This group of albums is from a trip I took to southern Africa in August of 1990. I had been invited to visit my friend Max Gilika who I had first met when he was a student at Adelphi University. I started out at his home in Gaborone, visiting historic locations near there. Next, I spent three days at a safari game park in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Max made a business trip to Johannesburg South Africa, and I went with him. While there, he gave me a fascinating tour of Soweto, very much then in the news because of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison a few months earlier.

Leaving Botswana, I flew to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and then to Harare, the capital. Having arrived in Harare, I rented a car with a driver, to visit Great Zimbabwe, a 180-mile road trip. After returning to Harare, I flew to Lusaka Zambia for my return trip home.

Chapter 7– Soweto

We arrived in Johannesburg and checked in at the Holiday Inn near the center of the city. Max had told me he wanted to take me to see Soweto, but he had to check with the police whether it was legal for him to take me, a white person, into Soweto. That had been against the law until recently, but now it was perfectly OK, no special permit required.

Soweto is an acronym; it stands for south-western townships. Under apartheid, it was illegal for Blacks to live in Johannesburg proper; they had to live in townships some distance from the city. Historically the townships were overcrowded, under-maintained and under-served. But by the middle of 1990, things were beginning to change. Nelson Mandela had been released from prison a few months earlier, and the oppressive rules of apartheid were being loosened. It was a fascinating time to see Soweto with my own eyes, an education for me.

Different parts of Soweto varied greatly. The first area we visited, where Max had a friend who treated us to dinner, was a modern development, single family homes with all the utilities, electricity, running water and sanitation, paved roads and sidewalks, green lawns. It could have been any one of many suburbs in the USA.

But those were not the conditions in most parts of Soweto. There were miles of row houses, narrow single-story brick “matchbox” houses, mostly just four rooms per home, no water or electricity. If they were upgraded with modern utilities, they wouldn’t have been bad housing for a small family, but I’m told that most were occupied by a dozen or more.

Worse yet were the men’s hostels, occupied by single men who moved to Soweto to work in the mines and performing other menial labor. Again, few to no utilities. There were no after-work activities for the men, who would spend their evenings in the shebeens (bars) and be up to no good. The areas around the hostels were considered the most dangerous part of Soweto.

Finally, there were the shanty areas. Home-made dwellings built using whatever could be obtained at no cost. Shanty towns similar to those in Soweto exist in many parts of the world.

Some of the worst conditions were environmental. All of Soweto was covered with a thick layer of smog when I was there, as most people cooked and heated their dwellings with coal. Most streets were unpaved, with blowing dust combining with the smog. There was loose rubbish everywhere, just a mess.

It is hard for me to guess what current conditions are like there now. I read varying reports. Soweto is now a part of the city of Johannesburg. There are bed and breakfasts and highly rated restaurants. Almost every street and alley in Soweto is mapped in Google Street View, unusual for most of Africa. Street View shows that most roads are now paved, and the rubbish, so visible in my photographs, appears to be gone. But reports claim it is still mostly an underprivileged area where many just scrape by. And I understand crime is worse now.

Note the smog in this and many of the photos.