A full day visit to Soweto with Phaphama is your opportunity to learn about the history of Soweto and engage in a two-way cultural exchange, experiencing urban African life in the 21st Century and sharing something of your own culture and way of life with your hosts.

A Full Day SOWETO VISIT includes the following:

• Lunch with a Soweto family and African intercultural afternoon
• Visiting sites of historical significance and cultural heritage

Lunch with a Soweto family

You will join a family in Soweto for a delicious home-cooked African meal of iphalishi (maize porridge), ikabishi (cabbage), ithanga (pumpkin) and umleqwa (home prepared chicken). Everyone has fun eating with their hands in true African style.

African intercultural afternoon

Family members and neighbours of the Phaphama host will explore with you various aspects of urban living.

Through discussion and role-play, you will experience:

• The importance and etiquette associated with greetings
• The use of titles of respect in an African language
• The significance of body language and eye contact
• An understanding of the African concept of ubuntu

You will be given an African name, learn an African greeting with the appropriate handshake, and learn basic phrases in one of the indigenous languages.

To round off the visit, your hosts will teach you one or two African songs complete with dance steps.

Many visitors say that this intercultural experience (and the food!), is the highlight of not just their Soweto Tour, but their whole stay in South Africa.

Sites of historical significance and cultural heritage

Depending on your itinerary and interest your tour may include these sites:

• Apartheid Museum - widely recognized as a highly successful presentation on the many aspects of the vast system of legislated Apartheid. There is a particularly remarkable film documenting the rise of popular resistance after 1976, where many activists tell the stories of the 20 years of activism through the violence wracked 1980s and 1990s.

• Diepkloof hostel - originally set up to house male migrant workers who arrived in Johannesburg from the rural areas to work on the gold mines.

• A walk and talk around an informal settlement.

• Chris Hani-Baragwanath hospital and taxi rank - the largest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere, which faces enormous public health challenges. The guide explains the history of the taxi industry as one the earliest forms of black regulated and black run businesses.

• University of Johannesburg (Soweto Campus) - the university campus has a major role to play in educating Soweto's youth. The guide provides a brief history of the education system under Apartheid and its role in oppressing the black majority.

• Kliptown - where the famous Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955, a document that embodied the aspirations of opposition politics of the time, and significantly influenced our present constitution. The Freedom Charter was described by the first African Nobel Peace Laureate Chief Albert Luthuli as "a document that gave flesh, blood and meaning to such words as democracy, freedom, liberty.”

• Regina Mundi - the Catholic Church that was the site of meetings and demonstrations during the anti-apartheid struggle since in the 1980’s.

• Mandela's House - the house where Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela lived before he was imprisoned on Robben Island.

• Hector Pieterson Memorial & Museum - the memorial was erected to commemorate the death of Hector Pieterson who was shot and killed, along with hundreds of other school children, at the age of twelve in the student protests of 1976.

We would also be very happy to accommodate your special interests eg school, church or sangoma visits, to mention just a few, if you let us know in advance of your visit.