Botswana journalist visits Soweto

Saturday 20th October 2007 (0900hrs): A few minutes before we left The Town Lodge in Midrand, our driver, Johan Hough, a white man, introduced us to a young black man with scruffy hair as Thamsanqa Ndemande. He was going to be the guide on our trip to Soweto (South Western Township). "You can just call me Thami because that's how everybody knows me," he responded.

Unlike my colleagues from other African countries of Mali, Algeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Senegal and Madagascar, I was not sure whether I really wanted to go to Soweto because I was aware of what could happen to us during the tour.