Sowetan Black Edition 2019

owetan In the know on the move R5.30 (eSwatini, Bots 5.20 incl tax) Friday October 18, 2019 www.sowetanlive.co.za

The Black Edition: A tribute to the people Inside PHOTO / THULANI MBELE

Black DA pushes back against Zille Her long time ally and Western Cape leader Bonginkosi Madikizela among provincial leaders who could tip the scales in Trollip’s favour page 5

Zulu, not violent but don't test me – Kwanele Ndlovu page 17

Born to tell Mathosa’s story Time Out Life term for child rapist Ninow page 4

S

owetan

By Gaongalelwe Tiro

On that fateful day, Jimmy Kruger, the infamous apartheid minister of (in)justice, held a media conference to announce new measures to clamp down on resistance to the apartheid state.

The day, dubbed Black Wednesday, became synonymous with issues of media freedom because Kruger banned church publication Pro Veritate and black newspapers The World and Weekend World.

The police also detained The World editor Percy Qoboza for five months.

For media freedom freaks, this was the highlight of the moment; in reality, however, the media was collateral damage.

Crucially, Kruger also banned 17 Black Consciousness-leaning organisations. The decision did not come as much of a surprise as the panicky regime was becoming increasingly erratic.

It had just martyred the leading light of the Black Consciousness movement, Steven Bantu Biko, a month earlier. Of the banned organisations, the irrepressible South African Students Organisation (Saso) was undoubtedly the most significant.

It had blazed the ideological trail that reignited the fire for freedom among oppressed black South Africans.

The period 1960-1968 was a dark hour for the oppressed, with leading liberation movements the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania exiled and moribund.

Both had formed military wings in the early 1960s but the armed Struggle had not taken off in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, the banning of the ANC and PAC and the incarceration and exiling of their key leaders had diminished their capacity for mass mobilisation.

Few dared to raise their heads above the parapet after the apartheid regime had demonstrated the lengths it was prepared to go to clamp down on resistance. It had butchered 69 protestors in Sharpeville

Editor: Thembela Khamango Project Manager: Lebogang Boshomane Designers: Abinaar Malao and Matshepo Mahlulo Sub Editors: Tumo Mokone, Deborah Gordin and Elvis Nemukula

The day liberation Struggle changed in 1960 and jailed some of the more prominent leaders of the liberation Struggle, including Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela.

The regime charged Sobukwe with inciting the protest while Mandela was first arrested for leaving the country without a passport but later charged with others for high treason.

The regime looked increasingly unassailable.

Then later in 1968 entered Saso onto the scene, imbued with a new political ethos, Black Consciousness.

Black Consciousness, with slogans like “Black Is Beautiful”, promoted Afrocentric pride that centuries of colonial and settler-colonial conquest had diminished. The conquest had ingrained subservience and selfdoubt that went to the core of the humanity of black people.

As a result, many straightened their hair, bleached their skins and sought to mimic the ways of the white man in any way possible. Increasingly, they took for granted the supposed superiority of the white race.

Saso coalesced around the magnetic personality of Biko, who became its first president and principal theoretician. The formation and the ideology it espoused grew from strength to strength until it finally broke into the popular consciousness of South Africans with the Tiro Affair in 1972. Class of ’72 valedictorian at the then University of the North, Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, occasioned the seminal moment when he climbed into apartheid and its artefacts during a graduation ceremony.

A whirlwind fallout followed, with unrest across tertiary institutions and scores of students being expelled or leaving

studies on their own accord to focus on the Struggle. It was also during this period that the issue of the armed Struggle was broached openly for the first time within Saso ranks and the first batch from the lot escaped to exile, led by Keith Mokoape.

The student movement established the Black People’s Convention (BPC) in December 1972 to organise elders in the black community and to mobilise them behind the liberation Struggle.

The proliferation of Black Consciousness spawned several other formations across different sectors of society.

The apartheid regime became increasingly wary of the influence of the movement. In March 1973 it banned eight SasoBPC activists: Drake Koka, Bokwe Mafuna, Steve Biko, Barney Pityana, Harry Nengwekhulu, Jerry Modisane, Strini Moodley and Saths Cooper.

Three months later, in June 1973, apartheid securocrats recommended that other Saso-BPC activists Tiro, Mosibudi Mangena, Chris Mokoditoa, Jeff Baqwa, Bennie Khoapa, Sipho Buthelezi, Ela Ramgobin and Sam Moodley be banned.

Instead, the regime arrested Mangena the same month before charging him under the Terrorism Act and sentencing him to a five-year prison term on Robben Island.

Tiro escaped to exile in September the same year before the apartheid agents, with the help of individuals in the Botswana security establishment, assassinated him with a parcel bomb on February 1 1974.

The regime escalated its harassment of the fledging movement.

Still, in 1974, it rounded up scores of Saso leaders after they had organised “Viva Frelimo” rallies to celebrate the impending liberation from colonial rule of neigh-

bouring Mozambique.

Cooper, Muntu Myeza, Moodley, Mosiuoa Lekota, Nchaupe Mokoape, Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, Nkwenkwe Nkomo and Kaborone Sedibe were charged, found guilty and imprisoned on Robben Island.

On August 5 1976, Saso leader Mapetla Mohapi was assassinated while in detention on suspicion of recruiting youth for military training outside the country.

While Saso was initially in universities and other institutions of higher learning, it subsequently made several deliberate attempts to link up its programmes with the broader struggles facing the black community.

The mantra of the new generation of activists was that they were “black first and students after”. Saso, therefore, rolled out community self-help initiatives and reached out to elders and youth in and outside schools while spreading its philosophy.

The earlier morphing of the African Students Movement into the South African Students Movement (SASM) when it fell under Saso’s sphere of influence was another significant development. The organisation that organised in high schools became an essential vehicle of political conscientisation and a breeding ground of liberation Struggle leaders such as Tsietsi Mashinini, Khotso Seatlholo, Murphy Morobe, Khehla Mthembu and Seth Mazibuko.

SASM became the decisive force behind the June 1976 student rebellion that changed the course of South African history.

The apartheid regime, typically, reacted with violence, killing scores of students and driving thousands into exile.

However, this too did not extinguish the fire for liberation among black South Africans that the Black Consciousness movement had lit. The regime stepped up its act and martyred Biko and banned the organisations that he and his generation of activists had established or inspired, finally drawing a curtain on the black radical tradition’s leadership of the antiapartheid Struggle.

■ Tiro is author of Parcel of Death: The Biography of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

II The Black Edition

Thloloe’s lessons from behind bars Jail was vet scribe’s second home

By Thabiso Thakali

P

rison cells hold both good and bad memories for Joe Thloloe’s lifelong career in journalism. As a 17-year-old pupil at Orlando High School in Soweto, Thloloe was thrown into jail for taking part in protests against the pass laws on March 21 1960. He had already joined the PAC as an activist a year before that.

In prison, Thloloe shared a cell with Matthew Nkwane – a journalist from Drum magazine he had known before.

Nkwane taught him how to write news stories on toilet paper using pencil stubs during

A copy of Sowetan, which rose after the Post’s demise.

By Pali Lehohla

South Africa and the region today, its character of Struggle and its futures, are inseparable from the nascent history of collusion of race, maize and gold.

In pursuit of this development path, a plethora of race based laws were enacted to ensure that farming and gold capital, despite sporadic flares of Anglo-Boer war battles, the long term unity of maize and gold would be maintained – to sacrifice blacks at all costs.

The Act of Union in 1910 and the birth of the Republic in 1961 remain monumental representations of this unity.

The liberation Struggle would be waged against this hegemonic alliance whose war head was the formalisation and institutionalisation of racial policies upon the Nationalist Party winning elections in 1948.

Ushering the dawn of

their year-long incarceration.

When he was released, Thloloe completed his matric and got his first job at The World newspaper as a journo.

The idea of becoming a journalist was planted and born out of Thloloe’s desire to tell the story of black South Africans during the liberation Struggle.

Fast-forward to August 1976, Thloloe is locked up again at the Modderbee prison in Benoni, on the East Rand, for his political activities.

He was now a journalist working for Drum. His then editor, Jim Bailey, had warned him to stay away from politics.

