Came across this article on http://ozziebackpacker.wordpress.com/- and thought it's well worth sharing! Well written, with some good insights. What's more, Lebo's is a great place, doing good thangs! - Alison

"Chasing Amy's" take on Soweto, July 2009

A bicycle might sound like a practical way of seeing Soweto, South Africa’s most famous township.
That’s until you spot a hundred local school children marching down the road, and they spot you – loaded down with Smarties and a camera hanging around your neck.
Suddenly I’m being mobbed for “sweeties” and photos.
“Shoot me, shoot me!” they cry, trying to grab my Cannon from around my neck. Smarties fly everywhere.
I’m now down off my bike, just five minutes into the tour, which began in Soweto’s Orlando West area.
I realise there’s a great chance that I will spend the rest of my trip around the township, which stretches out over more than 130 square kilometres southwest of Johannesburg, lagging behind the other tourists.
That’s the problem with trying to bike around Soweto – there’s just too much to see and do, and the locals are just too hospitable and chatty, to keep you riding continuously.
“I love the atmosphere and nature of Soweto,” says my 20-year-old guide Tshepo Matsile, who was born and raised in the township. (Soweto is actually a collection of townships, with its name an abbreviation of SOuth-WEsternTOwnships).
“It’s a place that everybody should see.”
“It’s (the tour) a good experience and a good adventure for the tourists, rather than a bus tour where you’re just taking photos and the locals feel like animals.
During the trips – half day and full day tours can be arranged – globetrotters can get a feel for Soweto by stopping at a shebeen (informal drinking house) in Mzimthlope Hostel to have a drop of umqo’mboti.
It’s a strong, fiery home made brew – the pronunciation involves an impossible clicking noise – drunk from a large bucket.
Visitors can also try a kota, a local sandwich consisting of bread, chips and cheese.
Soweto is also the place to visit if tourists really want to learn about South Africa’s black community’s fight against apartheid.
It’s impossible to speak about the segregation without mentioning the world’s most famous township, created in the 1930s to house mainly black labourers, who worked in mines and other industries in the city, away from Johannesburg.
The township’s Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world to ever call home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu once both lived there.
The former freedom fighter resided at his house, on the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane Streets, from 1946 to 1962. In 1997 the small house became the Mandela Family Museum.
The tour also includes the notorious spot in Orlando West where hundreds of thousands of students gathered on June 16, 1976, to protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as the official educational language – otherwise known as the Soweto Uprising.
The South African government put the official number of deaths from this violence at 23, but hundreds were believed to be killed. Some sources say this is even higher.
Student Hector Pieterson, just 12-years-old, was fatally shot by police that day, on the corner of Moema and Vilakazi streets. A memorial and museum dedicated to Hector, featuring the poignant photograph of the dying boy being carried by 17-year-old Mbuyisa Makhubu, was built on Khumalo Street in 2002.
The parents of Lebohang Malepa, who runs the bike tours from his hostel, Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, were both students involved in the 1976 violence.
Lebo, who lived with his parents as a young child while they were in exile in Botswana following the clashes, says Soweto played a “very important role” in the fight against apartheid, “especially being an urban township”.
“People in Soweto felt the pressure of apartheid more than anybody else in this country,” he says.
“There was a lot of resistance coming out of the township.”
It was out of his desire to have tourists learn about the significance of Soweto that he began running the township’s first hostel in 2003. Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers is also South Africa’s first black-owned hostel. The ‘formal matchbox’ house belongs to Lebo’s grandfather. It has seven rooms and can fit 24 beds.
After a “very slow” start, Lebo has accommodated thousands of tourists from all over the world, and Lonely Planet has even jumped on the bandwagon, listing the hostel in its guide books.
The bike tours, introduced in 2005, offer tourists who aren’t staying with Lebo, and those who are, the chance to explore Soweto, which has an unofficial population of about two million.
In the start, Lebo bought just three mountain bikes for the trips.
But they have become such a hit he now owns 20 bikes, which he supplies for the adventures.
Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers is also in the process of developing a campsite to accommodate extra visitors to next June’s World Cup.
“The World Cup is an opportunity for us as a country to showcase what we have so more tourists will come over (to South Africa),” Lebo says.
There’s even plans for an open air-library, a “beautifully painted shack at the park”, where kids can borrow books after school and be taught to read by overseas volunteers.
Lebo says he hopes that these developments will inspire more people to visit Soweto.
He hopes to show backpackers that despite the township’s turbulent history and the challenges it faces – HIV/AIDS, unemployment and teenage pregnancies are all “major concerns” – that it is not the crime hotspot people perceive it to be.
“I have seen apartheid,” Lebo says.
“I was able to see the resistance and now I live in the post-apartheid era.
“When people say Soweto is dangerous, we have to educate them about what went on.”

WANT TO GO?
Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers
Bookings can be made through http://www.sowetobackpackers.com
Or + 27 (0) 11 936 3444

Dorms are R95 per person, single room R150 and double room R250 – or pitch your tent in the garden for R65.
The hostel can arrange pick-ups from Johannesburg’s Tambo International Airport. They can also arrange bike, walking and car tours of the township and Johannesburg, community projects, safaris and more.