For nearly three million residents, Soweto is a daily carnival of life. Once a township with a brutal and bloody history, it is now a great cultural metropolis signifying the feel, the spirit, and the warmth of a vastly diverse South Africa.
Soweto's colourful past adds to the allure, dating from before the time of "matchbox houses", built by the apartheid government, to the current social programmes of township greening by planting 300 000 trees and commercial projects, hotels and informal guesthouses.
Word spreads. And with progress comes tourism.
Daily, busloads of tourists manoeuvre along the dual carriageway between taxis jam crammed with commuters, driving vehicles of questionable roadworthiness to this once-sprawling shanty town just 20 kilometres south of Johannesburg.
When entering the mini city, one passes monolithic Baragwaneth, the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere, on the left.
On the right is the animated landmark "Twin Towers", the old Orlando power station, which stopped functioning in 1983 and is now used for extreme sports like bungy jumping and abseiling, painted with pictures of icons like Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba.
In an earlier time, when there was no sewerage, running water, electricity, or public transport, ox wagons would dump human waste on the land surrounding the towers.
In the 1950s the ground was levelled, a few chairs placed roughly around the perimeter, and this was used as a field where famed soccer teams Orlando Pirates (established in 1937) and Moroka Swallows attracted crowds in their hundreds.
The vast space also allowed for a makeshift boxing ring, a popular sport enjoyed by famed activists and artists including Mandela and Ephraim Ngtane.
Now, 50 years on, the artistic towers stand proudly in the midst of a wasteland. Only a large ghostlike edifice in the background reminds one of what once was...
Although there are now eight malls dotted around Soweto, proud guides automatically point visitors to the huge concrete slab, Maponya Mall, the newest shopping enclave for the newly wealthy "black diamonds". Sowetan yuppies, princesses and brand label chasers, park their luxury cars and dip into Gucci purses for loose change to tip the car guards milling around.
Except for the crass cement elephant marking the entrance, the mall has the same great sameness to it as that of retail therapy outlets anywhere in the world.
While the bourgeois treat their kids to goodies at Sweets from Heaven and the restaurants and fast food outlets can't pack them in fast enough, specialist stores like the cigar stall, with its humidor appearance, and other niche boutiques are clearly feeling the effects of the global recession.
No tour is complete without passing The Soweto Hotel, a four-star establishment strategically situated in Kliptown's Walter Sisulu Square - so named to honour the former hero of the apartheid struggle.
Walk a few metres away from the hotel into the pristine square and you will see the South African Freedom Charter engraved on columns surrounded by the stands of curio sellers.
But turn slightly to the right and among other odds and sods, stalls with fruit and vegetables confront you.
A few people stand at the charcoal corn stand waiting to comfort themselves with roasted salty ears of corn.
Soweto wears two faces. Incongruous to the statuesque hotel, diagonally across the way, are a few very shabby general dealer stores, Spaza shops that have stood their place for decades.
Few tourists glance at these shops owned by Chinese and Indian merchants who have lived in the area for generations. A seedy strip round the corner from the hotel houses Modern Meat Dealers, its carcasses dangling in full view.
The only sign of time moving forward by 40 years here is the sign, "We accept Debit Cards and Credit Cards".
From The Soweto Hotel balconies, there is a view of a bridge and railway line adjoining a small field, once a coal yard to stoke trains before electrification. For the curious and brave who dare to cross behind the railway and walk down a steep gradient there is another world.
Minute tin shanties, row upon row of them, line a squatter settlement. This cleverly-obscured ghetto is overcrowded with sheds from hell.
Unwashed children play in stagnant puddles of rainwater. Typical African township tunes blare from somewhere unidentifiable.
People walk past and smile but you walk briskly towards your parked car, afraid of being robbed, afraid the squalor will rub off on you.
You drive to a more salubrious sight: The Oppenheimer Tower and its exquisite park.
Forty-nine steps lead to the tower top and your gaze stretches far and wide, across the Soweto sprawl and its vast expanse of tin rooftops.
Proudly a guide points towards a golf course and announces that golf is now a popular sport. He tells you about the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that frequent Soweto, "lots of them".
He will point to where the new state-of-the-art Jabulai Hospital is being erected between the police and fire stations.
Then it's onward to the landmark Hector Peterson Memorial Museum commemorating the notorious 1976 uprising and the first pupil killed by police in the protests against the eduction system.
There's also the Mandela family's fast food takeaway restaurant, and Mandela House in Vilakazi Street.
This once-dusty street without water or electricity is the only street in the world that has housed two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, none other than Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Here in Soweto's "Beverley Hills" children have sadly long grown used to gawping foreigners.