So incensed was Bailey that Thloloe had not listened to him that he sent a dismissal letter to be delivered to him at police holding cells.

Thloloe was then the president of the Union of Black Journalists (UBJ) – a bunch of courageous journalists who played a leading role in reporting the events of the Soweto student uprisings.

Thloloe’s crime along with some of the union members who were detained under the terrorism act, was to publish a Bulletin named “Asizuthula”.

The Bulletin had provocatively used a series of photographs taken by Sam Nzima documenting Hector Pieterson’s last moments before his death on its front page.

That issue also gave the firstperson account of the events of June 16 1976 youth uprisings, written by several black journalists who were in Soweto and witnessed the mowing

Joe Thloloe during an interview with Sowetan at his house in Roodepoort on the West Rand.

down of black pupils by police.

“It was a very powerful commentary on what happened on June 16th,” recalled Thloloe, leaning forward on a table in his study room at his home in Roodepoort. “On the day we went to press with that publication, it was banned. It was an offence to be seen carrying a copy of that Bulletin.”

This wasn’t to be the last time Thloloe would run into trouble with the apartheid

The World editor Percy Qoboza looks at the newspaper headlines. / T I M E S M E D I A

regime. In fact, arrests and detentions without trial shaped his career. In March 1977, Thloloe had been re-employed at The World for only a month when he was again detained and locked up for the next 18 months in Pietermaritzburg.

He came out of detention to find out that The World – a newspaper whose editor Percy Qoboza gave him a second chance when he was summarily fired by Bailey at Drum – was no more.

It had been shut down by the government and more journalists had been detained, including Qoboza, on October 19 1977, a day commemorated as the Press Freedom Day in remembrance of how the newspaper that had become the voice of black Struggle was silenced.

During his 18-month incarceration, Thloloe said, he had no way of knowing what was going on in the outside world.

“I had no newspapers, I had no visitors, I had no contact with anyone except my torturers. In 1978, one of my interrogators said to me that I should cooperate because when I leave prison I was going to find a completely new world

Big strides made as promised to Lembede Numbers tell the story democracy in 1994, Oliver Tambo (1917-1993), Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), Walter Sisulu (1912-2003), Jordan Kush Ngubane (1917-1995), Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-2006), Albertina Sisulu (1918-2011), Ashley P Mda (1916-1993), Dan Tloome (1919-1992), and David Bopape (1915-2004) of the ANCYL delivered the promise they made to Lembede (19141947) in 1944 – Freedom in Our Lifetime.

The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) had five key deliverables, namely meeting basic needs, developing our human resources, building the economy, democratising the state and society. These were the key pillars of Freedom in Our Life

Time that the stalwarts made to Lembede.

How then has SA fared since the dawn of democracy in 1994? For this snapshot we shall use a statistical lens.

Four years after the Act of

Dr Pali Lehohla. / N D LOV U

SANDILE

the Union and a year after the Land Act of 1913, the Statistics Act of South Africa was enacted in 1914. This Act went through several amendments and the last amendment was the post-apartheid Act 6 of 1998 and we are applying this lens of evidence.

Statistical evidence asserts that the demise of the brutal veil of oppression unleashed unprecedented access by the formerly oppressed to services that would get many out of dirt poverty and death.

Doors of learning opened and among those who are 20 years and above, 1.5-million more had schooling in 2007 compared to 1996.

In fact, a 1.5-million more of those in this age group of 20 years and above had schooling then. By 2017, functional literacy across all age groups was

outside, not the one I left behind. He said, ‘your Steve Biko is dead, your Union of Black Journalists doesn’t exist anymore, and The World doesn’t exist anymore’,” he recalled.

“My immediate reaction was that he is lying. The next day he came back and he had a copy of a proclamation of October 19th and threw it in front of me and said, ‘you said I was lying, look at that’. I looked at the government gazette and the organisations that were banned … that’s when the shock really hit me.”

It was only in March 1978 that Thloloe got to grips with what had happened to The World newspaper.

When he was released from detention and driven to his home in Pimville, Soweto, the reality sunk even deeper that he was no longer employed by The World – a newspaper that had served as voice of the Struggle.

“I got to understand that day that in fact people like Aggrey Klaaste and Percy Qoboza had also been locked up. That was the power the government had over us and the nation that at the stroke of a pen they could just shut down a publication, shut down so many organisations,” Thloloe said.

“The World newspaper had been somewhat replaced by Post Transvaal, but it was still in the same place in Industria, the same personnel and it was just a change of name.

“After my release from detention in 1978, I just slotted in and joined the new publication, the Post Transvaal.”

At the Post, Thloloe said, journalists had to continue telling the stories of black South Africans but they had to find a way around the Draconian apartheid laws.

In 1981, the Post ceased to exist, much like The World, after it was threatened with a ban following a prolonged strike by journalists.

And in their place rose the Sowetan to fill the void.

above 90%.

While in 1985, only less than 10,000 blacks graduated with a degree, by 2017 that number exceeded a 100,000 – more than a 20- fold increase.

However quality of education remains deplorable.

Despite a record that showed improvements in living conditions, the state of health of South Africans continued to deteriorate and mortality reached peak by 2005 with communicable diseases such as TB and HIV-Aids playing a leading role in causing death.

From 2007 in a growing population, the number of deaths occurring started to decline with affordable access to and availability of treatment of HIV and Aids. In this regard, life expectancy in South Africa has improved, now averaging 64 years.

■ Dr Lehohla is the former Statistician-General of SA.

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

IV The Black Edition

By Itumeleng Mafisa

A

bird’s eye view of Alexandra in northern Johannesburg from the top of Alex Mall tells the story of how the 1913 Native Land Act changed the landscape of the City of Gold.

Patrons of the mall enjoy taking pictures of the breathtaking view but one is also able to silently hear the story of inequality being told, with the tall buildings of Johannesburg, Sandton City and the gigantic Mall of Africa in Midrand all towering over Alexandra.

Like a pirate ship that has been through many adventures, Alexandra is able to tell a century-old tale of the struggle of rural Africans who came to Johannesburg to look for greener pastures. The first 40 families arrived in Alexandra in 1913, with their houses standing tall and proud.

It is estimated that by 1916 around 30,000 people had descended on Alex. Today, the population of Alexandra is estimated to be around 700,000, which is putting pressure on the township’s resources.

A walk in Alex means getting used to raw sewage accompanying you on your journey. The smell of steamy malamogodu also reminds you of the many homelands the people of Alex come from.

And the narrow streets full of hooting small taxis maneuvering up and down can make any new driver develop a thick skin, a necessary trait to survive in Joburg.

As you penetrate the streets of this overpopulated township, music bangs from corner to corner. It can be a bit difficult figuring out which house the music is coming from because most of the houses on the old side of the township are veiled by shacks and other makeshift structures.

Alexandra was born out of greed and inequality, with its founder, HB Papenfus, cashing in on the 1913 Land Act by selling property to black people. The old cry for land can be heard even today, with people building shacks and other structures near the river bank.

Shack blazes are a regular occurrence because of the

Sowetan Friday October 18 2019

The Black EditionV

Waiting to exhale:

The Alexandra Heritage Centre at 7th Avenue is a calm oasis in the township.

The story of Alex

close proximity of the shacks to each other. There is little space for playgrounds in schools because they are also feeling the pressure of a massive population influx.

Locals in the area still call the streets by their old colonial names, such as London and John Brand roads. A big contradiction exists as these are classy European names.

However, poverty can be found walking all over these streets, with many young people unemployed and winding their time by drinking shirtless on the side of the road.

On 2nd Avenue, a big ram walks all over a small illegal dumping site. No one seems to care that it’s there. Whether it’s rams or rats, the residents seem to be used to the sight of displeasing animals walking all over the township.

The City of Johannesburg had tried sending in owls to deal with a massive colony of rats in the area but that project failed when residents started attacking the owls. There was a spiritual concern with the presence of owls.

Residents seem to have also lost faith in the government, especially with the mystery of how the Alexandra Renewal Project funds went missing.

An uprooted tree that was planted by former president Jacob Zuma is a sign of the community’s frustration.

The same frustration waved its hand when Alexandra made national news after a picture of a foreign national being stabbed was published on the cover of the Sunday Times in 2015.

It was a moment of shame for the township.

