After visiting the Apartheid Museum we took a two hour tour through SOWETO or Southwest Township, really an area of many small towns southwest of Johannesburg. First we drove by the soccer stadium which has many names. My favorite is The Calabash. Others include Soccer City Stadium, FNB Stadium, First National Bank Stadium. It is the largest in South Africa and can seat nearly 95,000 fans.
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In SOWETO are two former cooling towers of the Orlando Power Station, an old coal-fired power plant, that now provide a recreational bungee jumping spot between them. The towers often get repainted depending upon who sponsors them.
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We stopped by the Hector Pieterson Museum that was created some time after the 12 year old boy was shot and killed during a student demonstration (SOWETO Uprising) during apartheid in 1976.
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Remembering Winnie Mandela
Street Vendors
The homes of two Nobel Peace Prize laureates-South Africa's first democratically elected president, the late Nelson Mandela, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu-are found on Vilakazi Street in the Orlando West section of SOWETO.
One Mandela house is now a museum.
A Winnie Mandela House
Other SOWETO Housing
Mbali, our guide to SOWETO, told me he spoke about 12 languages: 4-5 dialects each of Zulu and Xhosa, Afrikaans, German, Dutch, and English.
For our last morning in Africa, we rode around on a red tour bus.
Street Market in Johannesburg
Murals and Sculpture around Johannesburg
Women of South Africa
Train Yards and Trains
In the afternoon our home of 45 days got a much needed bath before we returned it in Pretoria.
Good-bye Africa
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