Soweto

A quick photo essay of our day tour around the streets of Johannesburg.  We began the day at 8am and continued sampling the city's many faces until after 6pm. It was ten hours of the most extraordinary contrasts. We saw wealth and poverty in equal measure. History also came alive as we watched videos of riots and security forces shooting into crowds at the Apatheid Museum before later standing in the same location ourselves.

We drove past the city's wealthiest suburbs where the locals live hidden behind five-meter-high security walls crowned with deadly electric wires. We stopped in Soweto and visited the shanty town hut of its poorest residents. It was rather shocking to see inside one of these temporary structures. Its owner and six other people had lived in this humble two-room shack with its leaking corrugated iron roof since 1994.

We stepped inside the Constitutional Court to see where the world's most inclusive constitution is constantly debated and upheld. We drove through the rapidly rejuvenating suburbs of Downtown Johannesburg and, as noted earlier, delved deep into the roots of racial politics at the Apartheid Museum.

More details in the days ahead.