Continuing the walk, one is immediately captured by the

numerous languages that filter through the air – from Bemba (Zambian language), Zulu, Venda to Sotho. Many of the residents are able to switch from one language to another – a sign of a dynamic township.

Residents have learnt to live harmoniously with each other despite their different cultural backgrounds and languages.

They all have a common goal – to get a piece of the pie in Joburg.

Vukuzenzele [get up and do it for yourself] is a common phrase among the township’s entrepreneurs. For those who can’t find work in the city, starting a business is the next best thing, the most common being food stands and taverns.

For those who don’t mind getting their hair done in the sun, there are braiders near Pan Africa shopping centre.

Walking in groups is encouraged because of crime in the area, especially at night. Life was not always this way in Alexandra. Once upon a time the jazzy music of Alexandra called black workers from across Johannesburg to come

The ‘Godfather ’ of Alexandra, Linda Twala

Though patrons of the Alex Mall can enjoy a panoramic view of the township from its roof, the mall itself is still a midget in comparison with the towering buildings of nearby Sandton. / P H O T O S : V E L I N H L A P O

and relax in Alex, where they could jam to Kofifi music and Marabi while unburdening themselves of the dog-eat-dog nature of city life.

Many cultures were present, Indian, Chinese and whites who had returned from war.

African workers from the Diaspora also became part of the community, marrying local women and participating in local politics. Many of them came as workers to the gold mines of Johannesburg.

Not only did the gold rush of 1886 bring workers to Joburg but it also brought European missionaries who came to preach the good news among natives. The clerics would eventually find their way to Alexandra, where they started churches that would teach Africans how to read and write – but they would also play an important role in the fight against apartheid.

Some of these missionaries included a German group of priests who founded the St Hubert’s Catholic Church in 1919 on 1st Avenue.

Despite the National Party’s heavy hand on black people, Africans living in Alexandra bloomed like wild flowers, with leaders of high calibre such as ANC’s trio of Zanele Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Joe Nhlanhla emerging.

There was also a string of musical talents such as Hugh Masekela, Caiphus Semenya and Ntemi Piliso.

Nelson Mandela and Samora Machel also called Alex home for a short period of time. Creative writers with an excellent command of the English language such as Wally Serote and Don Mattera also emerged out of Alex.

Before townships like Soweto carried the Struggle against apartheid and colonial laws, the residents of Alexandra had been carrying the fire of resistance. This started with the 1940 bus boycott. The city wanted to increase the fourpenny fare to five pennies (one penny is around R1 in today’s terms).

However, the township came out in protest and for six months residents boldly

‘‘

Everywhere you go you see young people all over the street walked 15km and more to their places of work. Their resilience paid off – at the end of six months the penny increase was dropped. The campaign was known as Azikhwelwa.

The residence of Alex did it again in 1954 when the apartheid government passed the Bantu Education Act, which stated that blacks now had to submit to an inferior system of education, preparing them for inferior status in SA society.

Thousands of school

children boycotted their schools in April 1954 in Alexandra and around the country.

Sixteen teachers from Alex lost their jobs.

The hostels of Alexandra – a protruding thorn, a piece of history no one wants to remember – stand strong, but an eerie atmosphere still surrounds these buildings.

In the early 1990s, a fight broke out between residents in the men’s hostels and residents south of the hostels, an area that became known as “Beirut”. Sixty people were killed, while nearly 600 were injured and around 10,000 displaced from their homes.

It was a painful procession towards the 1994 elections.

The black-on-black violence was one of the many challenges Alexandra had to overcome.

Today, Alexandra still stands as a symbol of inequality and tenders gone wrong and residents of this 105-year-old township are wondering when their time to exhale will come.

The “Godfather” of Alexan-

dra, Linda Twala, shared some of his thoughts on the issues surrounding the place of his birth.

Twala’s parents moved into Alexandra in 1903 and were among the first families to settle in what youngsters today call “Gomora”.

His family is a true reflection of the beginnings of Alex, with some of his family members having Asian and European features.

“I do not think that people from Alexandra are xenophobic but I think that we are in a crisis of resources, we need more land. There are too many of us living on a square mile,” Twala says.

The land issue in Alex is something close to Twala’s heart.

He says he was saddened by the slow yet painful loss of Alexandra land to Sandton developments.

“Some of our old burial sites are close to that area as you go to Mall of Africa ... we used to swim in Limbro Park,” says Twala.

He says he was playing

with the idea of organising a land protest by the elderly community of Alex.

“If it is young people that do this protest, they will arrest them,” says Twala.

Although Alexandra is still close to economic opportunities, the township is not immune to South Africa’s staggering 29% unemployment rate. Muntu Mbanjwa, 41, is one of those who are sceptical about the future of Alex. His great-grandfather was one of the first property owners in Alexandra.

“Everywhere you go you see young people all over the street, even during the morning. Where are the work opportunities for young people?” asks Mbanjwa.

He also questions the slow pace of development in the area. He is particularly concerned about the growing disparities between Alex and its classy neighbour, Sandton.

“You are able to see the highrise buildings of Sandton from here but they cannot see us,” he says.

“We do not have clean air in Alex, you can smell the difference in the air you smell here and the air in other parts of Johannesburg.”

The mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, has launched a probe into the Alexandra Renewal Project, which was meant to give the township a R1.6bn facelift.

The project was aimed at changing the physical, economic and social environment of Alex and was billed as a joint urban regeneration project involving the local, provincial

and national government as well as the private sector and non-government and community-based organisations.

But since its launch in 2001, little appears to have been delivered.

In a statement, the city said it was proud of several developments in the Alexandra area but no comment was given concerning the Alexandra Renewal Project.

“As a city, we will continue to do all we can to ensure that change is brought to our communities,” said the city in a statement. Father Ronald Cairns, a priest at St Hubert’s, says he has been working in the township for over three decades and has beautiful memories of the township.

He tells a quirky story of how he was rescued by a group of drunkards after he was hijacked in the area two years ago.

“They took me out of the car and some people from the neighbourhood spotted them and told them, ‘hands off our priest’. They rescued me and took me to a tavern where I found a lift to my house,” says the elderly priest.

Despite the human bonds the people of Alexandra have built, Alexandra lies below the towering buildings of Johannesburg, Sandton and Midrand, hoping to one day rise. Her children wonder if the Struggle will ever divorce Alexandra.

The destruction wreaked by the 1913 Land Act is not only felt in rural KwaZulu-Natal or by the chiefs and kings of different tribes, the after-effects can still be seen in present-day Alexandra.

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

IV The Black Edition

By Itumeleng Mafisa

A

bird’s eye view of Alexandra in northern Johannesburg from the top of Alex Mall tells the story of how the 1913 Native Land Act changed the landscape of the City of Gold.

Patrons of the mall enjoy taking pictures of the breathtaking view but one is also able to silently hear the story of inequality being told, with the tall buildings of Johannesburg, Sandton City and the gigantic Mall of Africa in Midrand all towering over Alexandra.

Like a pirate ship that has been through many adventures, Alexandra is able to tell a century-old tale of the struggle of rural Africans who came to Johannesburg to look for greener pastures. The first 40 families arrived in Alexandra in 1913, with their houses standing tall and proud.

It is estimated that by 1916 around 30,000 people had descended on Alex. Today, the population of Alexandra is estimated to be around 700,000, which is putting pressure on the township’s resources.

A walk in Alex means getting used to raw sewage accompanying you on your journey. The smell of steamy malamogodu also reminds you of the many homelands the people of Alex come from.

And the narrow streets full of hooting small taxis maneuvering up and down can make any new driver develop a thick skin, a necessary trait to survive in Joburg.

As you penetrate the streets of this overpopulated township, music bangs from corner to corner. It can be a bit difficult figuring out which house the music is coming from because most of the houses on the old side of the township are veiled by shacks and other makeshift structures.

Alexandra was born out of greed and inequality, with its founder, HB Papenfus, cashing in on the 1913 Land Act by selling property to black people. The old cry for land can be heard even today, with people building shacks and other structures near the river bank.

Shack blazes are a regular occurrence because of the

Sowetan Friday October 18 2019

The Black EditionV

Waiting to exhale:

The Alexandra Heritage Centre at 7th Avenue is a calm oasis in the township.

