Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer

A mansion in Soweto.

London, England:

Even before I ventured into Soweto, Johannesburg, there was this compelling gut feeling that this was where I would find the soul of South Africa - the area where the country's exceptionally rich history was bottled.

Soweto managed with ease to getunder my skin when I went there two weeks ago. However, as great as my first trip was, it just wasn't enough for me; I hungered for an unstructured tour, directly into the struggles that captured the core of this country.

So I went back last Wednesday, and after experiencing this township twice, I can safely say that Soweto is the pulse of South Africa, where the humiliating apartheid laws, intense violence and oppression caused the student uprising of 1976 - a major turning point that marked the beginning of the end of apartheid.

Soweto, beautiful Soweto, where mansions sit on one street, with middle-income residences across from them, and slums near enough for the people to say "Hi neighbour." The acronym for Southern Western Townships, Soweto is officially recorded as having a population of less than one million people, but the residents there refute this claim and say, "It's three million of us blacks living here."

And their statistics may just be correct, because Soweto is urbanisation influenced by the African culture, where every dwelling has two or three other homes in one yard. Historically, these people were never accounted for, because up until 1994 any black person living in Johannesburg had to be endorsed by the system as having a job.

This system was called influx control, the policy of restricting the numbers of African people allowed to live and work in the towns and cities, through the use of passes.

The birth of Soweto

When gold and diamond were discovered in South Africa, there was an influx of people from all over the country. However, the system decided that blacks should not live among whites, a political decision to create the distance between the two races.

The blacks were forced to live among themselves, hence the birth of Soweto - the one place where the nine South African tribes came together as one. It was also the only time that they stopped looking at themselves as Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana or Ndebele and realised they were one people faced with the same destiny.

Today on atrip to Soweto, there are remnants of the hostels where a lot of the men who left their families in other areas to find work in the mines had to live.

The people in Soweto lived under gruelling conditions, only 20 per cent had electricity, five per cent had hot water and, one hospital for 1.5 million people. Given grievances ranging from low pay and poor housing to the pass laws and political repression, virtually any issue could have set off a general upheaval. But the issue that finally did, was the regime's decision to implement a policy of teaching half the courses in African secondary schools through the medium of the tyrannical Afrikaans.

Of course, without much adult supervision, a new generation of students had arisen and they had no respect for the system. By this time the core of the black leadership, including Nelson Mandela, had been locked up, killed or exiled.

On June 16, these students made their voices heard when they led an uprising in which hundreds of them died. But this didn't stop them; their demonstrations ignited the change in South Africa.

Solace in bars

Some say the students were forced to take the reigns as their dispirited parents found solace in bars. One thing is for certain, when they retaliated against the system, the adults (their parents) were almost intimidated into a position.

Whatever the truth is, the students of Soweto made themselves ungovernable. They destroyed all the government buildings, killed a number of whites and went as far as to stop their parents from going to work for two weeks.

After the uprising, the youths got the attention of the world. However, many had to run away from the country, where they worked from outside with the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress. Current South African president, Thabo Mbeki is one such freedom fighter who had to flee the country.

As powerful as they were, the students couldn't do it on their own, so they got the help of the churches, which played a major role in concretising and making the elderly people understand what the whole struggle was about.

With few exceptions, the ministers embraced the struggle by preaching against the oppression and with most South Africans being Christians, it wasn't very difficult. This was how Nobel Prize Winner Anglican priest Archbishop Desmond Tutu gained a lot of attention and prominence, by preaching against the system.

Fought during the uprising

Khehlo Mthembu, who had his first brush with the law at the age of 14 and who fought during the uprising, said he spent time in 31 different prisons in South Africa. The proud South African said going to prison was almost a national duty, "We had to stand up against what was evil, oppressive and what was really depriving the people."

Today, every other car in the city is a BMW: Black Man's Wish.

Soweto has become one of the most important tourist attractions. Winnie Mandela still lives there and operates the Nelson Mandela museum chains from her home.

The homes of two Nobel Prize Winners still stand - Nelson Mandela's and Archbishop Desmond Tutu's.

A visit to Elias Motsoledi's village (Motsoledi, a freedom fighter who spent time at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela), can be quite disheartening. Here, the 20,000 residents use outdated paraffin stoves to cook, car batteries to watch their televisions and listen to their radios, don't have toilets or running water inside their homes, and 80 per cent are unemployed. Their means of survival, they say, is to accept visitors and use the tips to support the community.

The community guide makes sure to take you to the worst-looking house, where the only thing that looks new is a poster of a basketball star on the wall. The rest of the furnishings are torn, a miniature refrigerator stands at one side, along with an oil lamp that gives light to the six householders in this one-bedroom shack.

"My father is the only person who works in the family. He is a taxi driver," explained Lungile Kauleza.

Places you must go

Joburg's Wandie's: Where thelikes of Jimmy Cliff, Rita Marley, the Reverend Jessie Jackson, Quincy Jones, Roberta Flack, the late Johnnie Cochran, Richard Branson, Evander Holyfield and Nina Simone gravitate to on their visits to South Africa.

The Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital: The largest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Hector Pieterson Square: Peiterson was the first to die on June 16 and the spot is now commemorated with a stone memorial to the 12-year-old boy.

The famous Regina Mundi Catholic Church built in 1962: This church houses a black Madonna, has remnants of the gunshots fired in it by the police and played a significant role in the South Africa of the '60s, '70s and '80s, when political parties and gatherings were banned.

Places I visited throughout SA

Johannesburg: Apartheid Museum, Mandela Square, Rosebank Craft Market..

Sun City: The Palace of the Lost City, Pilanesburg Nature Rest, Lesedi Cultural Village and the Cradle of Humankind.

Tsitsikamma: Tree-Top Canopy adventure

Elephant Sanctuary and Monkey Land - near Plettenberg Bay.

Dinner on steamer at Knysna Quays.

Cape Town: Bo-Kaap and Cape Malay Quarters, lunch at the Waterfront and excursion to Robben Island. Table Mountain, Cape Peninsula, Boulders, Simontown Naval Base, Cape Winelands, Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschoek.

Accommodation was at the following five-star hotels: Michaelaneglo, Cape Grace and Beverly Hills.