Soweto Tour Part 2

Anna and I spent the week together working on follow up with the project but squeezed in a proper trip to Soweto - unlike the last time when Jimmy showed Tiff and I off in his car and that was about it.

We were taken to Soweto by a guide whose dad owns one of the oldest black-owned tour companies in South Africa. He was full of facts and figures which I'm not good at remembering.
The area later named Soweto began at the turn of the last century as a place where blacks working in the mines were allowed to live, out of eyesight of the whites and with very little infrastructure provided. Miners had to walk to and from work sometimes over 2 hours one way. In the 50's the administration divided townships according to ethnicity. It came to the world's attention in June '76 when school children demonstrated against being forced to learn in Afrikaans and the true colours of the regime were captured by the media.

We visited Nelson Mandela's old house, jam packed with photos and certificates and tour groups, and Desmond Tutu's house too. It's flagged as the only place you'll find two Nobel Peace prize winners living on the same street. We also spied on Winnie's house which has mirrored windows and fences and cameras. In 2002 apparently 75% of Jo'burg's residents live in Soweto whilst the 2001 Census put the population at nearly 900.000. It has one of the biggest hospitals in the world.

The photos are taken in an informal settlement a place where people build a house or shack on a piece of available land but aren't given the rights and laws from the government. But this one has been there for decades and I suppose moving the population en masse would hark back to the bad old days so instead they are provided with chemical toilets, communal taps and some electricity. The government is building houses for just this sort of person all over the country but they're often far away from the community they come from and are as basic as the shacks they've built themselves.

It's a big problem for those in power and you could say that if they dont play their cards right they'll lose precious votes.

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Zim

When you visit a place which receives so much media coverage like Zimbabwe it's hard to know what you're really seeing driving around its capital and meeting some of its people.

And Christmas is a strange time anyway - lots of the Diaspora had come back so the shoppers and holiday makers were out in force. The Victoria Falls Hotel was full to bursting -but perhaps with Chinese tourists rather than the Europeans or Americans. But inflation meant that the price of petrol or bread, say, were in free fall. And according to statistics a low income family of five needs Z$350,000 a month to buy basic foodstuffs but the average labourer is paid around Z$8000.

Does all of this really come down to one man? Why is it recently that he's been ostracised when he's been talking about the Land Issue since the 80's? Why does the criticism and sanctioning only come from outside the country, can the structures within really be so weak? These are the kind of questions I asked myself.

It's so hard to make pronouncements, and why should I?

The welcome I received was warm and gracious and the landscape breathtaking. And however hard life becomes, there's always beer.

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Zim Snaps 1

My second trip to Zimbabwe, this time for Christmas and New Year.

Here are some photos from Domboshava, just outside Harare - ancient cave paintings and a sacred space.