For years the vast black city of Soweto lay wrapped in obscurity. Many South Africans did not know where it was, that its million inhabitants provided the labour force that fuelled Johannesburg’s economic power house.

In 1976 Soweto leapt out of anonymity. Overnight it became a household name throughout the world as the perennial smog hovering over the townships made way for denser clouds of smoke and flames erupted everywhere. Many people died.

The world had discovered Soweto, but the name denoted nothing more than riots, stone throwing mobs, burnt down schools. The people of Soweto remained nameless spectres living in a shadow world.

Except for newspaper reports, the cultural life and social structure of this vast city reamain undocumented. This book is an effort to set straight the record.

It is not a political book, it supports no cause. It simply tells the story of the people of Soweto., not only the young rebels who brought chaos to the country, but also their often conservative and hard working parents, the newly weds desperate for a house of their own., the socialites who thrive on fast driving, hard drinking and high living, those sportsman and businessmen who have made it to the very top, the shebeen queens, the pirates, the witch-doctors, the tsotsis who skulk on the street corner, sharpening their bicycle spokes and waiting for the dark.

If the spectres  have become more real to the reader by the time he puts down this book, if he begins to realise that there really are people living there our aim will have been served.