Soweto Tours
Your Choices are the Soweto tour and the Soweto Jo’burg Tour
This tour is real value for money! Soweto is the very symbol of the African’s struggle for freedom in South Africa. During the last troubled decades of the twentieth century Soweto represented the struggle against apartheid.
We look beyond the bloody legend of the June 16 uprising and behind the hardened face of resistance politics, to the core of soweto. Soweto is about people leading their lives – working, commuting, celebrating and grieving.This tour also offers you insight into the daily lives of the people of Soweto, the origins of “Matchbox City” and its complex relationship with greater Johannesburg.
Tour Features:
- We shall drive through affluent suburbs. Compare the different houses: matchbox houses, elephant houses and informal settlements.
- On route to our first stop, view structures reminiscent of South Africa’s Apartheid past. Stop at the old mine compounds.
- Visit the Regina Mundi Catholic church. This church was mainly used for political meetings and gatherings during the apartheid era. The church used to be a safe haven for children escaping police brutality. Funeral services of many political victims were held here, hence its historical importance.
- Join your guide for a short guided tour of the Baragwanath taxi ranks and markets. Experience general urban life and culture in a black township. Some of the things you may see include: colourful markets, ladies carrying goods on their head, the local barber shop, “spaza” or informal shops, ladies doing their washing, donkey carts carrying coal, local home made beer brewing, traditional restaurants, traditional medicine and traditional healers, taxi commuters using local sign language to communicate with the driver, etc.
- You will get a chance to meet the people of Soweto. Your guide will stop at Motswaledi or Kliptown informal settlements
- We shall then take a drive to the suburb of Orlando. You will be able to view famous black activist’s houses during the apartheid years. See the houses of Winnie Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Then on to our famous previous president, the house where Mr Nelson Mandela lived before he was imprisoned in 1964. We shall go on a guided tour of his former house.
- Your guide will point out sites of the student uprisings that started in 1976.
- A guided tour of the Hector Petersen Memorial Square and Museum. The Hector Pieterson memorial and museum has been established to preserve the history and memory of all those who were involved in the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976. The museum is named after 13 year old Hector Pieterson, who was among the first student victims to die from police shootings. The memorial to Hector Pieterson is situated a few hundred meters from where he was shot. The museum houses photographic and audio-visual displays of the struggle of the youth against the injustices of apartheid.
- Visit a shebeen. Enjoy a traditional African buffet meal. Most tourists retire to a shebeen for some refreshment and gossip. Shebeens were born during the period when the apartheid government denied African people the right to consume liquor unless they could prove they had passed 10 years of schooling. They might then apply for a permit for no more than six bottles of beer and a bottle of spirits a month. This action saw shebeens formed by professional bootleggers. In 1988, shebeens were granted licences to sell liquor and are now run as taverns and nightclubs.
- The suburban drive will include affluent suburbs contrasting with the “bronx” like Hillbrow, followed by an orientation tour of downtown Johannesburg.
- Stop at a traditional healers “muti” shop in downtown Johannesburg.
- We shall drive through affluent suburbs. Compare the different houses: matchbox houses, elephant houses and informal settlements.
- On route to our first stop, view structures reminiscent of South Africa’s Apartheid past. Stop at the old mine compounds.
- Join your guide for a short guided tour of the Baragwanath taxi ranks and markets. Experience general urban life and culture in a black township. Some of the things you may see include: colourful markets, ladies carrying goods on their head, the local barber shop, “spaza” or informal shops, ladies doing their washing, donkey carts carrying coal, local home made beer brewing, traditional restaurants, traditional medicine and traditional healers, taxi commuters using local sign language to communicate with the driver, etc.
- You will get a chance to meet the people of Soweto. Your guide will stop at Motswaledi or Kliptown informal settlements.
- We shall then take a drive to the suburb of Orlando. You will be able to view famous black activists’ houses during the apartheid years. See the houses of Winnie Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Then on to our famous previous president, we shall go on a guided tour of the house where Mr Nelson Mandela lived before he was imprisoned in 1964.
- Your guide will point out sites of the student uprisings that started in 1976.
- Our last stop. A guided tour of the Hector Petersen Memorial Square and Museum. The Hector Pieterson memorial and museum has been established to preserve the history and memory of all those who were involved in the Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976. The museum is named after 13 year old Hector Pieterson, who was among the first student victims to die from police shootings. The memorial to Hector Pieterson is situated a few hundred meters from where he was shot. The museum houses photographic and audio-visual displays of the struggle of the youth against the injustices of apartheid.
We offer this tour in combination with atour of Johannesburg – the mining town that grew in to Africa’s dynamic and vibrant City of Gold.