostels.  Originally these were housing for black men working in Joburg but not allowed to stay in the city because of the pass laws.  Now they're family housing, but for the monstrously poor, the drug dealers, and the hired hit men.  Oh, and they're just starting to build government subsidized houses like matchbox houses but with amenities.  These are free if you stay on the waiting list long enough. 

We had a short tour of the shanty-town, led by Eddie, who constantly referred to us as "good people."  We learned how the place functions, saw a daycare, and went into a house that was possible three meters by five meters and was the only living space for three people, two of them teenagers.  It was short, but a good peek into a life just shy of homeless that works well for these people. 

Our educator-driver was Eric, who talked for three hours straight.  Travis got a little tired of listening, he said, but I was glad to finally have a tour guide who actually was informative.  Essentially, don't ever go into the hostels because even the police won't go in alone, shanty towns are their own little municipalities, and people are in denial about HIV-AIDS and refuse to either wear protection or get tested because they're scared of either having it or causing trouble in relationships.  And the nuclear power plant was closed before it even started providing power to the town it was designed to power.  Now you can bungee jump off the giant smoke stacks.  Woot.  And the government tries to enact helpful legislation to take care of its people, but it doesn't think these things through, so AIDS patients who get free ARVs sell them to druggies and people with TB get money and drugs from the government, so they take the meds until they feel a little better then stop so they can keep getting checks, which in turn causes ever more virulent forms of TB, which are, of course, untreatable. 

On to the history portion.  Due to an error on the part of another tourist who for some reason thought he could get to the airport at the same time he was supposed to be on a tour, we ended up getting a free visit to the Apartheid Museum (the tour including it was R80 more than the one we paid for).  This museum put me in mind of the Holocaust museums I've been to (Washington, DC and Yad VaShem in Israel) - the layout and artefacts were similarly planned, but the tone was slightly less depressing since people weren't getting gassed.  Still, the oppression and superiority complexes are absolutely shocking (and not gone, contrary to popular belief).  I think that the Truth and Reconciliation Committee probably had a big hand in not making it as big a blame issue as it could have been.  Whoever was responsible, you did a good job.  The video clips of people making their own statements are absolute gems, as are oral histories.  The fact that it was so recent surprises the visitor sometimes.  So does the fact that Nelson Mandela was taken off America's most wanted terrorists lists only last year and that we in the US were actively shunning South Africa.  It's amazing how things do change. 

Upon leaving the Apartheid Museum we began our tour of Soweto, finally coming to the Hector Pietersen museum.  This museum was about the student protests in 1976.  The government was forcing them to take courses in Afrikaans (not Afrikaans language courses), which they absolutely couldn't understand, so they couldn't learn, so they protested.  During a student march to bring a petition to the police station, armed police provoked a stone fight and then started firing live ammo on the students.  13-year-old Hector Pietersen was shot dead.  It was the beginning of the end.  This museum put a more local spin on the anti-Apartheid actions in Soweto, and it openly demonstrates the fact that instead of keeping the peace, the police were actively provoking trouble.  There were some more seriously disturbing quotations from people and government papers. 

Finally we stopped at the church Regina Mundi.  In this church students (who were not allowed to assemble) continued to assemble and plan actions.  They thought it was a safe place because it was a church, but there was natually a mole and the police came in and smashed part of the altar and shot live ammunition all over the place.  The ceiling still shows bullet holes and there are two of the old stained-glass windows with a whole bunch of holes in them.  It was rather aggressive.  On a lighter note, there's a piece of art inside called Madonna and Child of Soweto with a black Mary and Jesus and a rather abstract depiction of Soweto, which survived the craziness.  In the entry of the church there's a mural of notable South Africans and members of the Rainbow Nation and a flag.  It was here that I learned the meanings of the colors.  Red is for blood shed, black and white are for people colors, green and yellow are for natural resources, and blue is for the future, and the Y is a symbol of peace.  I had really wanted to know that.  Finally, there was a stained glass picture donated from Poland and on the inside the people in the picture were white, while on the outside they were black.  Pretty special. 

Erin

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