When I was visiting Johannesburg, I received plenty of warnings from South Africans in the hôtel to not go out walk alone, hail a taxi in the streets or go to certain areas. Ok, the last one is probably useful, but the other warnings I felt were exaggerated and a bit paranoid on the part of these well-meaning people.
So, one evening I took the train (Gautrain) to go to another suburb, granted the suburb where I was and the one I was going to were considered rich and safe. But I did walk the streets at night among the masses (that curiously almost exclusively Blacks, the Whites were in cars zipping quickly pass) and not once did I get murdered, robbed or attacked.
One area I wanted to visit was Soweto. The image of Soweto as poor is probably what most of us have. That’s true and not true. Soweto is huge and like many places in South Africa, présents a huge discrepancy between rich and poor. You will be surprised to discover the rich Soweto (or the Beverly Hills area of Soweto).
Beautiful houses that would be considered rich even in Los Angeles line some streets. What’s more surprising, these houses did not have fences and electronic protection like what we find in rich suburbs in Johannesburg. Yet, not very far from there, we also find very poor living areas where people live in cardboard boxes.
Soweto I found out was not some Zulu name, but actually short for South Western Township, created when Blacks were forced to move from their houses in Johannesburg during Apartheid. Today, Soweto pulls the tourists visiting Johannesburg with its muséums, including the Mandela house and Hector Pieterson museum. It is probably the only town that has produced two Nobel Prize winners who both lived in the same street !
When I was visiting Johannesburg, I received plenty of warnings from South Africans in the hôtel to not go out walk alone, hail a taxi in the streets or go to certain areas. Ok, the last one is probably useful, but the other warnings I felt were exaggerated and a bit paranoid on the part of these well-meaning people.
So, one evening I took the train (Gautrain) to go to another suburb, granted the suburb where I was and the one I was going to were considered rich and safe. But I did walk the streets at night among the masses (that curiously almost exclusively Blacks, the Whites were in cars zipping quickly pass) and not once did I get murdered, robbed or attacked.
One area I wanted to visit was Soweto. The image of Soweto as poor is probably what most of us have. That’s true and not true. Soweto is huge and like many places in South Africa, présents a huge discrepancy between rich and poor. You will be surprised to discover the rich Soweto (or the Beverly Hills area of Soweto). 
Beautiful houses that would be considered rich even in Los Angeles line some streets. What’s more surprising, these houses did not have fences and electronic protection like what we find in rich suburbs in Johannesburg. Yet, not very far from there, we also find very poor living areas where people live in cardboard boxes.
Soweto I found out was not some Zulu name, but actually short for South Western Township, created when Blacks were forced to move from their houses in Johannesburg during Apartheid. Today, Soweto pulls the tourists visiting Johannesburg with its muséums, including the Mandela house and Hector Pieterson museum. It is probably the only town that has produced two Nobel Prize winners who both lived in the same street !
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