SOWETO, South Africa — Nomsa Victorino had a Lexus in her garage, a pool in her yard, eight bedrooms in her villa and a message for the world about her famous hometown. “Whatever people have in their mind about Soweto — that Soweto is a place for poor people — it’s not like that,” said Ms. Victorino, 50, sitting in one of her three sitting rooms. “It has changed drastically.”

Agnes Sehole had rats on her roof, candles for light, paraffin for heating and a message for the world about her famous hometown. “It’s getting worse,” said Ms. Sehole, 77, sitting in one of two rooms in her house in Soweto. “There’s nothing that I’ve experienced of the new South Africa.”

Soweto, once the country’s largest black township, was a symbol of the united resistance to the racist apartheid regime and home to the anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. It is where the police killed at least 176 protesting schoolchildren during the Soweto Uprising of 1976, and where residents refused to pay the white government for rent, electricity and water during boycotts in the 1980s. To the outside world, Soweto stood for black solidarity.

Today, Soweto embodies the social and class divisions within South Africa’s black majority. It is a place of flashy cars and grand mansions, but also of shanty towns and high unemployment.