The Soweto Tour

             

These are very attractively hung clothes lines.  They say something!!!

Soweto Tour 13 April 2013

                                              President Nelson Mandela house @ No. 12 Avenue, Houghton Estate.  Sorry, no pictures today.  Mandela is in the residence.

We headed downtown via Berea, In Berea, housing is very compact.  There may be 16 people sharing a one bedroom apartment with one bath and a kitchen.  The wash hangs out on the balconies 

 Hillbrow, An upscale residential area with a beautiful view of our area (not so upscale, but fine)

The large grey structure mid left is the Kilarney Mall, just across the street from our apartment building.  Our apartment building has lots of windows, and some yellow brick.

The Johannesburg CBD Central Business District 

and past John Voster Square police station.

John Vorster Square was officially opened on 23 August 1968, during the height of racial segregation and political oppression in apartheid South Africa. It was named after John Vorster, whose notoriety as an apartheid leader was preserved through the grim memory invoked by the prison. Between 1968 and 1997, the austere blue, cement building in downtown Johannesburg became the site of innumerable human rights violations, involving interrogations, innumerable counts of torture, and the death of eight detainees. According to Jessie Duarte, the police station was a ‘true embodiment of the violence of the apartheid system.'

The ninth and tenth floors of the prison gained particular infamy, in that it was not possible to take the lift that far up. Once prisoners reached the ninth floor, they were walked up the final flight of stairs to the dreaded quarters of the Security Branch. Here, many opponents of apartheid were held without trial for days, weeks and months, with no sense of when they would be released.

The first account of death in detention was that of Ahmed Timol in October, 1971. At the time, Security Police argued that he had jumped to his death from the tenth floor of the building, but conflicting accounts reveal that he probably fell to his death while being dangled out of the window by his legs as part of severe torture methods meted out to detainees.

Political prisoners held in John Vorster Square were detained without trial. The South African state had introduced this measure in 1963, which enabled police to hold detainees for up to ninety days with no contact with family, doctors or legal representation. By 1965, this was extended to one hundred and eighty days, and in 1967, allowance for indefinite detention was made through Section Six of the Terrorism Act. In September 1997, John Vorster Square was renamed Johannesburg Central Prison, and the bust of John Vorster was removed, carrying with it the legacy of apartheid-era police brutality.

Neil Aggett, a medical doctor and committed trade unionist died at John Vorster Square on February 5, 1982 after 70 days in detention without trial.

As described by Thoba:

EVERY time I pass the plain, blue-framed bulk of Johannesburg Central Police Station I am reminded of Christopher van Wyk’s dark satire on death in detention. You read it once and it is difficult to forget.

He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself while washing
He slipped from the ninth floor
He hung from the ninth floor
He slipped n the ninth floor while washing
He fell from a piece of soap while slipping
He hung from the ninth floor
He washed from the ninth floor while slipping
He hung from a piece of soap while slipping

The day before he was found hanged on February 5, 1982, Neil Aggett wrote an affidavit stating he had been assaulted, deprived of sleep, tortured and beaten on various occasions since his arrest. The subsequent inquiry into Aggett’s death is grim reading and the facts of his death still hang over the building like a shroud.

Today, the building is called Johannesburg Central Police Station, home to 680 police and civilians who look after an estimated 100 000 people living in a 12.5-square-kilometre swathe of downtown. That number will grow as business — and residents — return to the city. "There are not a lot of empty buildings in town any more," says police spokesman Inspector Wendy Botha.

We stopped by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Pimville Ward, and the Protea Glen Ward.

Maponya Mall    

We proceeded into Soweto from Diepkloof – Nasrec Road. 

Most of those Africans who were forcibly removed from the Western Areas of Sophiatown, Newclare, and Martindale were resettled in the new locations of Meadowlands and Diepkloof, now suburbs of Soweto.

This is a home for 3 families.  Each has its own color and entry.

 What houses there were at all were "matchboxes," built in monotonous simplicity. The average three- or four-room house had two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room, most often shared by six to seven people, four of them adults.

                                     
                                                

In 1979 a survey revealed that only 5.8 percent of the houses had bathrooms and 12.9 percent had inside toilets. The 1951 prototype had ash floors or smooth earth instead of floors, no ceilings, and a roof made from asbestos sheeting with no gutters. In later years, these were no longer built by the board and all new houses were of the type  which included inside bathrooms, ceilings, and floors. Endless rows of these houses lined the dusty streets that ran thick with mud when the rain came.