The story of Alex

close proximity of the shacks to each other. There is little space for playgrounds in schools because they are also feeling the pressure of a massive population influx.

Locals in the area still call the streets by their old colonial names, such as London and John Brand roads. A big contradiction exists as these are classy European names.

However, poverty can be found walking all over these streets, with many young people unemployed and winding their time by drinking shirtless on the side of the road.

On 2nd Avenue, a big ram walks all over a small illegal dumping site. No one seems to care that it’s there. Whether it’s rams or rats, the residents seem to be used to the sight of displeasing animals walking all over the township.

The City of Johannesburg had tried sending in owls to deal with a massive colony of rats in the area but that project failed when residents started attacking the owls. There was a spiritual concern with the presence of owls.

Residents seem to have also lost faith in the government, especially with the mystery of how the Alexandra Renewal Project funds went missing.

An uprooted tree that was planted by former president Jacob Zuma is a sign of the community’s frustration.

The same frustration waved its hand when Alexandra made national news after a picture of a foreign national being stabbed was published on the cover of the Sunday Times in 2015.

It was a moment of shame for the township.

Continuing the walk, one is immediately captured by the

numerous languages that filter through the air – from Bemba (Zambian language), Zulu, Venda to Sotho. Many of the residents are able to switch from one language to another – a sign of a dynamic township.

Residents have learnt to live harmoniously with each other despite their different cultural backgrounds and languages.

They all have a common goal – to get a piece of the pie in Joburg.

Vukuzenzele [get up and do it for yourself] is a common phrase among the township’s entrepreneurs. For those who can’t find work in the city, starting a business is the next best thing, the most common being food stands and taverns.

For those who don’t mind getting their hair done in the sun, there are braiders near Pan Africa shopping centre.

Walking in groups is encouraged because of crime in the area, especially at night. Life was not always this way in Alexandra. Once upon a time the jazzy music of Alexandra called black workers from across Johannesburg to come

The ‘Godfather ’ of Alexandra, Linda Twala

Though patrons of the Alex Mall can enjoy a panoramic view of the township from its roof, the mall itself is still a midget in comparison with the towering buildings of nearby Sandton. / P H O T O S : V E L I N H L A P O

and relax in Alex, where they could jam to Kofifi music and Marabi while unburdening themselves of the dog-eat-dog nature of city life.

Many cultures were present, Indian, Chinese and whites who had returned from war.

African workers from the Diaspora also became part of the community, marrying local women and participating in local politics. Many of them came as workers to the gold mines of Johannesburg.

Not only did the gold rush of 1886 bring workers to Joburg but it also brought European missionaries who came to preach the good news among natives. The clerics would eventually find their way to Alexandra, where they started churches that would teach Africans how to read and write – but they would also play an important role in the fight against apartheid.

Some of these missionaries included a German group of priests who founded the St Hubert’s Catholic Church in 1919 on 1st Avenue.

Despite the National Party’s heavy hand on black people, Africans living in Alexandra bloomed like wild flowers, with leaders of high calibre such as ANC’s trio of Zanele Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe and Joe Nhlanhla emerging.

There was also a string of musical talents such as Hugh Masekela, Caiphus Semenya and Ntemi Piliso.

Nelson Mandela and Samora Machel also called Alex home for a short period of time. Creative writers with an excellent command of the English language such as Wally Serote and Don Mattera also emerged out of Alex.

Before townships like Soweto carried the Struggle against apartheid and colonial laws, the residents of Alexandra had been carrying the fire of resistance. This started with the 1940 bus boycott. The city wanted to increase the fourpenny fare to five pennies (one penny is around R1 in today’s terms).

However, the township came out in protest and for six months residents boldly

‘‘

Everywhere you go you see young people all over the street walked 15km and more to their places of work. Their resilience paid off – at the end of six months the penny increase was dropped. The campaign was known as Azikhwelwa.

The residence of Alex did it again in 1954 when the apartheid government passed the Bantu Education Act, which stated that blacks now had to submit to an inferior system of education, preparing them for inferior status in SA society.

Thousands of school

children boycotted their schools in April 1954 in Alexandra and around the country.

Sixteen teachers from Alex lost their jobs.

The hostels of Alexandra – a protruding thorn, a piece of history no one wants to remember – stand strong, but an eerie atmosphere still surrounds these buildings.

In the early 1990s, a fight broke out between residents in the men’s hostels and residents south of the hostels, an area that became known as “Beirut”. Sixty people were killed, while nearly 600 were injured and around 10,000 displaced from their homes.

It was a painful procession towards the 1994 elections.

The black-on-black violence was one of the many challenges Alexandra had to overcome.

Today, Alexandra still stands as a symbol of inequality and tenders gone wrong and residents of this 105-year-old township are wondering when their time to exhale will come.

The “Godfather” of Alexan-

dra, Linda Twala, shared some of his thoughts on the issues surrounding the place of his birth.

Twala’s parents moved into Alexandra in 1903 and were among the first families to settle in what youngsters today call “Gomora”.

His family is a true reflection of the beginnings of Alex, with some of his family members having Asian and European features.

“I do not think that people from Alexandra are xenophobic but I think that we are in a crisis of resources, we need more land. There are too many of us living on a square mile,” Twala says.

The land issue in Alex is something close to Twala’s heart.

He says he was saddened by the slow yet painful loss of Alexandra land to Sandton developments.

“Some of our old burial sites are close to that area as you go to Mall of Africa ... we used to swim in Limbro Park,” says Twala.

He says he was playing

with the idea of organising a land protest by the elderly community of Alex.

“If it is young people that do this protest, they will arrest them,” says Twala.

Although Alexandra is still close to economic opportunities, the township is not immune to South Africa’s staggering 29% unemployment rate. Muntu Mbanjwa, 41, is one of those who are sceptical about the future of Alex. His great-grandfather was one of the first property owners in Alexandra.

“Everywhere you go you see young people all over the street, even during the morning. Where are the work opportunities for young people?” asks Mbanjwa.

He also questions the slow pace of development in the area. He is particularly concerned about the growing disparities between Alex and its classy neighbour, Sandton.

“You are able to see the highrise buildings of Sandton from here but they cannot see us,” he says.

“We do not have clean air in Alex, you can smell the difference in the air you smell here and the air in other parts of Johannesburg.”

The mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, has launched a probe into the Alexandra Renewal Project, which was meant to give the township a R1.6bn facelift.

The project was aimed at changing the physical, economic and social environment of Alex and was billed as a joint urban regeneration project involving the local, provincial

and national government as well as the private sector and non-government and community-based organisations.

But since its launch in 2001, little appears to have been delivered.

In a statement, the city said it was proud of several developments in the Alexandra area but no comment was given concerning the Alexandra Renewal Project.

“As a city, we will continue to do all we can to ensure that change is brought to our communities,” said the city in a statement. Father Ronald Cairns, a priest at St Hubert’s, says he has been working in the township for over three decades and has beautiful memories of the township.

He tells a quirky story of how he was rescued by a group of drunkards after he was hijacked in the area two years ago.

“They took me out of the car and some people from the neighbourhood spotted them and told them, ‘hands off our priest’. They rescued me and took me to a tavern where I found a lift to my house,” says the elderly priest.

Despite the human bonds the people of Alexandra have built, Alexandra lies below the towering buildings of Johannesburg, Sandton and Midrand, hoping to one day rise. Her children wonder if the Struggle will ever divorce Alexandra.

The destruction wreaked by the 1913 Land Act is not only felt in rural KwaZulu-Natal or by the chiefs and kings of different tribes, the after-effects can still be seen in present-day Alexandra.

Sowetan Friday October 18 2019

The Black EditionIII

Electronics new fashion for label

By Isaac Mahlangu

T

he story of Wandi and Sechaba’s urban street label, Loxion Kulca, is one about black identity and expression.

It was an unprecedented era with the biggest songs on SA’s black radio stations being local hits by Zola or TKZee. This was a significant shift as music by US artists such as R Kelly and Ja Rule was pushed to the back-seat or down the charts.

And this also cut across to fashion, with the coolest brand to rock becoming Loxion Kulca, a fresh kasi streetwear label that cemented one’s street cred.

Zola and TKZee - big stars at the time - also wore Loxion Kulca, so did dozens other relevant celebrities and TV personalities.

