Soweto 2

I made a brief visit to Soweto back in November. Yesterday I went again with L and E, to be shown around by Booysie, who has always lived in Soweto and now runs a car hire and tour company. Booysie says that in some ways Soweto is improving - an increasing number of people have the money to improve their accomodation or build new houses, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with these new structures being adjacent to shacks or the old basic two-room houses built to house the service class for Joburg. There's also more community spirit and pride in the area. On the other hand, there are still parts of Soweto - for example Kliptown, which we visited - where there's no running water or electricity, and thousands of people live in corrugated iron shacks, in conditions which must be appalling. Schooling is still inadequate, with the richer Sowetans bussing their kids to the fee-paying schools in the ex-white areas, while the poorer families make do with what's available locally. I asked if there were any white people living in Soweto and Booysie said yes, a few, but only those in mixed-race marriages; there were no white families that he knew of.

We visited SKY, the Soweto Kliptown Youth centre, where 22 orphans live - the community was founded by Bob Nameng, who was orphaned himself at six years old and lived on the streets for two years. The community is supported by the American National Basketball Association (which is rather surreal, as apparently there are only four basketball courts in the whole of Soweto - a town of four million people; the community itself doesn't have one) and other donors, while the kids are also taught arts and crafts in an attempt to make the endeavour more self-sustaining. Another of the leaders there was very critical of the SA government and the local administration for failing to support efforts like theirs - nearly all the support comes from abroad - and when you look at the housing and services in Kliptown you can understand that there must be a very high level of disappointment and frustration that so little has changed since 1994. The government believes in market-led solutions to poverty and lack of opportunity, but there's no evidence that this is working in Kliptown.

Above: a nice new house in Soweto; a standard two-room house (many courtyards are filled with one-room huts to accomodate a growing family or to rent out); a corrugated iron shack (hot in summer, cold in winter); "hostel" housing originally built to accomodate men only, usually mine workers; one of the disused Soweto power station cooling towers - a rare structure above two storeys, now used for bungee jumping - the art work is attractive but paid for by a bank - the other tower is unfortunately a giant advert. Booysie pointed out that all the pylons lead in the direction of Joburg - when the power station was still functioning, Soweto had no electricity at all. He also said that under apartheid the housing immediately around the towers was for white workers at the power station only - while he was growing up he wouldn't have been allowed into the compound, and so he didn't see the towers up close until after 1992.