The installation of electricity was slow—in the 1970s, only 15 percent of houses had electricity—and, when street lighting finally came, it was in the shape of towering spotlights disconcertingly reminiscent of labor camps. 

At night, people lit candles and paraffin lamps. They cooked on coal fires, which also produced the heat on cold winter nights when the temperature on the Highveld sometimes dropped to freezing. Only a quarter of the houses had running water. Those that did usually had a tap attached to one of the walls of the outdoor toilet. Four manual telephone exchanges served the entire Soweto area. By the end of 1976 there were 71 public and 1,171 private telephones. On the waiting list, 2,338 families had applied for private telephones. 

Although the new houses were certainly an improvement over the squatter shacks of "Hessian Town," it soon became clear that the government intended to provide only the barest minimum. Ordinary streets were not named and, because of the restrictions on commerce and trade, the common features of urban areas elsewhere—town centers of trade, entertainment, and services—were nowhere to be found. 

The monotony seemed deliberate.

In Dube, stood the several "hostels" for "single" men and women, separated from the township world around them by barbed wire and strict rules whereby no visitors were allowed. Government laws required that dormitories be shared by members of the same ethnic group. "Home," and the only private space, was a steel or concrete bed and an iron-bar locker. Hostel inhabitants shared a communal coal stove and a cold-water shower. There were few communal spaces. 

The single rooms measure 3m x 3m and comprise a bed, a locker, a small single plate coal stove and a window. No children were allowed in the hostels.

Each hostel was administered by a white manager with full authority to expel residents for violating hostel laws and regulations, such as the prohibition against brewing alcohol or bringing a woman onto the premises. Those who lost their automatically lost their jobs and were expelled from the city.

The vast majority of hostel dwellers were between 18 and 44 years old. Most migrants were unskilled workers. Although judgments about their "irresponsibility and apathy," about their lack of interest and commitment to their work, must be made with caution, their impermanence and the many social problems—"high rates of crime and violence, alcoholism, homosexuality and prostitution"—they faced set them off from the rest of the community.  The Hostels are still used for housing.

Soweto was policed by two official forces. The roughly 900 officers of the municipal West Rand Board were known to Sowetans as "Blackjacks" because of their black uniforms.

At night their complexion blends with that of the uniform. Walking in the streets at dusk, you can only figure them out by the click-crunch sound of their heavy black boots. The jackets of their uniforms are double-breasted, fastened with shiny copper-coloured buttons. On their heads are black caps, the brims cover the forehead leaving room for the ferocious looking eyes, as if they were the eyes of blood-thirsty hunting hounds. 

The Uprisings in Diepkloof

Steve Lebelo was a student from Madibane High School in Diepkloof. His life and future in the liberation struggle was shaped by the killing of his older brother Abe Lebelo who was killed on the 4th of August 1976. Following his death, Steve Lebelo decided to take on the liberation struggle as a personal goal (Brink and Malungane 2001).

According to Lebelo, Diepkloof is steeped in the history of resistance going back to the 1940s and 50s, long before the location was established. The community resettled in Diepkloof in the second half of 50s and early 60s came from a tradition of resistance to Apartheid.

Lebelo’s testimony claims that Diepkloof was as prepared for the revolt as were Naledi, White City and Orlando West. Madibane High School in Diepkloof was represented in the meeting that decided on the march and established the Soweto Students’ Representative Council (SSRC). At Madibane High School students were notified of the march as early 14th June 1976.

But it is generally agreed that tensions in schools had been growing from February 1976, when two teachers at the Meadowlands Tswana School Board were dismissed for their refusal to teach in Afrikaans.  They preferred to teach English as it would be more internationally accepted.

Students and teachers throughout Soweto echoed this sentiment, and the African Teachers' Association of South Africa presented a memorandum to this effect to the Education Department. From mid-May around a dozen schools went on strike, and several students refused to write mid-year exams.

"From the morning assembly on 16 June 1976, Madibane High School students did not march into their classrooms. Instead, they headed to the centre of the township, having been joined by students from nearby Namedi Junior Secondary School. Both groups of students marched along Immink Drive towards the Diepkloof Sports Grounds. Here they were scheduled to meet with students from Bopa Senatla Junior Secondary School, and together march down Masopha Street towards Orlando Stadium .

