Private Soweto Half-Day Tour with Local Guide, Johannesburg

Soweto, a city within a city

Soweto, short for South Western Townships, spreads across the south-western edge of Johannesburg and is one of the largest townships in South Africa, with well over a million residents. It began in the early twentieth century as segregated housing for Black workers of the gold mines and grew through forced removals into a vast grid of neighbourhoods such as Orlando, Diepkloof, Pimville and Kliptown. In the 1970s and 1980s it became the centre of resistance to apartheid, and its story is central to understanding modern South Africa.

A Soweto tour today shows a place that is far more varied than its history suggests: tin-roofed hostels next to smart suburban houses, street markets, murals and busy taxi ranks. Our private half-day tour covers the key sights with a guide who lives here, which answers the question most visitors ask about how to see Soweto safely and respectfully.

Orlando Towers

The two cooling towers of the former Orlando power station rise above the township and have become its most recognisable landmark. The coal-fired station supplied electricity to white Johannesburg for decades while the surrounding streets stayed dark, and it closed in 1998. Since then the towers have been painted with bright murals depicting Soweto life, and the site hosts bungee jumping and a swing between the two stacks for those who want an adrenaline moment.

On this private tour we stop at the base of the Orlando Towers for photographs and the guide explains both the industrial history and the story of the murals. From here the vehicle continues past the calabash-shaped national stadium, built for the 2010 football World Cup final, and into Orlando West, the heart of the historic township.

The memorial museum of the 1976 uprising

On the 16th of June 1976 thousands of school pupils marched through Soweto against a decree forcing them to study in Afrikaans. Police opened fire, and the deaths that followed, captured in a photograph that travelled around the world, turned the township into the focus of the global campaign against apartheid. The memorial museum in Orlando West, opened in 2002, stands close to where the marches began and tells the story through photographs, film footage, newspaper pages and the testimony of people who were there.

Your entry ticket is included, and the guide walks you through the exhibits with the kind of personal detail that only a local can add. Allow around forty-five minutes. The sixteenth of June is now Youth Day, a public holiday, and the museum is one of the most moving stops on any Johannesburg sightseeing itinerary.

Vilakazi Street

A few minutes from the museum lies Vilakazi Street, the best-known address in Soweto and the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize laureates once lived. The small red-brick house museum of the struggle years is viewed from the outside on this tour, as entry is not included, but the guide explains who lived here and what the street meant in the 1980s. Today Vilakazi Street is lively with restaurants, craft stalls, street performers and visitors from everywhere.

This is the natural place for a short stroll, a coffee or a souvenir, and because the tour is private you decide how long to stay. Vilakazi Street is also where Soweto's halal and vegetarian-friendly eateries are easiest to find if you want to add lunch at your own cost after the tour.

Kliptown and the Freedom Charter square

Kliptown is the oldest part of Soweto, and in June 1955 its open ground hosted the Congress of the People, where delegates from across the country adopted the Freedom Charter, the document that declared that South Africa belongs to all who live in it and later shaped the democratic constitution. The square built to commemorate the event has a memorial tower, a conical monument in which the charter's words are carved, and a market where locals shop.

Depending on the time available and your interests, the guide may include Kliptown, the Regina Mundi church that sheltered protesters during the uprising, or a stop in a residential street to see how families live today. Soweto residents welcome respectful visitors, and a private tour with a local guide is the most comfortable way to meet them.