Soweto Tour

March 3 2010

Drive around Soweto:

Vali, a PHRU driver, took me around with him on his visits to the patients of the clinic to deliver letters. This was my first full tour of Soweto. The only word to describe Soweto is diverse. The living conditions range from areas like Mulswatle with shacks, dirt floors, tin roofs and no roads to areas like Rocktown and White Town with two story homes with beautiful architecture located across the street from the friendly, well maintained Thokoza Park.

It is very disheartening to actually see the children living in the shacks playing on the roads and wearing dingy, holey clothing. No one should live in these conditions. The government is building RDP houses in between the shacks in certain communities such as Freedom Park. These houses have a living area and one bedroom plus a bathroom. Each family is allocated one house regardless of the size of the family. The shacks are not destroyed, so new families then move into the abandon shacks.

Another occurrence is that the family that has received an RDP house rents out the RDP house and continues to live in the shack. Building RDP houses is a right step toward eradicating the squatter camps but there needs to be some improvements to the system to actually manifest the change.

The poorest, must run down and dirty area of Soweto is Kliptown. The residents of Kliptown actually live with pigs and use the same river water to clean themselves and wash clothes as the pigs. In this area, there is not even room between the shacks for the government to build RDP houses, nor are the residents of Kliptown shacks being moved into the newly built RDP houses in other communities. The PHRU driver said he doesn’t believe the government is doing ANYthing in or for Kiptown (like its just a lost cause). This is so frustrating and disappointing that I get sick when I think about it. And what’s more is that just across the main road from Kliptown is Eldorado Park with nice, fenced in houses and street lights and sidewalks. The disparity is unimaginable until you actually see it with your own eyes.

On the other side of Soweto, is a first world development. It begins with the brand new rail station that has been built for the World Cup traffic. Across the railroad tracks you will find a very modern, enclosed, shopping mall, a beautiful park, and houses that would go for millions of dollars in certain areas of the US.
On a side note: There is a lot of drama between the new buses and rail system that the government is implementing and the older minibus taxi services which are losing business to the new buses. The minibus taxis have been going on strike in attempts to get the government put a stop to the new bus services, which in my opinion would be horrible because SA is in need of serious public transport improvement and this one of the first large movements by government toward that end.

During the drive, I got to see the Morris Iaasikson High School where the infamous student riots began on June 16, 1976. On that day, black students organized together in protest to the Afrikan’s infiltration of schools and burned down any building or structure that was Afrikans and also burned and stones many Afrikans people. This riot was the spark to the flame that ignited the rest of South Africans to demand equality or at least better treatment from the Apartheid.

The visit around Soweto was eye-opening to say the least. Previously, I was obviously aware of the disparity surrounding South Africa but it took seeing the conditions in person to really grasp how stark of a disparity actually exists.