They have cottoned on to clamouring round the tourist buses to sing the national anthem, while cupping a begging hand. These clearly not deprived tiny buskers detract from the soul of Soweto, turning it into just another same-old, same old tourist experience.
A drive through the first area in a black township where blacks gained permission to own a piece of land in the 1980s, Diepkloof Extension, and you marvel at the view of chic homes unencumbered by electric fencing or high walls.
Like "Millionaire road" these properties are clearly owned by the middle classes.
Celebrities like Elton John, film stars like Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie have found themselves lunching at the famed, but now commercialised, Wandies.
This shebeen (pub) was the first open to the public and served as a great watering hole and source of information for journalists who gathered here with locals in the apartheid era.
But, it's the satellite dishes on even many of the poor homes that draw comment.
Soccer is a national religion, almost a metaphor for life.
And with football not viewed on State-owned TV stations, satellite TV remains a priority, regardless of people's circumstances.
And this explains in part the locality of the site of one of the 2010 Fifa championship stadiums.
The Soweto football stadium is sumptuous. It is elegant. It is unique. And all 94 700 seats are booked for the World Cup opening and closing games.
Apart from its size, being the largest stadium ever built for a Fifa championship, the architecture leaves you agape. Shaped like the once-ubiquitous African calabash, used as a vessel for eating and drinking, the stadium alone is a compelling reason for a visit to Soweto.
Away from the "milk and honey" lies a more authentic insight into the cultural twist of urban life.
Cruise down any side street, and stop to chat to somebody tending the higgledy-piggledy garden of a modest home, or stand near a pavementbarber unselfconsciously grooming a client's hair in the outdoors, and warmth triumphs.
You will soon be engrossed in conversation and within hours welcomed into what is usually a considerably extended family. Wealth and status count for naught.
Kliptown squatter camp brings a rude awakening: One-roomed tin shed-like shacks erected within a wall's distance of one another. Fifty communal taps dotted about for 45 000 people.
Green portable toilets line the front of the tin sheds, with one toilet serving seven to 10 families. There is no electricity, no proper drainage, and the street is like a public sewer with one ditch of stagnant dirty water smack bang in the middle of the dusty road.
A man holding a blackened goat's head in one hand walks by, and smiles.
A few children play unsupervised in the sand.
But here in the slum though, the Kliptown Youth Programme (KYP) is a haven for 350 kids who, every afternoon, eat a hot lunch before spending time at arts and crafts, doing homework, gumboot dancing or playing football. There is not a beggar among them.
Seventy five percent of parents are unemployed, but they share their last crust with one another.
A white face is greeted with curiosity in this area. Then a hand is stretched out and you find yourself invited to mingle outside or to sit and chat in the overcrowded shed.
Warmth and acceptance flow through the people, heads held high, and you know you have met part of the heart of Soweto - 44 000 people living in an antheap of space, with no privacy but safely and securely.
They declined the government's offer of relocation and housing a fair distance away, for fear of lack of employment, for fear of being alienated from the Soweto they know and love.
Twilight falls.
Buses and taxis carrying blue collar workers are returning from Johannesburg, "City of Gold".
You want more of this feeling of belonging, albeit away from Kliptown's crowded heat with its many smells, its tumult and squalor.
So, you head for a shebeen (Rotso's Place) opposite Baragwanath Hospital, near the huge main taxi rank and the busiest marketplace in the whole of Soweto. Rich and poor head to the market to buy food for their dinner and you see the art of salesmanship, of barking, touting and hustling.
Inside Rotso's a room full of total strangers nurse their beer bottles, but it's so crowded that it's difficult to put a bottle to your lips. A sign facing the room reads "This Is a Gun Free Zone."
The music belts out, but voices drown it. People mill, jostle, and flock, young and ancient, for a liberating drink on the way home.
Then it's time to return to your own world, the seclusion of Western life in suburbia with fences and high walls and communication through Facebook and Google.
And you reconsider the meaning of life.
If you go...
Getting There:
Most airlines fly frequently to Johannesburg (JHB) South Africa from Australia particularly Qantas and SAA. Virgin airlines fly direct from Melbourne.
Staying in Joburg:
All major hotel chains as well as other categories of accommodation abound in this first world city.
Bookings can be done via internet or travel agents.
Staying in Soweto:
There are many B&B guest house options in Soweto as well as an excellent Four Star hotel and backpackers accommodation
Tours:
B&Bs: Neos in Orlando West and Botle in Dube.
Soweto full day now R700.
KDR Travel and Tours has half-day Soweto tours from R450 a person and full day from R660. See www.soweto.co.za
Recommended Tour options:
Prices range from R700 per person.
Other Suggestions:
No trip to South Africa is complete without a visit to a game park or reserve.
Few people miss Cape Town, with its white sand beaches and wine estates.
