5 Best Sights in Soweto and the South, Johannesburg

This theme park lets you step back in time to 1880s Johannesburg to see why it became known as the City of Gold. One of the city's most popular attractions, especially for families, it has good rides that kids will enjoy and is based on the history of Jo'burg. In addition to riding the Anaconda, a scary roller coaster on which you hang under the track, feet in the air, you can (for an additional fee) descend into an old gold mine and see molten gold being poured. The reconstructed streets of the bygone era are lined with operating Victorian-style shops and restaurants. And for those with money to burn, the large, glitzy Gold Reef Village Casino beckons across the road.

The anti-apartheid activist and former president lived in this small house for 15 years until his arrest in 1961 (and for 11 days after his release), with his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, and then second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The redbrick house, which was burnt to the ground in 1988 and was rebuilt with the help of the community, holds heritage status today and has been converted into a museum that contains Mandela's memorabilia and weaves a story that helps visitors better understand his daily struggles as a lifelong freedom fighter. The museum was renovated in 2008 to mark his 90th birthday. If you're unable to visit the museum, you can do a free virtual tour via the website, which includes a number of informative videos.

Named after mining magnate Ernest Oppenheimer, who established the De Beers diamond mining company as a powerful global brand, this park is one of the few green spaces in Soweto and is rich in flora and birdlife. The park is dominated by a large tower built as a tribute to Oppenheimer, who helped resettle people displaced by the apartheid government in the 1950s. Here you can also see Khayalendaba, a cultural village built in the 1970s by South Africa's best-known traditional healer, artist, and oral historian, Credo Mutwa. Some of his statues here portray African gods, warriors, and mythical figures, even sculptures of prehistoric African animals.

It's best to visit the park with a guide in the daytime for safety reasons.

Central to the liberation struggle, this Catholic church was a refuge of peace, sanity, and steadfast moral focus for the people of Soweto through the harshest years of repression. Archbishop Desmond Tutu often delivered sermons in this massive church during the apartheid years. And it wasn't always so peaceful—you still can see bullet holes where police opened fire on students and residents seeking refuge. It has a Black Madonna and Child painting and beautiful stained-glass windows, including one depicting the Annunciation. This is often a stop on a guided tour of Soweto.

In 1955 the Freedom Charter was adopted on a dusty field here by the Congress Alliance, a gathering of political and cultural groups trying to map a way forward in the repressive 1950s. The charter, the guiding document of the African National Congress, envisaged an alternative nonracial dispensation in which "all shall be equal before the law." Its significance in South Africa is similar to that of the Declaration of Independence in the United States, and it influenced South Africa's new constitution, adopted in 1995 and widely considered one of the best and most progressive in the world. The site has been recently revamped as an open-air museum centered around the Ten Pillars of Freedom and includes shops and a four-star hotel in what is being described as South Africa's first township entertainment explosion center.