Johannesburg (Part 2) - In sight?

Low-class living in a Soweto 'hostel'.

I moved hostels from the rather run-down hostel, in a northern stronghold, to a locally-run hostel, called Lebo's Soweto Backpackers, south west of the centre of Johannesburg.  Actually, 'Soweto' stands for 'SOuth WEstern TOwnship', as I was soon to find out.

African reggae plays out to the friendly team working at the bamboo-built enterprise.  Dozens of bicycles are neatly lined outside, a line of business for the tourists that the young owner has been offering successfully for years now. Two black girls are on reception and cheerfully check me in.  Dudu,  pretty and quick witted, shows me around and chides me for asking too many questions (as a seasoned hostel visitor I tend to know what I'm looking for). 

It's quite small, crowded and thinly insulated.  This was Lebo's grandfather's property once.  Now a hostel as well as a home, it's decorated in bright colours and the sandy back yard is charming - it houses a small bar, pool table and lounge areas.  Tethered parrots talk to themselves as a pair of golden weaver birds delicately hang a grassy nest from an overhead branch - unperturbed by the humans walking a few feet away.  Compared to the drafty old mansion I've left, this place is delightful.

Part 1 of a modern day 'Ten Commandments', replacing the apartheid regime

Lebo's is located in Orlando West, a lower-middle class neighbourhood of the huge township.  Soweto stretches to the horizon and houses some three to four million people (it's hard to be precise, given the nature of some densely packed areas and the fluctuating population).  Locally the streets are quiet and safe; the small plots meticulously clean.  I walk around for exercise and have a few conversations with the locals - they strike up without prompting, pleased to speak with the white guy, happy enough to talk to the tourist, sharing the warm afternoon sun.

 

I do this again a day later, too, joined by a extrovert lady in her 50s.  Helen has taken the trouble to learn a dozen phrases of Zulu, and to the rapture of the folks we bump into she greets them and exchanges a few phrases.  Her effort conveys respect for their culture and interest in their lives, in a way that camera-clicking along the tourist route never could.  She receives plenty of encouragement and tuition, and I join in as best I can. 

We wander further, into more impoverished areas.  Despite the open drains and shanty building standards, people clearly take a pride in their homes - Helen asks to spend a penny, and returns exclaiming the house inside is much cleaner than our hostel.   External appearances can be deceptive.

Mothers and grannies cross the path to join us and talk; curious lads strike up; old men pause and greet us.  There is a 'village' feel to the place and we wander slowly for a couple of hours.

 A stay in Soweto was an attempt to get deeper into the fabric of the society than the quick two-hour tourist excursion I'd experienced the first morning.  That car tour was a convenient way to transit between the two hostels, but I learnt a little along the way too.

Our driver, George, had immaculate English (as well as five other, African dialects) and made sure we saw the well-to-do areas.  Soweto has a growing share of millionaires - Winnie Mandela's house we passed, for example - and most of them hang on to and use their properties here (even if they relocate to more plush suburbs eventually).

He pointed out the street where not one but two Nobel Peace Prize Winners came from - Tutu and Mandela.  And he left us to visit the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum: named after the first student to be killed in the Soweto uprising of 1976.

Slowly, a few jigsaw pieces were falling into place: barely remembered images from the 1980's news bulletins - funerals, fighting and palls of smoke.  At the Hector Pieterson museum, I was able to piece together a very rudimentary understanding of the history of South Africa, and the central role that Soweto played in shaping the modern miracle nation.

I recommend taking a few minutes to read this summary from Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_uprising

Chastened, I followed our guide though slum areas of the township.  There was certainly more than hint of 'poverty tourism' about this - the locals living here must feel like zoo specimens, day after day.  I didn't really enjoy the role of gawping western tourist.  The grotty surrounds were similar to those I'd seen on a tour in Cape Town:  below a certain level of sanitation, proximity, electrical safety and room to move, long term habitation presumably can't happen.  We were looking at that base level of urban living.

 

A day later, at the world class Apatheid Museum, another piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place.

I can't try to describe everything in the Apartheid Museum - you should visit if you get the chance.  It was illuminating, disturbing and moving.  I wish I could convey succinctly all the chilling, and inspiring details woven into the museum's displays.  As a British observer, I'm not used to picturing such horrors occurring within 'recent memory', as opposed to, say, the First or Second World Wars that we studied at school - history too far removed from my own life.

I couldn't help but think of the South Africans I'd met over the past month - some of whom must have been in up close and personal to the terrible wrongs wrought across the nation.  Their friends and families losing loved ones.  Comrades serving in the defence forces or the military wings of the ANC or PAC.   How can modern day South African's live peacefully together after so much oppression, violence and bloodshed?  

 It seems that the true answer is: they don't, not yet.  Prejudice is very much still evident in South Africa, and racism is not far beneath the surface if you care to look.  You only have to read a few newspapers, listen to the radio or TV, or speak to South Africans to realise that distrust, corruption and poverty are rife in this wonderful country.  On paper the apartheid regime has been erased, but it will take many decades before the legacy fades, institutionalised injustices are exposed and the see-saw settles. 

I'm hugely ignorant of the depth of history that South Africans themselves understand fully.  And I realise no country is free from the stains I've mentioned above.  Learning, as the issues ring out around me, I've found in Johannesburg a window into this country that I could barely discern before now. 

The peaceful integration of black South Africans into positions of influence in business and politics may continue, and the problems may recede.  I hope so, as  there's much to do.  Racial integration is hard.  Infrastructure, particularly in the cities, is under increasing pressure of numbers; energy supply is under strain; and low-income housing is not being built fast enough.  Actually, that all sounds a lot like the UK right now. 

Once again, the world seems to me a small place and the challenges people face are surprisingly universal.  I wonder what the solutions are?