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Soweto Township Tours – The Shipping Container Phone Box

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This unusual travel photo from gives new meaning to the term ‘Phone Box!’ It was spotted on one of the Soweto Township Tours (SoWeTo is short for South West Township) on the outskirts of Johannesburg in South Africa.

Soweto is well known around the world, unfortunately, for the many clashes and demonstrations against Apartheid but it’s a bustling ‘city’ of around four million people. It sometimes comes up in satirist/cartoonist Zapiro’s South African News Humour illustrations.

And like any place in the world where resources are few and far between, this Public Phone facility is an old shipping container an enterprising individual has converted into a multi-user telecommunications hub rivalling the largest call centres in the world! If you’re visiting Johannesburg, you should do a Soweto Township Tour to see how others live around the world.

When you don’t have a mobile phone handy to call whoever you need to contact, I guess these things would come in handy.

India, watch out! No seriously, some people can’t afford a landline or a mobile phone, so this is probably the only means of communication possible sometimes.

I’m guessing ET could phone home from Soweto… And he wouldn’t have any mad scientists wanting to conduct any dodgy experiments on him either!

The Soweto Phone Box!

Soweto Township Tours - Public Phone Box Johannesburg South Africa

There’s more to Public Phone Boxes in Soweto.

Check out Soweto Inside Out. plus the cool Contortionists and the Cooling Towers Bungee Jump.


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