Soweto

Saving the best for last, we travel from Pretoria to the famous Soweto Township, where you will be taken by minibus taxi to the most important historical and cultural landmarks and be allowed to mix with the local inhabitants at their places of leisure. The total tour lasts about 6 hours and will leave you with the most unforgettable experience of your life.

Soweto (SouthWestern Township), the largest 'township' in the country, was developed for exclusive black occupation under the apartheid system of the early 1950's.

Today the population of Soweto is a polyglot community, open to all the country's various indigenous groups.

Commercial life is still conducted largely through thousands of 'spaza' shops (home-based stores) and street stalls and social life through the myriad 'shebeens' (home-based drinking and conversation venues), clubs (much more upmarket), restaurants, coffee shops, community halls and sports centres.

Much of the struggle against apartheid was fought in and from Soweto. Riots that rocked the country started in Soweto on 16 June 1976.

Soweto's 2 000-bed Chris Hani-Baragwanath hospital is the largest in the southern hemisphere.

Hector Petersen Square, in Orlando East (one of the area's wealthiest suburbs), has been named for the first student killed in the 1976 uprising. Here visitors can see the Petersen memorial and a display of photographs.

Nelson Mandela's one-time house, which he shared with his former wife during the 1950s and 1960s, is now a museum that contains a range of memorabilia.