This is the early 2000s which coincided with the powerful emergence of radio superstars like Yfm’s DJ Khabzela, another big fan of Loxion Kulca.

Yfm had led the revolution by putting kwaito on high rotation, in the process it became the biggest radio station in Gauteng.

The then president Thabo Mbeki was preaching African Renaissance and young black South Africans were responding to his sermon by carving out their identity in music and fashion. Local was definitely lekker .

Wandi Nzimande and Sechaba Mogale, founders of Loxion Kulca, were the young trailblazers who achieved what was then unthinkable.

Not many people know that the duo was influenced and impressed by stories of Nubian traders in ancient Egypt so much that they named their first company Nubia.

They had learnt that Nubia was home to one of Africa’s earliest and most powerful kingdoms.

They were also impressed by tales of Nubian rulers who had conquered and ruled Egypt for years, building monuments such as royal pyramids, which still exist both in Egypt and Sudan today.

Mogale, who grew up in exile, mainly in Lusaka, Zambia, had been exposed to many cultures. Nzimande was raised in various parts of Soweto. He still identifies various sections of the township including Zola, Emndeni and Rockville as his home.

Even though they were not living in the township when they started their business, the kasie culture and identity dominated most of their conversations.

“That’s all we used to talk about, I used to tell Chabi (Sechaba) a whole lot of stories, I was born at Baragwanath Hospital and I know Soweto like the back of my hand, so it was very easy for us to have

Sechaba Mogale and Wandi Nzimande celebrate 20 years of their iconic South African clothing and shoes brand Loxion Kulca, which was very popular in the early 2000s and is still selling. / T H U L A N I M B E L E

Loxion Kulca eyes new era this trade off,” Wandi said.

He said he was intrigued by hip-hop music and culture which Mogale had been exposed to while growing up in exile.

“Sechaba knew everything from Big Daddy Kane, Ice T to Public Enemy and Run D.M.C, which was pushing a lot of consciousness and my thinking was already wired like that, it was about identity,” Wandi said.

Nzimande and Mogale were all about cool clothes, conscious music, especially rap, and the need to be proud of their identity.

“What formed our thinking is that we were big on expression, Sechaba was exposed to a lot of international cultures. I was raised on bubblegum (music).”

The trade off between the two became a melting pot which culminated in an idea to start their own brand. In 1998, a year before they launched Loxion Kulca, with the help of their relatives, they made crocheted hats for themselves.

“We were young and broke at the time, we couldn’t afford the likes of Fubu, Moses Malone, Karl Kani and then we came with a stupid idea of what if we made our own.”

Mogale was a big sneaker fanatic while Nzimande was crazy about hats. The hats being a lot easier to start with, launched Loxion Kulca.

In 1999, they joined forces with clothing franchiser Brian Abrahams, who initially loaned them money to kickstart Loxion Kulca, which they had already registered.

“Brian’s first question was, ‘what is it that you need?’ And Chabi likes to say that a business is just a phone and a desk

Wandi and Sechaba back in the beginning.

and that’s what we asked from Brian – a phone and a desk,” Nzimande said.

Abrahams somewhat believed in their vision through watching them push their brand. “And Brian wasn’t involved in the business but he saw that lezintwana ziyaspana (these boys are working), and asked again: ‘what else do you need?’”

They then told Abrahams of their plan of going to the annual National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) where they had never even set foot.

Nzimande and Mogale had felt that if they could sell their brand at the festival, that would easily be the fastest way to grow the brand across the country. Their idea was to get around 100 caps and maybe 50 T-shirts, however, Abrahams advised them to go big and even put in R40,000 to help launch them.

Off they went to Grahamstown with half the stock they had acquired with Abrahams’ help. The trip would propel their clothing brand in a way

they never imagined.

With their girlfriends in a car with a boot full of Loxion Kulca stock, mainly hats and caps and just little money on them, they hit the road... armed with hope and belief.

“Grahamstown was something Wandi identified. I’m not even sure where he knew the festival from but he recognised it as a place where they’d be a lot of artists and musicians,” Mogale recalled.

“There was confidence in at least knowing how to put ourselves together in terms of how we looked, and we were using these tools that were foreign and Grahamstown seemed like a perfect place to test our stock, and Wandi had the foresight to identify that festival as a perfect place to show up and have a presence.”

Nzimande chipped in: “We didn’t even know how to get there, we just followed signs.

We just had enough money to drive down with a boot full of stock.” He remembers that on their first night at the festival, they had around R150 between them.

“I think we bought a few sandwiches, the next day we didn’t really have money left... we had to sell a few hats.”

Some friends who had travelled to the festival helped them sell their hats. That’s how the Loxion Kulca brand was born. Like a rose that grew between concrete slabs, it couldn’t be ignored.

Abrahams was very impressed by their hustle and decided to get fully involved in the brand. Not only did he fund it, Abrahams showed so much faith in the label that he even re-bonded his house to raise funds for Loxion Kulca stock to be mass-produced.

In a short space of time, Loxion Kulca was in Sales House and Edgars stores, and could be snapped up in more than 900 stores nationwide, raking in an annual turnover of around R80m in its prime.

The three-man partnership was a solid force, but the shutting down of several local factories that supplied them, proliferation of fake goods and disagreements on the company’s direction, drove the them into a difficult period, especially after Abrahams’ passing. To add salt to the label’s misery, Mogale left in 2007.

The label, however, weathered the storm as it remained alive and available in more than 400 stores nationwide.

Loxion Kulca is now in its 20th year and there’s renewed energy, as Nzimande and Mogale are talking business again.

The future involves electronics, which Nzimande refers to as the “new fashion”.

Perhaps the story of Loxion Kulca is entering a different chapter in a totally different era.

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

VI The Black Edition

Young, feminist and black Black men do not back our struggle

By Malaika wa Azania

“Our focus right now should be on the question of race; we will deal with the gender question later.”

It was in 2016 when this statement was made by a young man, one of the most notable faces of the #FeesMustFall movement that changed the face of higher education in SA. We were in a meeting at the Parktonian Hotel in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, with student leaders from across the country, trying to synchronise our activities in order to strengthen the impact of the movement.

When a young woman suggested that the successes of the movement depended on its ability to employ an intersectional approach to the struggle, this was the response.

This incident is not isolated, it is reflective of a broader attitude within the student movement and indeed, the broader society, towards the question of gender.

In the new SA, a country that is in many ways not so new, the race question has been given great priority through policy interventions and general discourse.

Undoubtedly, the nature of our resistance and liberation history necessitates the prioritisation of race, for it was on the

basis of race that apartheid was facilitated. But our oppression was layered. It was marred in complexities that were deeper than the de-civilisation and dehumanisation that emanated from racial segregation.

Throughout history, black women have been hurled to the margins of existence, thrust at the very edge of the periphery where our oppression was not only racial and classist, but also sexist.

While both black men and women suffered the gross violations of their human rights that characterised apartheid, black women suffered far more and for many years, were completely marginalised even from the very organisations that would later become architects of a democratic SA. Black women who suffered the terrorism of the colonial state and endured imperial devastation were not accepted as members of the ANC when it was formed in 1912. It would take more than three decades for this to change.

This historical invisibilisation of black women has set parameters for the subordination of the gender struggle even in post-1994 SA. The deeply problematic views that found expression on that afternoon at the Parktonian Hotel reflected not only this history but a SA that is

Former Wits SRC president and now ANC MP, Nompendulo Mkhatshwa, in action during FeesMustFall protests. / N I C H O L A S R A W H A N I / G A L L O still resistant to change.

It reflected a SA in which black women continue to be regarded as ornaments, completely incapable even of articulating their own struggle without the aid of the allknowing man who insist that gender is too insignificant a struggle to be given a priority.

All blackness is not equal, we differ How do we address the divides Biko tried to bridge?

By Jamil F. Khan

It’s been 42 years since Steve Biko was assassinated. Black Consciousness is not what it used to be and the hallowed ground it was founded on has been sullied with contestation many times.

It served its purpose when what seemed to be a single-issue struggle needed to be won, but we have grown beyond one dimensional politics.

In SA, blackness became a call to action for all those oppressed under the racist, fascist supremacy of the apartheid state. Many heeded the call.

