The tour bus trundles deeper through the veld and the passengers ready their cameras in anticipation.
Various animals live here, but the visitors are only interested in taking pictures of the people. To the left, some are queuing for taxis; to the right, women hang washing amid a sprawl of shacks. Straight ahead is an open-air market.
The bus stops and the door opens: time to set foot in the world’s most famous township, Soweto, chaperoned at all times by a guide.
Decades after embodying the liberation struggle, Soweto has again become a microcosm of South Africa — this time of a gentler place, where its violent history provides the backdrop for ”heritage safaris”.
The transformation is about to climax in festivities marking the township’s centenary, which will bring together veterans of the struggle, artists, musicians, business leaders and tourists.
South Western Townships, as it was originally known, was founded in October 1904, when Johannesburg council used an outbreak of bubonic plague as an excuse to herd blacks out of the city and on to a ”native” location on part of a huge farm named Klipsruit. A century later, bricks bearing the names of anti-apartheid heroes and other prominent locals are to pave the route taken during the 1976 student uprising — creating a Hollywood-style walk-of-fame boulevard.
”The celebration of 100 years of Soweto’s birth is an opportunity to acknowledge and recognise the richness of its culture and way of life,” said the mayor of Johannesburg, Amos Masondo.
In the absence of game, natural beauty or inspiring architecture, the township is luring visitors with themed tours of its fight against apartheid.
The residents largely welcome the heritage safaris as evidence that Soweto is no longer a no-go area for whites and is on its way, like the rest of South Africa, to becoming normal.
”I think the investment will pay off,” said Mapule Letsholo, who recently upgraded her pub, Robby’s Place, into a restaurant and guest house.
But a few complain that the tours are distasteful and that visitors treat the township like a game reserve.
”They seldom step from their vehicles, and when they do, they don’t buy anything,” said Wiseman Pumzile (39) a hawker of fruit and sweets. ”After they take their photos, they run away.”
However, neither the government nor local politicians have raised any objections to the tours, which are providing much-needed revenue. Guest houses are springing up, and every day coaches disgorge snap-happy Europeans, Americans and Asians.
Stops include Vilakazi Street, site of the former home of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. The ex-president’s foundation charges R20 enter the house, but his former wife reputedly earns far more from her fast-food restaurant opposite, which planning authorities have tried in vain to shut.
Around the corner is a grey, two-storey house, the home of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and up a steep slope squats Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s current abode, a red-brick mansion with bulletproof windows, CCTV cameras and armed guards.
”She needs so much protection because she knows she’s a naughty girl,” says our guide, Themba Shabangu. In the early 1990s, the so-called Mother of the Nation was accused of kidnap and murder, but that seems another era. These days, her most serious alleged crimes are fraud and theft.
Grainy photographs and film footage in the Hector Pieterson museum show sights and sounds of the 1976 clashes between police and students, including the iconic image of the lifeless 13-year-old Pieterson being held in the arms of another boy. About 600 people died as Soweto burned — fuelling the wider struggle — but freshly planted olive trees outside the museum signify that today all is calm.
”I was a little nervous about coming here, but now I’m really happy to have seen the place,” said Donald Ryberg, a retired teacher from Florida. ”There’s a lot more development than I expected.”
It is a common refrain of first-time visitors. They expected to see the crumpled shacks, street traders and the ubiquitous children, but not the paved roads, the mansions and the golf course.
A decade of democracy has brought clean water, electricity and dignity to some, but many of the estimated three million residents remain mired in poverty and unemployment. Those who can afford it, tend to move to posh suburbs such as Sandton and Fourways, which were once white enclaves. – Guardian Unlimited Â