Soweto tour

THALEFANG CHARLES | Friday January 8, 2010 00:00

The winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu used to live 50 metres apart on this street and Hector Pieterson, 13 year-old boy who was the first casualty of the 1976 Student uprising was shot at the corner of Vilakazi and Moema street . Orlando West High School famous for its active participation during the Soweto uprising is also on the same street. Enter Vilakazi street today you would think you are in the Coca cola street.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu no longer live in Soweto but the oddity of their former street lives on. It is the only street with big coke billboards welcoming you to the street.

The road is far better developed than bigger streets like Khumalo and Pela streets. When I stood on Vilakazi street on December 16 2009, South Africas day of reconciliation, I tried in vain to imagine young Mandela walking along that street because the street nowadays looks so posh that you would think you are in an up market suburb. The influx of tourists to this street has created business opportunities for locals in the form of restaurants and curio shops.

After visiting Regina Mundi Catholic Church, where some of the meetings to organise the 1976 June Student Uprising were held, which still bears the bullet holes from 1976, I was rather disappointed by the commercialising of this famous street. Regina Mundi Church looks the same as it was 34 years ago. There are small black holes on the white ceiling which our tour guide revealed are bullet holes from the apartheid police guns, a reminder to visitors of the role played by the church in the struggle for freedom.

At the Hector Pieterson Museum, an intriguing two storey red-brick building with irregular shaped windows named after the first victim of the police shootings, most of the pictures, documentaries and artefacts at the museum were not new to me. Most of the enlarged photographs were part of my history material at high school. The thing that left a lasting impression though was a moving poem on the second floor, hidden behind a glass corner;

First victim...

A bullet burnt

Into soft dark flesh

A child fell

Liquid life

Rushed Hot

To stain the earth

He was the first victim

And now

Let grieving the willows

Mark the spot

Let nature raise a monument

Of flowers and trees

Lest we forget the foul and the wicked deed

-Don Mattera, 1976, Azanian Love Song

Reading this now, the effect is not the same as when I discovered these words at that corner, I was touched by the poem that after reading it loud for the third time, I went straight outside before I could break anything.