A full day visit to Soweto with TALK Tourism is your opportunity not only to learn about the history of Soweto, but also to engage in a two-way cultural exchange, discovering some of the fundamental concepts of urban African life as it develops 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:

• In the morning: Visiting sites of historical and heritage significance
• In the afternoon: Lunch with a Sowetan family and African intercultural afternoon (suitable only for groups of four or more visitors)

Sites of historical and heritage significance

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

Depending on your itinerary and interest, the morning part of 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 today, among other problems, faces the enormous challenges of a society ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 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 - former Vista University) - the university campus has a major role to play in educating Soweto's youth. The guide provides a brief history of Apartheid education 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 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 at the age of twelve in the student protests of 1976.

• Community-based recycling project, commended by the World Summit held in South Africa in 2003.

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), umleqwa (home prepared chicken), umngqusho (samp and beans). Visitors will be encouraged to eat with their hands in true African style.

African intercultural afternoon (suitable only for groups of four or more visitors)

Family members, neighbours and language helpers from the TALK project 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 nine official indigenous languages.

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