SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa's Soweto, once the heart of anti-apartheid struggle and still a place few white South Africans visit, marked its centenary yesterday hoping to build its legacy into a tourist attraction.
Sowetans planted a tree at a high school near the site of the original settlement that grew into a sprawling series of townships now home to an estimated two million to four million people.
"When my gran came here there were just four houses here and it was still bush, with wild animals around the place," said Ms Martha Ramabusa (72), whose mother was one of the first people born on the new settlement at Pimville.
Officials aim to use the anniversary to boost Soweto's already growing tourist industry. While many foreign visitors to the commercial capital, Johannesburg, visit attractions such as the museums and former president Nelson Mandela's old house, many white South Africans have never set foot there.
"I think a lot of people are a bit scared," said white IT worker Mr Reinier Dupreez (29), visiting the centenary celebration as part of an organised tour.
Despite living in a suburb close to Soweto, he said he had never been in a township before, but would come back to bring his parents on a tour.
The settlement was originally intended to house mainly black labourers who flocked to Johannesburg to work in mines or factories.
Later renamed Soweto - an acronym for South and West Township, describing its location south and west of Johannesburg - it provided a cheap pool of black labour kept outside the main city and deprived of many basic amenities by apartheid.
The area became a centre for political activity and boasts the only street in the world which has been home to two Nobel laureates - Mr Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In 1976, black youths took to the streets to protest against apartheid and the forced teaching in schools of Afrikaans, the language of the white apartheid government.
Police fired on them and Hector Pieterson (13) was killed. Photos of his death caused outrage around the world.
"The youths all came to the school, they were clad in double overalls because of the police dogs," Mr Teboho Lebeko (74) told Reuters. "After then there was no turning back."
Although Soweto itself now has affluent areas where palatial houses sit amid the lines of bungalows, tens of thousands still live in little more than corrugated iron or wooden shacks.
Sowetans say things have improved since the end of apartheid in 1994, although the townships are plagued by violent crime, and teachers say young people are at risk from AIDS, drug abuse and a dangerous combination of unemployment and lack of hope.
But, as Soweto marked its 100th birthday, many residents said that in another century from now the townships could rival plush north Johannesburg suburbs such as Sandton.
"I see it as a place where people will want to live and those who have moved out will want to move back to," said Sowetan Pam Ndaba, who is co-ordinating the celebrations.