Business is booming in Soweto

SOWETO, South Africa - The towering construction cranes and the cacophony of churning concrete trucks and rumbling cherry pickers are the sights and sounds of a business boom in South Africa's most famous township.

Black South Africans are reaping the benefits of a growing economy, and at the heart of it all is Soweto, the sprawling township in the southwest of Johannesburg that was at the center of the antiapartheid struggle.

Soweto "historically has been the leader in our national movement toward freedom . . . and we expect no less from it in our struggle toward the economic growth of the majority," said Jason Ngobeni, executive director for the economic development of Johannesburg.

In the last five years or so, new houses have been built in the once-overcrowded and once-underdeveloped area. Roads were paved, and electricity installed. New parks have been landscaped, and a derelict power station will become an entertainment complex.

Most obvious, though, are the shopping malls, once chiefly associated with Johannesburg's wealthy northern suburbs. The latest in Soweto, which former President Nelson Mandela opened yesterday by cutting a gold ribbon, is the 700,000-square-foot Maponya Mall.

"I have been one of the sons of this town for a very long time. I have seen it grow," developer Richard Maponya said at the opening, standing before a statue inspired by an iconic photograph of a dying Hector Pieterson, youngest victim of the 1976 Soweto student uprising against apartheid.

Soweto is the most populous black urban residential area in the country, with about one million people, nearly a third of Johannesburg's total population. It was created in the early 1960s by the apartheid government to house the laborers, most of them black, who worked in the mines and other industries in the city.

While most people welcome Soweto malls, there have been casualties of the boom - shops that served the community for years but are now unable to compete with larger retailers.

Around the corner from Maponya Mall, the owner of Welcome Butchery & Supermarket, Patrick Siswana, anticipates that for the next six months his business will decline as Sowetans see what the mall has to offer.

He says malls only widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. "The only people that can afford it are the rich people. The poor will remain very poor."

Others are more upbeat, focusing on what the malls bring: jobs, cheaper prices and an end to trips to the city center to buy anything other than the most basic groceries.

"Before we had to go to town to buy stuff like shoes. . . . Now, it is better. You can buy it here," said Solly Hlatshwayo, who is working as a welder on the new mall.

Hlatshwayo, 37, who grew up in Soweto, says life in the township under apartheid was hard, with few shops or economic opportunities.

"Now, it is getting like a big city," he said. "I feel proud."