Today, we have much more to consider in a system where although not officially criminalised, being black still bears much contempt in a white supremacist world order.

Blackness, framed as a world view, leaves much to be desired in a place as material as visceral as SA.

As time has passed, questioning blackness has become an imperative for many of us.

The value of Biko’s framing still resonates today and unity in the quest for self-determination and agency in identity is still needed. Powerful as the ideology is, we can’t remain blind to the fact that all blackness is not equal.

As it intersects with gender (identity), ethnicity, skin tone, class and sexuality the material experiences of those considered black by any ideological standard differ.

When we consider black as an experience under white supremacy, how do we reconcile the differences among us?

How do we address the divides Biko tried to bridge, without losing sight of the fact that we are all oppressed, however unequally?

Personally, I have grappled with occupying the ideological position of blackness, knowing

The funeral of Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. /TIMES MEDIA ARCHIVES

very well that I am positioned differently to someone who embodies black in the eugenics sense of the word. The consequences for my life are not the same as the person

To be a young, black feminist in the new SA is to constantly negotiate your existence not only in this racist society, but in the black community.

It has often confounded me how black men tend to be so comfortable existing in a society in which oppression occurs.

It is not too uncommon to hear

black men argue that feminism is nothing more than an attempt at obliterating the black family, or at worst, an assimilation into “white feminism” which we reject with the contempt it deserves.

■ Wa Azania is a masters candidate in the department of geography at Rhodes University

who looks black.

Some have argued that black is simply a look and not an ideological positioning, which may tend towards the very eugenics so often decried in modern day race talk.

Prof Pumla Gqola states that for many of us the somatic (bodily) is the key to meaning in terms of race, and when considering the way in which race and its meaning changes, depending on the observer, this rings true. Among ourselves, this contestation is important for the way we make meaning of ourselves are our humanity, but in the eyes of white supremacy we are relied on for our ideological divisions.

A black person, considered black by any standard, can be more useful to white supremacy for their alignment to its principles, than a white passing coloured person whose mind will not be swayed.

We cannot ignore the reality that the way we look influences much of how we experience the world and the opportunities we are afforded in a system set up to rank our humanity along various lines of difference.

At the same time, we cannot discount the value of liberatory ideology espoused by those with more proximity to whiteness, when they are truly invested in using that power to

dismantle the system.

When I say this, I don’t mean in the academic sense and I am not oblivious to the fact that poor black South Africans of all ethnicities have little capacity to be unpacking ideologies of liberation when their material conditions constrain them so severely.

Maybe then, it is our job, as the privileged, to spend ideological blackness on dismantling the systems that bear down such a brutal strangle-

Blackness was a call to action for oppressed hold on material blackness.

The contestation and remaking of blackness will remain a difficult conversation under the suffocating gaze of white supremacy’s ever-present threat of violence.

Who says what matters and some of us should be labouring more than others. How we know where the boundaries sit is a process of discovery and unlearning all the same.

■ Jamil F. Khan is a PhD critical diversity studies candidate

Sowetan Friday October 18 2019

The Black EditionVII

The music maestro

Greg Maloka. / COURTESY OF MRSK VISUALS

Maloka made FM a cultural weapon

By Thembalethu Zulu

I

n June of 2007, a 35year-old Greg Maloka walked into his first meeting with the executive committee of Kaya FM and posed what many would have deemed a worrying question from the station’s new managing director.

“What business are we in?”

Maloka is said to have asked a perplexed room of executives, who duly informed him Kaya FM was a radio business.

“I said, okay, well, that’s good. But from today we’re not in the radio business.”

Fast forward 12 years and Kaya has become more than just a radio station, having dropped the FM from its brand name. The content hub now boasts a number of ventures that include KayaTV, Kaya Travel and Shop Kaya, an online store that supports local businesses by offering their wares on the portal.

But rewind to when Maloka

was just 13 years old and you will find the start of a story and, subsequently, a career that has cemented Maloka as one of radio’s most innovative and inspirational leaders.

Not only is he one of the medium’s biggest icons, he is also responsible for the development of some of its greatest talents, including the likes of DJ Fresh, the late DJ Monde Mabaso, Unathi Msengana and Gagasi FM’s Vukile Zondi. Maloka is also widely lauded for the promotion of different local music genres like kwaito, house and Afro-pop.

“You know, I created radio as a child on tapes, so I used to record my own station,” he says sitting across me in his roomy office in Rosebank.

He’s in his signature getup of casual/cargo pants, shirt and arty sneakers as he talks about how as a teenager he was already “recording” his own radio station on cassettes at home with the rudimentary tools of mic and earphones.

Maloka’s speech is mea-

From his start at YFM at 22 years of age to being MD of Kaya, Greg Maloka has been at the forefront of every cutting-edge moment in South African popular culture. / A A R T V E R R I P S

sured, each answer well thought out. His office reflects his interests. On the walls is art from the African diaspora, a box of prized vinyls on the floor (some autographed), a stocked wine fridge, a coffee machine – he drinks about six cups a day– and books that include an anthology of poems about someone who inspires him, Oliver Tambo.

“OR Tambo is one of my greatest influences, just, you know, in the way he saw the world. He was a mentor. He

‘‘

There’s no medium that competes with [just] listening

mentored a lot of young people,” he says. “I was quite young myself, when I got the opportunities that I got at 22 when I started at YFM. ” Legend has it that Maloka, standing in a queue of about 600 aspirant DJs auditioning for the newly licensed station, passed the time by handwriting a strategic plan for the station which he then managed to land in the hands of the then music manager, Arabi Mocheke. The “inspired moment” as he calls it, landed him a job at the station.

“Since then, I try and talk to young people about being able to spot your inspired moment and being able to use it.”

Maloka used his moment to develop a career at the station that saw him occupy its most pivotal roles, including music and station manager, eventually becoming the youth station’s CEO. At the time the station was arguably one of the leading influencers of youth culture in the country.

His achievements didn’t go unnoticed. Soon Kaya FM, then a largely niche regional station catering for a mature audience in its 40s, headhunt-

ed him to take over as MD. “I was 35 when I was asked to come to Kaya. So, I have this passion for young talent because how dare I not look at other young people when I was given opportunities at a very young age?”

A lot has been written about Maloka – how he grew up in Diepkloof, how at some point he wanted to be a priest, his thoughts on who and what the Afropolitan is and so on. But how would he describe Greg?

He’s never been asked this question he says. Like many who are deemed exceptionally intelligent, Maloka says he can’t articulate himself as fast as his mind works.

“I’m the person that’s forever seeking clarity….” he says.

“I’ve not found it easy to articulate some of the things I think. And because of that you find that many amazing moments pass because you weren’t able to be clear.

“The pace that I do things and the rate at which I think about stuff and how I want things to happen is totally different... I guess I always feel we can be a hell of a lot better.”

With a CV that includes induction into the Liberty Awards Hall of Fame as well as a proven track record as one of the most successful leaders, why has he stayed in radio, which is not necessarily the most lucrative of industries?

“I have not seen one industry that would have afforded me the opportunity of shifting the cultural needle. None,” he says resolutely.

“I mean, radio is a very versatile medium in that when you think about other traditional forms of media, they’ve been under enormous pressure, but radio is a complementary medium, so it finds its way to survive. There hasn’t been a medium that competes with [just] listening.”

After 25 years in media, what is his proudest moment?

“I think my proudest moment has been being able to watch the manifestation of the Afropolitan over the period.

“When I started with YFM, it was a certain mindset, the same sort of presentation of a

people. Being African was not fashionable. If anything, we all wanted to be anything, but, you know?” [He says “you know” a lot].

“Being able to contribute to the consciousness conversation in the way that we did whether it was pushing local music, local firms on air – being able to repackage offerings for Afropolitans.

“I’ve been blessed with having worked with the two most important markets in SA, [youth and adult]. I don’t know any other radio manager who’s had an opportunity to work with the same people over two different, very important life stages. And that I suppose is a moment of pride.

Though it’s not something I created, getting the opportunity to do that was incredible.”

His reach has gone beyond radio and music. His involvement has extended into other areas including art and film.

“FM is just one frequency… it’s just one channel through which you disperse this content. Culture as a whole is broad. So, we’re focused on building alongside people that are creative, people creating products that showcase just how amazing Africans are.”

