Soweto Bicycle Tours: see the famed suburbs on two wheels

SSoweto Bicycle Tours, a home-grown initiative of Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, will take you on a ground-level visit to this most famous of South African townships, once home to Nelson Mandela. And there are walking tours, tuk-tuks or cars available if you’re not much of a bike fan. 

Soweto, the famous South African township cradling the south of Johannesburg, feels like a universe unto itself. It is a place best experienced on the ground, rather than cruising through it in an air-conditioned bus with sealed windows. 

It’s much better to hear kwaito music and people shouting greetings, to see children running alongside, to smell the kota (the favourite junk food of Soweto) and corn cobs over the fire and the strange things sold at herbalist shops, and to laugh at the good-natured comments from vendors selling everything from sunglasses to snuff. 

Soweto Bicycle Tours offers a way to experience this excitement on two wheels, making for an unusual and memorable township tour. 

You can opt for 2-hour, 4-hour or full-day guided bicycle tours. There is also a 3-hour tour of Kliptown, the suburb of Soweto in which the Freedom Charter was signed in 1955 – a historic document outlining South Africa after apartheid. That document became the foundation of South Africa’s Constitution, one of the most progressive in the world. 

If you’re not into bikes at all but still want a ground-level experience of Soweto, why not try a tuk-tuk tour? 

Depending on which tour you choose, you will see an old workers’ hostel (now transformed), the place where the 1976 Soweto student uprisings started, the Hector Pieterson Memorial, Nelson Mandela’s Soweto home and a shebeen, among many other attractions. 

The owner of the tours, known simply as Lebo, first plunged into tourism in 1999, opening his home to visitors wanting to stay overnight. It’s centrally located, within walking distance of the famous Vilakazi Street, where Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu once had homes. 

In 2003, Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers was officially opened. He and his wife, Maria (originally from Sweden), live on site too. 

Subsequently, Lebo began the bicycle and tuk-tuk tours (you can opt for a walking tour, too, or be driven if you prefer). 

In 2008, Soweto Bicycle Tours and Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers became responsible tourism operators, when they were certified by Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa. 

Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers is known for its commitment to the community. It is cleaning up a dump site and turning it into a green space with newly planted trees – for Lebo, it’s all about opening up people’s eyes to his beloved Soweto.