SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA : Youths in a brass band rehearse in a backyard in Orlando, Soweto, South Africa. The band has about thirty members and they rehearse a few times a week and usually perform in churches, weddings and funerals during the weekends in the township. Soweto is South Africa's largest township and it was founded about one hundred years to make housing available for black people south west of downtown Johannesburg. The estimated population is between 2-3 million. Many key events during the Apartheid struggle unfolded here, and the most known is the student uprisings in June 1976, where thousands of students took to the streets to protest after being forced to study the Afrikaans language at school. Soweto today is a mix of old housing and newly constructed townhouses. A new hungry black middle-class is growing steadily. Many residents work in Johannesburg, but the last years many shopping malls have been built, and people are starting to spend their money in Soweto. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson)
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