Building for the future is something Maloka is passionate about. “The whole thing about not thinking about [just] today is very difficult because we are hungry today, we want freedom today. Everything has got to happen in our lifetime… and sometimes we make a lot of mistakes because we want to eat the fruit of the tree whose seed we should have planted. But if we understand the length it takes for a tree to grow and bear good fruits, that’s generally never in your lifetime.”

And what of his personal legacy? “I don’t want to focus on building a legacy, because a legacy is what society decides when you die. Dealing with challenges and opportunities as they present themselves to you is what we should be doing… I leave that decision to people because we make different impressions on different people for different things… when you’re among other cows, best you be the purple cow.”

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

VIII The Black Edition

By Thabiso Thakali

S

izwe Nxasana is a man on a mission to break apart the traditional notion of how teaching and learning in schools should be conducted.

Though Nxasana is a qualified charted accountant who earned his stripes in the corporate world over many years and co-founded the first black audit firm, SizweNtsalubaGobodo, his first love has always been education.

Nxasana together with his wife, Dr Judy Dlamini, founded Future Nation Schools – the first independent blackowned private school chain in Johannesburg.

Throughout his lifelong career, Nxasana vowed not to retire just as charted accountant.

When he left the corporate world several years ago, his appetite to contribute to the improvement of the quality of education was whetted.

“I sort of planned my life in 10-year cycles. Before I turned 40 we were successful as accountants and we had an audit firm that was the first of its kind in the country,” he said.

“For me, I could never see myself retiring in that industry. I left before I knew where I was going. I ended up at Telkom. I had to learn about telecoms from scratch. After that I went to banking, again it was about forcing myself out of comfort zone. I was in banking for 10 years.”

The former chairperson of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme established Sifiso Learning Group, which is headquartered in Illovo, Sandton, at Nxasana House, to be the vanguard of a fresh approach to education.

As a youngster growing up in Newcastle in KwaZuluNatal, Nxasana said his father, who was a teacher, taught him that he could be anything he wanted in life.

But it was not until he arrived at Fort Hare University that Nxasana knew he would become an accountant. He

By Thabiso Mahlape

The first thing I ever read, where reading is the following of a story and/or a narrative, was a newspaper.

I was about seven years old or so, in in the early ’90s. Later, as a teenager, I would find comfort in Reader’s Digest anthologies and romance novels.

I never really got the sense that there was something wrong with the trajectory of my reading until I traded the farmyard of Motse Maria High School for the big city lights surrounding Wits University.

Until I could no longer ignore what was clear, other children had a curated reading experience. No one had curated mine.

Which begs the question, what were black children reading back in the ’90s?

Luckily, children from the ’90s

Creating schools for the African future Nxasana breaks myths about learning

Businessman and education visionary Sizwe Nxasana. / ANTONIO M U C H AV E

was drawn to the profession when heard that professor Wiseman Nkuhlu had qualified as the first black chartered accountant at the time.

Nxasana also joined the elite group of the first 10 black chartered accountants in SA when he qualified.

His journey of success didn’t end there.

“When I qualified as a chartered accountant [CA] it was quite clear to me that we needed to do more to open up opportunities [in education] for

We need to do more to open opportunities those of us who are black.

“That’s how we founded the association of black accountants because I became one of the first 10 black CAs in the

country. For us it was it was important that we opened opportunities for others because we stumbled upon the profession, there was no career guidance that even remotely suggested you could study and become a CA.” Nxasana, who is chairperson of National Education Collaboration Trust, said the idea of establishing Future Nation Schools was born out of the recognition that independent private schools were only for the privileged few.

“So we had to strike a balance between making Future Nation Schools affordable but at the same time offer great quality and relevant education to communities,” he said.

“So that’s why when it came to deciding where we locate our schools, we’ve got Fleurhof outside Meadowlands in Soweto, which is an affordable housing area. So we pitched our fees to a level where those parents that live in that affordable housing development can afford to send their children to school. The same applies to our Lyndhurst campus, which is just outside Alexandra.”

There are nearly 1,000 pupils in Future Nation’s three campuses, which were opened three years ago.

The former FirstRand CEO has also been working with the government to promote reading for meaning through the Reading Coalition. His company has a publishing division that is encouraging indigenous language writers to publish their books to promoting reading. Nxasana said he realised that there were no books in marginalised indigenous languages.

“So if I want to read stories to a child and I want to find books in Xitsonga, in Tshivenda, in Sepedi, you hardly find any content out there. Yes, there are bigger languages, which are isiZulu and isiXhosa and maybe Setswana to a lesser degree, where you’re going to find some content which is age-appropriate for children to read or even adults for that matter,” he said.

“Thinking about our languages as languages of teaching and learning but also as commercial languages is quite an important issue that we’ve got to address.”

Through Future Nation Schools, Nxasana also started a technology company that develops technologies that have been integrated into learning.

“Technology is upon us. As Africans we cannot just continue to be consumers of technology, we have to be creators of technology.”

Our stories must be told in our own voices and languages Children must see and hear themselves in books are my age-mates and from conversations it has been clear that the majority were not reading, and the few who were like me had no access to ageappropriate reading material, and where they did it was nothing that looked and sounded like them. One such conversation was with Nangamso Ka Nomahlubi, the author of a just published children’s book, uQwenga.

I asked her about the first book she read. Three Little Pigs, a gift from her grade 1 teacher, she tells me. “It was in English and in grade 1 I didn’t understand English much. I still have this vivid picture of

her sitting with me at the back of our rented two-bedroom house, with her translating for me every word.

“I grew up reading a lot because everyone was a reader at home. I read everything from my sister’s Mills and Boons to Mama’s The Voice by Gabriel Okara. The publication I read the most though is The Daily Dispatch, our provincial daily newspaper.”

My nieces need material that affirms them

Reading, for children, is a fundamental tool in shaping their world view, what is important and who has authority.

Nomahlubi says she wrote uQwenga because she wanted to contribute to the movement of telling our stories our way.

“I have young nieces who need reading material that affirms them. This story is about a dog who grew up in town and is trying to adjust to a village life. So many people have gone through that. I wanted to engage the young readers on that difficult transition and the importance of family values.”

She wrote the book in Xhosa to further cement that she wanted its readers to see and hear themselves in the book.

“Representation is everything. It removes so much

doubt. It’s important we tell stories in our own languages... many [children’s stories] are written by non-speakers of those indigenous languages.

The indigenous speakers merely serve as translators. This means still, we are not owning that space. I wanted my nieces to read an isiXhosa book written by an isiXhosa speaker.”

Where are we as a country with publishing for children?

Not where we should be. The success story is that black children weren’t being catered for at all 20 years ago; they are now, but with difficulty.

We are a country rich in storytelling; we just need to work together so our children grow up knowing and understanding their experiences to be real and valid.

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

14 The Black Edition

Maponya plans academy Business icon keen to train entrepreneurs

By Mpho Sibanyoni

Richard Maponya, the greatgrandfather of black business, is not ready to rest on his laurels despite being two years short of a century.

Maponya is so concerned about the low employment rate in the country that he is planning to open an academy to train the youth on how to be entrepreneurs.

“Right now I am trying to come with an institution that must train all our youngsters so that when they graduate they get trained to use their own hands and be able to get employed or get into business in their own right,” he said.

He said he was currently searching for financial and non-financial support to make his dream a reality.

The youth unemployment rate gives him melancholy feelings while he gets euphoric when he thinks about the strides the country has made since apartheid.

Maponya is ecstatic that black people are no longer treated as pariahs in the land of their birth and they are free to participate in the democratic and economic activities of their choice.

“We are proud that we are South Africans now because during apartheid we were not

South Africans, we were foreigners [in our own land],” he said.

Maponya is, however, not chuffed about the direction the economy is heading to, pointing out that living conditions were deteriorating daily for the majority of locals while the rich few delighted in opulence on a grand scale.

“In terms of the economy and how people are living, it looks like people are getting poorer and poorer and poorer, and this is a sad thing that after 25 years in our new dispensation we are still having the majority of our people very poor,” he said.

