White person, shoot me!

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but if I did, remembering to blog would be a good one.  Four months late, here is the final instalment of our South African diary:

Tuesday 22nd December

Orlando West, Soweto

"Umlungu (white person), shoot me!" yell the children, before posing for a photograph.

As we cycled through the streets of Soweto, our presence caused quite a stir among the crowds of children walking home from school.  Not that we are any kind of special visitor, but visitors we are nonetheless, and the children all want to talk to us, high-five us and hitch a ride home on the back of our bikes.  And they love to get their photo taken.  "Shoot me, shoot me!"  Each vies for our attention by pulling more and more over-the-top glamour model poses.

All of this makes getting from A to B take rather a long time, though provides a welcome excuse for regular stops on the steep uphills.

Our visit to Soweto began with a lesson in cooking bunny chow at Lebo's Soweto Backpackers, where we were dropping off a suitcase of educational items donated by members of our church.  (A suitcase of goods which thankfully made it across two border crossings without any questions from customs.)

After lunch, we set off from the shadows of the Orlando Pirates' stadium to explore this corner of Soweto by bike.  For me, this is a chance to visit many places I've read about for so many years - Walter Sisulu's house, the Hector Pietersen Memorial and, of course, 8115 Orlando West: the home of Nelson Mandela.

8115 Orlando West - Home to the Mandelas

Vilikazi Street is not just home to Mandela's home, but Desmond Tutu's, making it the only street in the world once home to two Nobel Peace Laureates.  It is located in the "Beverly Hills of Soweto", a now rich area filled with hotels, restaurants and shops all here to service the coachloads of tourists.  The properties in the surrounding streets are large and luxurious - this area has become extremely wealthy.

Contrast this to the area a few kilometres away once home to a working men's hostel.  Here, people live in shanty accommodation with no electricity or plumbing, and where getting down the narrow lanes between the corrugated iron buildings means cycling through raw sewage.

These are some of the poorest living conditions we have encountered in South Africa, and yet next to the squalor sits a large - but empty - modern apartment block.  Built several years ago to provide a better quality of accommodation for the people, it has lain empty and is now going to waste because of a government corruption scandal.

Soweto

We stop at a local shebeen (an illegal drinking establishment where a simple system of handy hymnbooks provides the necessary cover) to taste Johannesburg beer.  There is a real sense of frustration here that the ANC government - many of whom grew up in Soweto - appears to have turned its back on the living conditions here.  That a small elite grows richer while others remain in poverty does not seem befitting of the party of Nelson Mandela.

And yet, there is hope here too.  A student is eager to show us two of Soweto's newest buildings - a communal swimming pool and a Volkswagen dealership.  Nothing special, you may think, but these were luxuries open only to white people under apartheid and their arrival in Soweto is a sign of acceptance in a place created as a dumping ground for an oppressed people.

Soweto seems to represent South Africa in miniature - the story of its bloody past, dramatic transformation and fragile optimism are at every turn. Hope, frustration, wealth, poverty, joy, anger, corruption and overwhelming hospitality all exist side-by-side.

It brings home what makes this land so remarkable - its people.  Rich or poor, whatever their circumstance, South African's exude life.