Soweto

One of Mia's coworkers, a soft-spoken man named Terence, took me around Soweto today. Soweto is the largest township in Joburg. No one knows exactly how many people live there, but the 2001 census says well over 800,000. Mia said people can live their entire lives in Soweto - go to school, college, get married, have children, work, die - and never leave the place.

A township is basically where poor blacks live, a result of apartheid and evictions of black Africans from municipal centers. They are usually just outside cities, informal settlements made up of pitiful shacks. The poorest ones don't have electricity or toilets or much of anything really. Some townships are extremely dangerous, especially for white people, and there are some that even blacks are afraid to go into. They recommend tourists take a black friend or guide with them when travelling in certain townships. Terence was my black friend.

But Soweto is an up and coming township. It has street names, paved roads, a hospital, a university, shops, restaurants full of white tourists. People who have become financially successful are coming back to Soweto and building homes there. So while there are still areas with a township's tell-tale shacks, there are also nice homes.

I was interested in Soweto mainly because it was hugely significant in the struggle against apartheid. An uprising that took place there woke the rest of the world to the oppression (and brutality) of apartheid. Many say it marked the beginning of its end.

A very brief history: on June 16, 1976, the black students of Soweto carried out a massive march, striking against the new law that required them to be taught in Afrikaans.

What started out as a peaceful children's demonstration became a massacre. The police shot into crowds of kids. It's thought that as many as 500 were killed, but the official number is a ridiculously conservative 23. Thousands were injured. The chaos continued for the next two days with police randomly shooting into protesting crowds while angry and frustrated blacks torched anything in sight.

It spread to other townships too, including Alexandra, where Terence grew up. Terence was in first grade at the time.

I asked him if he remembered it. He did.

Was it scary? Oh yes, it was very scary.

That's all he said. Terence is a man of very few words.

I eventually got up the nerve to ask what it was like for him living under apartheid. He said it was "very hard."

"Everybody was poor," he said.

I asked if it was better now. "Oh yes. Everybody has equal rights now," he said. "It's what you do with it. You go to school, you'll be all right."

I asked what else needed to be done. He said they needed to get rid of the corruption in the current government.

I think everybody in the country would agree with that.