Life in the Townships

• From the 1950's, many Africans lived in Townships. These were situated on the outskirts of the big cities and were overcrowded and dirty.
• The most famous townships was Soweto, the "South West Township", was on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It was home to at least a million people.
• Soweto was overcrowded. A four-roomed house could have twelve people living in it. Most homes did not have running water, electricity or toilets. Water came from outdoor taps.
• 200,000 people from Soweto travelled into Johannesburg everyday to work. The journey could take up to 4 hours.
• Migrants lived in hostels with up to twenty-five men to a room. Each man had a concrete shelf that was his complete living space for fifty weeks of the year.
• The conditions in squatter camps were abhorrent in squatter camps on the edge of townships. Here people lived in shacks of made of canvas, wooden boxes and tins.
• Conditions were so abhorrent in squatter camps that in the 1970's it was estimated that 40% of the people in SA had tuberculosis and 98% of sufferers were black.