Parents

My Mum and Dad came out to visit me the other day. It was actually quite interesting being just the 3 of us, given that they've been divorced for 25 years! Driving around with them in the back I occasionally turned round to say "no fighting in the back you two or I'll leave you by the side of the road" - much to everyone's amusement.

They stayed in Joburg for a couple of days, then Dad took the train to Cape Town while Mum and I went to Pilanesberg to look at the wildlife. Before that, however, we took a tour around Soweto - which I found a fascinating experience.

You might imagine Soweto to be a poor, dirty, dangerous township. 30 years ago, that would have been an accurate assessment. But one of the things which surprised me most was the level of affluence in some areas of Soweto. Flash cars sat on the driveways in front of houses. Conspicuously absent from the scene were the 2m walls topped with electric fences which you'll find in all the white suburbs. That said, there is still plenty of grinding poverty. We were escorted down an alleyway of tin shacks and had a look in one of these houses. I must admit to being very nervous, as between us we were carrying cameras worth more than the annual wage of all the people around us.

Then the obligatory Hector Pietersen museum - the eponymous boy was the first to be shot during the Soweto uprising of 1976, when students protested against being taught in Afrikaans at school.

Next up we found ourselves in a small non-descript shack which was where Nelson Mandela lived from 1946 - 1962. Very interesting - did you know that he was labelled a terrorist by the CIA, who helped pass on intelligence about him to the South African government of the time? His house now boasts an official apology from that same agency.