Soweto

Today I went to Soweto to see the Hector Pieterson Museum - a very moving memorial to the 13-year old schoolboy who was shot during the Soweto uprising in 1976, and a very effective exposition and condemnation of the whole apartheid system and the increasingly violent lengths the regime went to in repressing protest. The schoolchildren were protesting against a new law mandating that half of the teaching in their schools had to be in Afrikaans - which very few of them spoke - and so they sat in class for week after week not understanding what half of the teachers in front of them were saying, and slowly realising that they would inevitably fail the subjects being taught in this alien language. (They wanted to go on being taught in English - another colonial language, but one that they at least already understood.)

A small detail which is also indicative of the pathos and desperation of those times is that Hector's original surname was Pitso - his family changed it to Pieterson in the hope that they'd get better treatment as being less "African" and more "coloured". I don't have any photos from the museum (not permitted) but there are some above from the streets of Soweto. Note the nearly-completed new Soweto football stadium where the final of the World Cup will be played in 2010 - and note also the "informal housing" in the field in front of it.

Just to rub in the extremes of poverty/ money here, on the way back I stopped at the Gold Reef City complex - which rather oddly includes the excellent Apartheid Museum (take a look at the web site to see the Flash creativity, as well as the content, of course) along with a theme park with thrill rides and a casino - which is of course decorated in high kitsch. A city of contrasts indeed.