Soweto

Sundays host the rooftop market at the nearby shopping center with many craft tables, some food stands, and usually a bit of music as well, so we went to look around in the morning. After making our way through wooden, beaded, and other trinkets, past some tapestry and painting displays, we heard a string quartet playing Christmas carols at the back of the roof. It was very energetic, the performers obviously enjoying the spirit of the season, a lead violinist with two accompanists and a cellist as well. It's definitely a readjustment of associations to see Christmas being celebrated in the heat of South Africa's summer. There had been clerks with Santa hats in the mall when I had changed money (7 rands per dollar currently) and Christmas lights adorn businesses and a few houses.

Lukanyo thought it would be a good day to see Soweto, since we won't have any more weekends in Johannesburg. Lonely planet has an apt description, though you can find much more anywhere you look on the web:

This street in Soweto, Vilakazi Street, is likely the only street in the world hosting the homes of two Nobel Peace Prize winners.

"The idea was simple. Move anyone who wasn't white as far away from the 'chosen race' as possible, but still close enough that they could be used as cheap labor.

Thus was born Soweto (the name is an acronym of South West Townships), the biggest, most political, most violent, most dynamic and easily the best known of South Africa's townships, a term that doesn't seem quite right for such an enormous place. That it's on the outskirts of Johannesburg (Jo'burg) seems appropriate; Soweto has almost as many grating contrasts as does its patronising parent.

Dozens of the shanties and three-room matchbox houses that make up Soweto would fit onto a single stately block in Jo'burg's Westcliff or Parktown, but most white Jo'burgers wouldn't know this. Most whites have never been to Soweto or any of the six other main townships that surround the city; most simply cannot understand why anyone, especially visitors, would want to."

The ANC (African National Congress, founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, a national democratic organization representing blacks) in 1949 advocated open resistance with strikes, acts of public disobedience and protest marches. By the 1950's resistance to the oppressive and racist laws of apartheid could be seen visibly and became centered in Soweto. Some individuals wouldn't carry the mandatory passes that held their name, photo and race identification, facing arrest and the abuse that ensued. The Sharpeville Massacre occurred when the police opened fire on demonstrators as they burned their passes, killing 69 and wounding 160 people.

Shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre the ANC and PAC (Pan African Congress) were outlawed and went underground. It was in the 1970s with the introduction of Afrikaans as the mandatory language of instruction, that students began to band together. Students organized a peaceful protest for June 16th 1976 but were met with police violence culminating in hundreds of student deaths in the days that followed. The Soweto Uprising finally brought international attention to the system of apartheid, which still took 18 more years to dismember.

We visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial, a museum honoring the children of the Soweto Uprising, dedicated to the first boy who was killed on June 16th, 1976. It was amazing to see there the polar ends of the human capacity and spirit. We went on to have lunch in the township, walking to see the house that Nelson Mandela lived in before he was arrested in 1963 (for treason and sentenced to life in prison along with other ANC and PAC leaders) and where he returned after his release in 1990. It's also just a few blocks from Archbishop Desmond Tutu's house, a figure of clerical resistance to apartheid.  This street in Soweto, Vilakazi Street, is likely the only street in the world hosting the homes of two Nobel Peace Prize winners.  This was told to Lukanyo on his last visit by Sakhumzi, the owner of the place where we had lunch, which has the same name.

On the drive back, we talked about current race relations, only 12 years since the end of apartheid. In Johannesburg and other larger cities, the race relations are good, being much more mixed. There is still a lot of segregation otherwise since the townships that were created to separate races are still intact. The townships are much more impoverished than the city areas, meaning a lack of mobility for those who live within them. So far, this has kept the racial makeup of the townships pretty close to what they were previously. In the more impoverished and lesser educated areas, you still have some racist ideology as well (sound familiar?).