Soweto is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, in the province of Gauteng, bordering the city’s mining belt in the south. Its name is English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships.
The first outcrop of the Main Reef of gold was discovered on a farm in 1886. Within a decade, 100’000 people had flocked to the fledgling town of Johannesburg.
Until the end of the First World War, urban growth in Johannesburg proceeded unevenly and haphazardly, but under the impact of a wave of militant struggles by black workers and in the context of the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic, the white-led state became determined to better manage the movement of Africans into the urban areas and to place them in properly controlled locations.
The promulgation of the Native (Urban) Areas Act of 1923 was intended to meet these objectives. The Act was a hybrid piece of legislation. On the one hand, it espoused the principles enunciated by the Stallard Commission of 1922, which had infamously declared that an African ‘should only be allowed into the urban areas, which are essentially the white man’s creation, when he is willing to enter and minister to the needs of the white man, and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister’. On the other hand, when it empowered local authorities to set aside land for black residential purposes, it recognized the need to create conditions for the settlement of an urban African population in order to provide a reliable supply of labour to secondary industry.
The growing demand for housing led the government to establish Orlando (named after the chairman of the Native Affairs Committee, Edwin Orlando Leake) in 1931, when thousands of African families were evicted from urban slums in and around the Johannesburg city centre and moved there. The authorities described this as a ‘model native township’ that was supposedly planned along the lines of a garden city. William Carr, chair of non-European affairs, initiated the naming of Soweto in 1949, calling for a competition to give a collective name to townships dotted around the South-West of Johannesburg. The City Council settled for the acronym SOWETO and the name was first used in 1963. Following the 1976 uprising of students, the name became internationally known.
Soweto became the largest Black city in South Africa but until 1976, its population could have status only as temporary residents, serving as a workforce for Johannesburg. It experienced significant civil unrest during the Apartheid regime. In 1976, student riots were sparked by a government policy to enforce education in Afrikaans rather than their native language. Police opened fire on 10’000 peaceful student demonstrators, leading to 176 students killed and more than 1’000 injured. The Soweto uprising was a true turning point in South Africa’s History. Even to contemporaries, it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. Riots flared up in 1985 again and continued until the first non-racial elections were held in April 1994.
Since 1994, the township of Soweto has transformed from a legacy of the apartheid era to a vibrant, energetic hub that will ignite your senses and immerse you in true South African culture. Soweto’s History is inextricably linked with the lives of prominent South Africans such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, amongst many others.
In 2010, South Africa’s oldest township hosted the FIFA World Cup Final and the attention of more than a billion soccer spectators from all over the world was focused on Soweto.
Planning a visit? Soweto Boutique Hotel offers safe, stylish accommodation in the heart of Soweto, moments from Vilakazi Street and Mandela House. Browse our rooms, see things to do nearby, or contact us to book your stay. You may also enjoy Johannesburg: where cultures and history collide.
Sources: Orlando West Soweto, an Illustrated History (Noor Nieftagodien and Sally Gaule), Wikipedia and personal