Orlando West looks ordinary at first: tidy brick houses, kids in school uniform, taxis hooting at every corner, smoke from braai stands curling over the street. It is in Soweto, about fifteen kilometres southwest of central Johannesburg, and on the morning of 16 June 1976 these were the streets where thousands of schoolchildren marched against being taught in Afrikaans. Police opened fire. Among the first killed was twelve-year-old Hector Pieterson, and the photograph of him being carried by an older student went around the world.
The Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum stands a few blocks from where he fell, and it is worth an unhurried hour. It walks you through that day minute by minute, with the voices of people who were there, and it explains why the uprising changed the course of apartheid. The day is now a national public holiday, Youth Day. Nearby Vilakazi Street is famous as the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners lived, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu; Mandela's small house is a museum, and the street has cafés and restaurants where you can eat well.
As riding goes, Soweto is city work. Traffic is dense and unpredictable, minibus taxis stop wherever they please, and potholes appear without warning. The approach from the Johannesburg side via the old Potchefstroom road or the motorways is straightforward, and the open highveld beyond, towards Sterkfontein and the Cradle of Humankind, is where you get your reward: long straight roads under huge skies and sudden summer thunderstorms that build every afternoon from about November to March.
Fuel is everywhere, with attendants who fill up for you and expect a small tip. Ride here in daylight, park where you can see the bike or where a car guard is watching, and consider joining a local guide, who will add stories no plaque can tell. Try a kota, a hollowed quarter loaf stuffed with chips, polony and atchar, then sit for a moment at the memorial fountain and let the place settle in.