Stephen Kumalo Ndotsheni, the hills above Ixopo
Book One
The story begins in a poor rural parish in the Natal midlands, where the pastor keeps a shrinking congregation on land that no longer feeds its people. A letter calls him north to the city to look for his sister and his son. Paton frames the district from the lovely road that climbs into the green hills above Ixopo, before the valleys fall away to the dry, red, overgrazed country the young have left.
Book One, chapter 1
inferred Ndotsheni is a fictional village, set in the tribal country in the hills above the real town of Ixopo in Natal, roughly 400 km south of Johannesburg. This marks Ixopo, the named landmark the book opens from, and sits outside the Johannesburg setting on purpose.
Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗
Stephen Kumalo Sophiatown
Book One
Arriving in Johannesburg, the pastor is taken in by a fellow priest in one of the few places where black families could still own their homes. Crowded, poor and alive, this western suburb was a centre of black city life in the 1940s. The search for the lost son starts here, moving out through the addresses where he was last known.
Book One
explicit Sophiatown is named in the novel. This marks the historic freehold suburb west of central Johannesburg, later demolished under apartheid and rebuilt as Triomf before the old name was restored.
Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗
Stephen Kumalo Alexandra
Book One
The trail leads to the packed township on the northern edge of Johannesburg, reached on foot during a bus boycott the pastor joins in solidarity. Alexandra shows him a poverty deeper than home and a city that runs on the labour of people it will not house decently. The son has already moved on by the time he gets there.
Book One
explicit Alexandra is named in the novel. This marks the township northeast of the city centre, one of the few freehold areas open to black residents at the time.
Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗
Stephen Kumalo Shanty Town, Orlando
Book One
The search reaches the shack settlement thrown up overnight on open ground southwest of the city, where families with nowhere else drove stakes and stretched sacking into homes. Paton drew on the real squatter movement at Orlando in the mid-1940s. Here the pastor learns his son has drifted into trouble and reformatory, and the worst of the news comes close.
Book One
explicit The novel names Orlando and its shanty town. This marks Orlando, the oldest part of what became Soweto, southwest of the city, where the postwar squatter camps rose.
Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗
Stephen Kumalo The goldmines of the Reef
Book One
The gold under the ridge is why the city exists and why the young men keep leaving the land for it. The book keeps circling back to the mines and their headgear and the migrant compounds, the machine that pulls families apart even as it makes fortunes above ground. City Deep is one of the deep mines worked along the Reef in this period.
Book One
explicit The novel returns again to the mines of the Witwatersrand that draw men to the city. This marks City Deep, one of the deep-level gold mines on the Reef beneath southern Johannesburg, as a representative point.
Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