SoWeTo

New Orleans right after Katrina

I remember when my Swiss friends Felix and Martin came to visit me and NYC during the gas shortages of the late 70's. All they wanted to see were the gas lines snaking for blocks and go to the rubble that was then the South Bronx. I showed them the lines. They were unavoidable, but I stopped the tour short of the South Bronx. I wasn't stupid. I had read Bonfire of the Vanities. 

Vilakazi Street

I do not get the attraction with ogling other people who are living in dire straights. I did not like to see it when we stumbled upon it by accident in Asia and Latin America so I certainly never joined a bus tour on purpose like the Favela Tour in Rio.

I did go on the so-called Tour of Destruction in the Ninth ward of New Orleans however when Waterkeeper Alliance had its annual conference there right after Katrina. But that was different. We weren't there to see people living in squalor. We were there to act as witnesses to the lack of progress by the government and insurance companies. I was a little concerned about what we would see on the Soweto tour we were taking our guests on, but I needn't have been.

The story of Soweto is a story of triumph over adversity. Originally forced to relocate there by the South African government, many of the wealthy and middle class blacks have now chosen to remain there. It is vibrant and colorful and the people are happy to tell you their story. Sure there are still places you wouldn't want to go and our taxi driver did not take us, but slowly but surely the tin roof shacks are being replaced by brick housing. There is electricity and running water, sewer services and security. And great medical facilities with the largest state-of-the-art trauma hospital in the world.

It is also the site of many of the pivotal political events in Johannesburg's recent history which are worth seeing. There is a memorial to Hector Pieterson and the schoolchildren who were gunned down by the police in 1976. And the square where the current constitution was drafted now houses a brick building. Inside you can read the 11 adopted constitutional laws fittingly etched in stone. Vilakazi Street in West Orlando, one of the south western townships, has the distinction of being the only street in the world with the homes of two Nobel Prize winners, former President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

And the Orlando cooling towers which once electrified downtown Johannesburg while it mocked the surrounding Soweto townships who sat in darkness is now an art installation ... and used for bungee-jumping! I guess the new Soweto is just not dangerous enough anymore. They need to jump off a bridge!