SOWETTO

Sowetto--this is a township outside of Johannesburg, about one hour from where I'm living at Refilwe. There is a lot of history here from the Apartheid era. Basically, the white South Africans decided to move the black people to this area to separate them. This is now one of the famous townships and it is very large. There are neighborhoods of all different types of housing. There are informal settlement areas where people live in shacks. Then there are simple house structures that the government has now made (post-apartheid) that people live in for free. And then there are bond houses, also government made which people pay rent to live in and may potentially own one day--I'm not sure exactly how all this works, but these are some things I picked up on my travels.

I went with a woman from Refilwe to pick up her two daughters (pictured above on the left) who were staying with family for the holiday. The picture of us is taken with Sowetto in the background to the right. We stopped at a June 16th Memorial. This is in honor of those who were killed during Apartheid times, when there was a march down the main road to Sowetto to protest all education being taught in Afrikaans (the language of the white South Africans). The top two pictures were taken at this memorial as well. The two painted towers are just another landmark in Sowetto (at least I don't know what they might signify). Clearly, I still have research to do about this area and the history there, but it was good to spend an afternoon in the famous Sowetto.