Soweto Township
Megan visited Soweto yesterday while I was working, but she was gracious enough to go back this afternoon with me so that I could live out my Kevin Carter fantasy.
We hired a car from a tour agency (by not going through the hotel it was a lot cheaper), and we had a driver and guide who are both life-long Soweto residents. All the best pictures got away, as always happens, but here are 50 I liked.
There are lots of stories that go with some of these, but if you know much about the history of apartheid you know all of that. It was cool to finally see this place I’ve heard so much about. It would have been interesting to stop for a drink somewhere, but we were with the wrong guys for that. Maybe next time. (Yes, Thabo, that’s a hint.)
This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 11:13 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on June 1, 2007 at 1:34 pm Tom wrote:
I don’t know what’s worse — the living conditions or the fact that they have been infected by our terrible pop culture (check the top right of that image — I do believe that’s the Britney Spears shaved-head pic).
Seriously, great pics again. Walking around, do you get the feeling that people are optimistic? I can see some optimism in the pictures, but I get kind of a nothing-to-do feel from some of the pictures, too. And do you get a welcome feeling?
on June 1, 2007 at 4:41 pm Mom wrote:
I enjoyed the pictures. We toured the Hector Peterson School outside of Capetown, but we didn’t see the Memorial. That must be only in Soweto, huh?
Mom
on June 1, 2007 at 8:55 pm Doug wrote:
Tom, everyone I’ve talked to here, regardless of their income level, feels that things aren’t improving in South Africa as quickly as everyone thought they would. Everyone also worries about the imploding economy in Zimbabwe, and how that is affecting things — lots of economic refugees slipping into South Africa and putting even more strain on the economy here.
Mom, the place the where Hector Peterson was shot is in Soweto, and that memorial has been built a block away. Another thing Soweto has is a street that was home to two Nobel peace-prize winner, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
That power plant in several of these photos is one of many apartheid reminders. The whites built a power plant in Soweto to generate power for themselves in Johannesburg, but there was no power provided in Soweto originally — it was just a good place to put the power plant so that no whites would have it in their back yard.
Tony Blair was in Soweto on Thursday, talking on a radio show. One of our guides said he tried to call in to ask Blair whether he was still going to be the Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Bush administration after he’s no longer Prime Minister of the UK. (Apparently Nelson Mandela gave Tony that title a few years ago.)
on June 2, 2007 at 9:37 am Tom wrote:
Ergh, Blair’s a brave man (though I still think he’s a Bushie pushover). I doubt our Commander in Chief would go anywhere and do call-in radio where he was called something like that.
I guess that’s more what I was asking — whether people feel like things are getting better. And it sounds like they don’t, at least not fast enough.
I assume the power plant now also provides power to Soweto? I’m surprised, in a way, that they put it there — seems like it would be very convenient to saboteurs. Anyhow, let’s hope it at least provides a few jobs to Soweto now.
on June 3, 2007 at 12:21 pm Megan wrote:
I think it’s a mistake to think about Soweto just in terms of hope vs. dispair. It misses the fact that people there do what people do everywhere–live their lives. And despite all the problems, there’s a lot of life going on. Lots of children playing, people talking and laughing in the streets, etc. A much more appealing community in many ways than, for example, the rich white neighborhoods I saw, which were all walled in with no one around but servants and security guards.
It’s also worth noting that Soweto is huge, with quite a spectrum of living conditions. Some of the houses are really very nice. It’s not all squalor and despair at all, though we liberal Americans tend to think of it that way.
The power plant is no longer in use, because of all the pollutants it pumped into the environment. It was shut down for both practical and symbolic reasons.
on June 3, 2007 at 2:38 pm Tom wrote:
See, this is why people need to travel more. Point very ardently taken.
Honestly, all I’ve ever known about South Africa is what I’ve seen on the news, dubious descriptions from a bonehead South African exchange student in high school (he wasn’t a bonehead because of any racism-related issues, he was just a doofus), and now this from you guys.
I’d seen some stuff about the middle- and upper-class portions of Soweto over the past several years, and completely forgotten about them until I read this. Hm.
I wonder how many Americans are like me — stuck with a 1988 understanding of it. Probably most of us. The sticky, arcane details of the day-to-day economy and life don’t make good news footage, you know? Like a good liberal, I embraced the dire portions, proceeded to do nothing about it, and maintained those frozen assumptions with startling consistency over roughly twenty years.
I guess it’s back to NPR for me, warts and all. Bread Line of the Month stories aside, they do keep a bit more up-to-date on South Africa (and the rest of the damned world) than me and my dim recollection of boycotting Coca Cola in college for some reason or other.
It does make you wonder what the half-life on a bad history is for a country, though. I mean, I’m sure South Africa still has its problems to solve, but you have to figure that even doing things totally right still starts the fifty-years-until-you’re-not-bastards clock ticking. Think about Germany and Japan. Eeesh.
on June 3, 2007 at 3:02 pm Doug wrote:
Yeah, the nice part of Soweto was interesting. Very expensive-looking homes, and some nice-looking B&Bs.
I didn’t take any pictures of that stuff, of course.
on July 19, 2007 at 3:57 am Thabo wrote:
Hint well taken…i sure will be there on your next visit to Soweto, and its very refreshing to see the picture you painted about Soweto than the one people always see on the news.
on July 19, 2007 at 9:07 pm Doug wrote:
Thabo, great to hear from you! And knowing you’ll take us out for a drink in Soweto greatly increases the chance we’ll be back in Johannesburg soon.