By the time the marching students reached the sports ground area, they had been joined by hundreds in the township. News of developments in Orlando West reached Diepkloof even before students could start the march down Masopha Street to Orlando Stadium. Because Diepkloof had Council police headquarters located next to the sports ground where students converged, they responded quickly to the threat, dismissing students with teargas.

As the crowds scattered, mayhem followed. Students and unemployed youth returned and started attacking the nearby beer hall. The beer hall was gutted by fire within an hour and crowds from the township looted it. The next building to be attacked was the Council Offices in Zone 1, but by the time the students reached the offices, all white personnel had been evacuated. This followed the murder of Dr. Edelstein in White City earlier in the morning. By midday, students and unemployed youth were making their way home with large quantities of liquor looted from the beer hall. What followed was drinking and festivities, signaling that the next few days were destined to be spent at home.

On 16 June, students from three schools - Belle Higher Primary, Phefeni Junior Secondary and Morris Isaacson High - planned to march from their schools to the Orlando Stadium, about a kilometre from the museum, to hold a meeting. But before they got to where the museum stands today the police met them, in Moema Street.

There are conflicting accounts of who gave the first command to shoot, but soon children were turning and running in all directions, leaving some children lying wounded on the road - among them Hector Pieterson and Hastings Ndlovu.

"I saw a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went for the picture. It had been a peaceful march, the children were told to disperse, they started singing Nkosi Sikelele. The police were ordered to shoot."

These are the words of Sam Nzima a journalist from "The World" newspaper, recalling the events of 16 June 1976, when over 500 people were killed as they protested over the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in township schools.

Nzima's photograph of the dying Hector Pieterson being carried by a fellow student was published around the world, and came to represent the anger and tragedy of a day that changed the course of South African history, sparking months of clashes between police, school children and protesters.

Hector, 12, was one of the first casualties of what came to be known as the Soweto Uprising.

"I was the only photographer there at the time", Nzima says. "Other photographers came when they heard shots."

A few months after that, The World was banned and shut down.

During the June 16, 1976 student uprisings, protesting students fled to Regina Mundi from Orlando Stadium to escape the police’s bullets and teargas canisters. 

Black Madonna and Child

The police followed the students into the church, firing live ammunition and damaging the marble altar and crucifix.

Bullet Hole

The hands were shot off from this Christus statue.
The police yelled, "Who will save you now?"

Today, the church continues to play a vital role in the community and welcomes visitors. Tourists from across the world visit the church each day. The church’s garden has been transformed into a striking park, and points of interest include memorial stones donated by Japanese Christians, an art gallery and a plaque recording the history of the church and of Soweto.

Hey Kids!  Do you remember when we used to play 20 pick up to pick up the toys?

Our Guide, Thoba Karl-Halla

Regina Mundi Catholic Church, built in 1964, forms part of the rich history of Soweto. The largest Catholic church in Soweto – it can seat 2 000 people and has standing room for 5 000 – Regina Mundi first wrote its name in South Africa’s history books during apartheid, when it opened its doors to anti-apartheid groups and provided shelter to activists.

From 1995 to 1998, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu presided over Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings at Regina Mundi

In Orlando West, on the corner of Vilakazi and Ngakane streets, visitors will find the modest house that Nelson Mandela and his family called home from 1946 to the 1990s. Mandela lived in the house with his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, and, after his divorce, with his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Upon his release from Robben Island in 1990, Mandela moved back to the house for a short 11 days before moving to Houghton, where he currently resides.

The four-roomed home now houses various memorabilia, arts and crafts, honorary doctorates conferred on Mandela and picture collections of the Mandela family. It is around the corner from the Hector Pieterson Memorial, and close to the actual spot where Pieterson fell in the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising.

Mandela is recovering his personal ID documents.  Identification papers were often buried while a person was in prison or in exile.   It was forbidden that people should plant gardens for fear that documents were being hidden in the garden.

We enjoyed a beautiful lunch at a B&B in Soweto

There are a lot of independent businesses in the area.  Find a need, make a plan, and go to work!

Next we see the Baragwanath Chris Hani Hospital

There are 24,000 babies born at this hospital each year.  We made blankets for some of those infected with HIV.

                                                

                                                                                                        

Power Station Towers have been repurposed.  There is bungee jumping available.  We did not try it.           

                                     

This stuff from a mine is being reprocessed to extract anything that was missed.

       Back home to Johannesburg with our heads spinning!!!    
     
Until the next Blog, Elder and Sister DaBell