A weekend in Soweto

Fikile Ngcobo, an English teacher at Orlando West Junior Secondary School in the 1970s, says she was trained to view her job as filling an empty vessel, not engaging with a human being.

"All you do is pour until it is full," she recalls in an interview preserved in the museum's archives. "How it gets full, how it feels when it gets full was just one thing that was never thought of."

The museum's book shop stocks a wide range of fiction and history about South Africa and the region. Outside, vendors sell handicrafts, including lengths of cloth worn as skirts in the ANC's green, yellow and black printed with portraits of Mandela and of South Africa's newest president, Jacob Zuma. Just up the hill, a latte at Nambitha, another Soweto landmark, can provide a shot of energy before more sightseeing.

We could have confined ourselves to Orlando West, where Cape Town's retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu still has a home. But we managed a few side trips over our two days.

One was a short drive to a hilltop site in Soweto's Central Western Jabavu district where writer and artist Credo Mutwa built sculptures in and around traditional huts in the 1970s. A fading, hand-lettered sign says, "This place is no mere museum or tourist attraction. It is a holy place, where African cultures, religions and ... sciences are preserved in pictures and sculpture form."

My daughter Thandi likes a larger-than-life diorama out of a natural history museum from some alternative universe. It shows a cave man and his wife protecting their child from rampaging dinosaurs.

My favorite is a seated king, his head swollen to the point of bursting because he's too selfish to share his knowledge, according to commentary offered by Phillip Thamaga, a potter and sculptor with a studio in the complex.

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Mutwa's folly is set in a park built in 1957 with money donated by mining magnate Ernest Oppenheimer. The 30-meter (100-foot ) Oppenheimer Tower at the center of the park was built from bricks scavenged from homes demolished in Sophiatown when that mixed-race neighborhood in northern Johannesburg was declared all-white in the 1950s and its black residents were forced to move to Soweto.

Another short drive took us to Thokoza Park, straddling Soweto's Moroka and Rockville neighborhoods. It's near Regina Mundi, a Catholic church known as "the people's cathedral" when it was a center of anti-apartheid protests and funerals. But our focus was on Thandi's right to burn some energy.

The park cut by a picturesque stream was refurbished in 2003 as part of a major effort to bring more services to Soweto. It has a duck pond, barbecue pits on a concrete patio, soccer fields and basketball courts. Art exhibits and jazz concerts are staged on its lawns.

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A dozen boys were turning swinging into a competitive sport: How high can you soar? Thandi chooses a climbing frame shaped like a jet.

"I'm a pilot!" she sang out.

She'd already pronounced herself at home in Soweto, perhaps because she's spoiled everywhere. Motaung, our B&B hostess, treated Thandi like her own daughter, stepping in to braid her hair.

Thandi preened in front of a mirror, then declared: "I love Soweto!"

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