Day 49

Day forty nine
Thursday - 5th March 2020

Current position
Signature Lux Hotel by Onomo
135 West Street
Nelson Mandela Square
Sandton
2146
Johannesburg
South Africa
S 26°6.39948'
E 28°3.31788'

Our tour guide arrived to pick us up bang on ten. We again were not surprised to find we were the only two on the tour.
We set off in his car as he gave us the itinerary for the next four hours. Our first stop was the FNB Football Stadium which was opened in 1989 with a capacity of e95,000 and was later refurbished in 2009 in readiness for the World Cup. On our approach to the Stadium it looked like a huge doughnut on the horizon. We stopped for photographs then moved on to the depths of the South West Township better known as Soweto.
Our guide explained that there were three classes of people in Soweto. The upper classes who bought and owned their own houses. The middle classes who lived in a house provided by the Government but paid a monthly fee for the privilege and the lower classes who live in tin sheds on derelict ground who are waiting for the Government to provide them with a house when they get a job.
The upper class houses looked fine and would not look out of place at home. The middle class homes were very small brick built properties which the residents could extend or rebuild after five years if they were successful with their jobs. The lower class homes were rusty tin sheds in areas known as Shanti Towns as expected these residents were poor and unemployed. Our guide stopped and introduced us to a local resident guide who showed us round a small part of one of the many Shanti Towns. The tiny corrugated houses were crammed together with small alleyways running between them. It was very quiet with just one or two residents walking by now and then. He took us into one little tin house and introduced us to the lady living there. She was scruffily dressed sitting beside her bed which took up most of the single room. She was surrounded by a few personal belongings with pots and pans for cooking. There was very little space for anything else. Ros asked where her children slept and she pointed to the floor and there were four of them. It was a most depressing state of affairs. We wound our way back to where we had entered and Ros asked if we could visit one of the tin houses which was used as a nursery. This little building was split into two rooms. At first we saw two ladies who were playing and drawing with three or four children but as we peered into the second room we could not believe our eyes as it was jam packed with little children asleep on the brown earth floor. There was not an inch between them as they lay end to end and side by side. We had never before seen anything like it. We thanked the ladies for allowing us in and gave them a generous donation.
Back at the car we gave another donation to the local guide and insisted that half go to the first lady we met and the remainder to go to a fund which the guide said would benefit all those who live in the Shanti Town. Sceptical as always we got the feeling that our money would get stuck in his pocket.
We moved on with the graphic picture of the sleeping children firmly embedded in our minds.
The next stop was the power station which was attacked and damaged during the 1976 uprising and has not been in commission since. However the cooling towers still remain and had been brightly painted for the World Cup in 2010. The paintwork looked as if it had only been done yesterday. We were confronted by three men dressed in black who insisted that we watch them perform an African dance but before we could answer their ghetto blaster was on full tilt as they did a jig which was more like a break dance. Two minutes later their hands were outstretched for a donation.
Our guide then drove us to Nelson Mandela's House number 8115 on Vilakazi Street Orlando West Soweto.
It was at this point that we had a bit of a contretemps with the guide as he expected us to pay the entrance fee which we thought was included in the price of the tour. The guide telephoned his Manager who appeared ten minutes later telling me I had a misunderstanding. I said no no no you have the misunderstanding. In the end he relented and paid our fee. However entry to the house really wasn't worth whatever fee it was as there was very little to look at. We were shown round by a female student who just regurgitated her talk with no feeling as she annoyingly kept swaying and banging her left shoulder on and off the wall. Still we've seen Mandela's House and got the photographs. We also  through the trees caught a glimpse of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's current house which is across the road from Nelson's pad.
After our little contretemps with the guide he was no longer his chatty self. Hey ho so we drove in silence to the Hector Pieterson Museum. Hector Pieterson was at twelve years old the first child to be shot and killed by police during the Soweto Uprising on 1976. The guide handed us over to another local guide who gave us details of the shooting and explained the significance of the area outside the museum which is now a monument to Hector.
Whilst we were giving the guide his donation for his services he told us that the museum was closed as load shedding was in progress. Unfortunately for him and our guide we don't believe anyone and we went to check for ourselves and of course the power was on and our guide rushed over we presume red-faced with his credit card to pay for our tickets. It transpired that our guide had asked the local guide to tell us the museum was closed to save him paying for our tickets. Oh what tangled webs. During our visit to the museum we realised that we were Mandelared out so we had a quick look round and left. Our next problem was paying for the tour as originally we had specified and agreed payment by credit card but the guide did not have a credit card machine so as we wanted to be dropped at the Carlton Centre called the Top of Africa he took us there so we could get cash from an ATM. We paid the guide thanked him for his services and off he went.
The Top of Africa is the tallest building in Africa and with its 50 floors it towers above Johannesburg. We took the lift straight to the viewing gallery at the top and admired the surrounding views. We then had a walk round the shopping centre before calling an Uber to take us to the Park Gautrain Station.
We had a bit of trouble finding the pick up point for the Uber but after a call from the driver we homed in. We sat in the back just as a man opened the front passenger door and jumped in as another man stood by the drivers door. The man in the front beckoned our driver for the key. There was a bit of argy bargy between them so Ros and I got out and stood away from the car despite the man saying politely you'll be alright Ma'am. In the end our driver had to pay over what looked like 400 rand which we took to be protection money because of the feud between taxi and Uber drivers. After the excitement was over our driver took us to the station where we caught the Gautrain back to our hotel.

In the evening we had a rather expensive but very nice and relaxed meal at the five star  Michelangelo Hotel over the road from our rather cheaper hotel. It was so nice that we booked to take afternoon tea there on Monday at three o'clock.