Greening Soweto — A 200,000-Tree Programme to Close Johannesburg's Apartheid-Era Green Divide

Johannesburg's apartheid-era development left the city with a heavily forested, wealthier north and a far less-forested south, where townships such as Soweto were concentrated. In 2006, the City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ) launched “Greening Soweto,” aiming to plant 200,000 trees — predominantly indigenous species — as street and park trees to redress this “green divide” ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
JCPZ reports the planting target of 200,000 trees was reached by the end of 2010. A 2018 independent field assessment (University of South Africa) surveyed the planted trees and found a survival rate of only 43.46%, identifying thirteen indigenous species still present, and linked outcomes to planting method (ball-and-burlap vs. bare-root), visible root flare, mulching and post-planting condition monitoring.
The assessment explicitly recommended new planting and maintenance guidelines to improve future survival, and the low survival rate is a rare independently-verified data point in a city where tree-count claims are otherwise inconsistent: JCPZ and other city sources have cited figures ranging from roughly 6 million to over 10 million trees citywide without a unified public inventory, and the popular claim that Johannesburg is the “world's largest man-made urban forest” has been reviewed and found unsupported by reliable evidence (Africa Check fact-check).
Greening Soweto illustrates both real re-investment in a historically under-greened area and the governance gap between planting and long-term stewardship — the numeric target was met, but nearly six in ten trees planted did not survive to the 2018 survey, a shortfall that would not be publicly known without the independent academic follow-up.

Read the full analysis: https://www.jhbcityparksandzoo.com/services-facilities/urban-forestry/about