“At the same time we’re having a very serious problem of our youth, 60% of them are not employed. To me this is a bombshell. If we are not careful our youngsters will one day have a leader like Julius Malema who will say enough is enough, we’ve been hungry for so many years and we are in trouble. We can’t get employment and there is nobody taking care of us, let’s go for it,” he warned.

“Believe you me, if the youngsters can do that [revolt] we’ve not got any army to stop them. This one would be worse than 1976 youth uprisings, when we were fighting apartheid.”

Maponya laments the unfortunate fact that a black government is not taking care of its own people.

“The delivery is very, very poor and that is a sad story. We just see guys enriching themselves, they are getting into

Youth unemployment worries Richard Maponya. / politics to enrich themselves,” he said.

Maponya, who spoke to Sowetan this week, was forced

‘‘

It looks like people are getting poorer and poorer and poorer

Private sector stalls on transformation BMF urges government to play strong leadership role

By Mpho Sibanyoni

The last few years have been tough for black professionals as gains made in the transformation of the private sector, especially when it comes to the promotion of African and coloured people to senior managerial positions, were eroded.

The situation was made even worse by government not having a labour minister who would hold the private sector

accountable by coming up with tough punitive measures to deal with companies that did not adhere to the country’s transformation laws, like the employment equity act and broad-based black economic empowerment.

This is the reason that Black Management Forum president Andile Nomlala believes that government should play more of a leadership role when it comes to transformation.

“In the first 10 to 15 years of our democratic dispensation we’d a marginally much stronger government and the

ROBERT TSHABALALA

to be an economic activist when the apartheid government declined to award him a licence to run a factory that would manufacture clothes.

When he qualified as a teacher, Maponya took a career detour and went to work as a stock taker for a clothing factory in Johannesburg.

It was during his stint at the factory that he got hold of offcuts and soiled robes, which he took and sold in Soweto.

When the apartheid authorities got wind of his booming business they shut it down and did not want to entertain the idea of him building his own

progress that was made during those years is being regressed,” Nomlala told Sowetan.

“If government is weak in regulation and legislation… strategic direction and economic planning, then you are not going to have a country…

“The last 10 years were unfortunately a very big missed opportunity because if we had just progressed and built on that [transformation] trajectory since 1994 to 2009… by now we would probably be sitting at 20% unemployment rate.”

He said the large-scale corruption that besieged the country in the last 10 years made the road to transformation even more tougher, as the private sector used the corruption argument as an excuse not to focus on building a soci-

ety that was racially inclusive “within their own corridors”.

“They said government can’t ask them about transformation when government was corrupt,” Nomlala said.

He commended Bidvest and Naspers SA for appointing Mpumi Madisa and Phuthi Mahanyele as chief executives, respectively.

He said the appointment of Sim Tshabalala as Standard Bank’s first black CEO in 2013 has resulted in an increased number of the bank’s executive roles being dominated by black people.

But he lashed out at companies that failed to appoint black CEOs. “These cosmetic appointments of black people as chief financial officers and chief operations officers, or anything

clothing factory due to him being black.

The oppression was, however, not enough to see him giving up on his business idea.

When he was 24, he and his wife Marina decided to start a business that employed 100 people who drove around with bicycles to sell milk in Soweto.

In 1964, the struggles that were faced by black business saw him teaming up with other formidable black entrepreneurs – Dr Sam Motsuenyane, Bigvai Masekela and SZ Conco – to form the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) in Soweto to wage a fight for black traders against apartheid machinery.

At the time Nafcoc, of which Maponya was founding president, was aligned to the African National Congress.

Maponya was also the founding chairperson of the Johannesburg African Chamber of Commerce.

Born 98 years ago in Tlhabini, a village outside Lenyenye in Limpopo, he married Marina, a qualified social worker and the cousin of former president Nelson Mandela, in the 1950s.

After they joined forces, they became a power couple that propelled the family business into a general dealer, eatery, butchery, liquor stores and supermarket, car dealership and filling station.

For his efforts, he has scooped several awards.

In April 2015, the Durban University of Technology awarded him with an honorary doctorate.

He has scooped various awards including the Small Business Excellence Award (2007), World Enterprise Award (2008), was a recipient of the Top 100 Companies Award: Business Times (2008), Lifetime Achievement Award and a BEE Entrepreneur Award.

Last year, he became the second person to win the Lifetime Achiever Award, which is the highest accolade in the 30-year-old Entrepreneur of the Year competition.

that is short of the CEO, is not good enough. We have top notch black professionals that can be appointed as CEOs.” Nomlala added that companies that were hellbent on going against the country’s transformation agenda were ill-treating black professionals to the extent that they fell into depression.

“They eat depression pills and they live under terrible conditions as many of them are being overlooked for promotion,” he said.

“They have to train and develop their white counterparts who get propelled into corporate ladders and senior leadership positions. The sad thing is that these black professionals are more often than not more qualified than their white counterparts.”

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

18 The Black Edition

Journos buoyed career Don Laka hails scribes who exposed his music

By Sam Mathe

Don Laka doesn’t remember the number of records he has released since launching his music career in the early ’70s.

His vast discography includes various styles and genres spanning four decades.

Some of the music was recorded for other artists in his capacity as songwriter, composer, arranger, producer and record label owner.

It’s an achievement that indeed defies memory.

However, Laka remembers journalists who have supported his musical journey since those halcyon days of African jazz and township soul.

It was the time of The World with the irrepressible Percy Qoboza at the helm. Elliot Makhaya was one of the legendary newspaper’s best known arts journalists alongside Vusi Khumalo, Derrick Thema and Morakile Shuenyane – some of black journalism’s eminent scribes of the time who have since become iconic names of the profession.

Laka remembers Makhaya as a crusading wordsmith who combined his passion for the arts with remarkable penmanship and an authoritative style that earned him a cult readership.

“He was a proper critic of the black arts whose articles were instrumental in building careers of many musicians including mine,” Laka says.

“Bra Elliot realised my potential and told me so. He developed a special relationship with musicians because he was genuinely interested in

Veteran musician Don Laka / their calling. Ours started when he reviewed one of my earliest albums. He had interviewed me and the result was a comprehensive and insightful write-up.”

He says when The World and other black publications were banned on October 19 1977 – Black Wednesday – he felt the loss acutely.

“The World was a mirror of the black world. It reflected our dreams, hopes and aspirations. It celebrated our achievements and contextualised our challenges. It was our mouthpiece.”

He befriended Derrick Thema, another gifted scribe with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the arts.

His father was Richard Selope Thema, a Congressman who became the first editor of The World in 1952.

“He introduced me to a number of joints in Soweto. One of

THULANI MBELE

them was Irene’s Place in Orlando East. It was a popular shebeen that was frequented by artists, writers, activists and everyone who was interested in challenging apartheid.”

For artists like Laka, the appointment of Makhaya as showbiz editor and arts critic was welcome news indeed.

His humorous column, Monday Blues, provided the much needed comic relief for folks

‘‘

The World was a mirror.

It reflected our dreams and hopes

whose tapestry of life was often stained by tragedy.

In 1980 Laka became a founder member and keyboardist of Sakhile, a formidable Afro-fusion ensemble fronted by bassist Sipho Gumede and reedman Khaya Mahlangu. One of their memorable recordings, Isikhalo (The Cry) is a jazzy elegy for the children who were killed in the 1976 student uprisings.

As a precocious 12-year-old who was curious about everything under the sun, Laka was already familiar with the phrase by the elders, ke dilo tsa makgowa – literally meaning “white people’s things” in the Sotho languages.

Every invention he knew was credited to people of European ancestry but he was sceptical. So did that mean Africans contributed nothing to human civilisation? He wondered as he began a lifelong quest for the facts.

The result is a well researched history text titled Know Thyself: Re-Introduction to African History (Lesedi House, 2017). It proves that Africa is the birthplace of humanity and world civilisations and contends that most of the everyday items from mirrors to makeup and writing were invented by Africans.

As a youngster growing up in Mamelodi, Pretoria, he came under the spell of Matlherane Mphakathi. Popularly known as Bra Geoff, he was a cultural guru, jazzophile, political activist, philosopher, artist, publisher and much more.

He was manager of the Malombo Jazzmen when they took first prize atthe Castle Lager Jazz Festival at Orlando Stadium. Recently at the Joy of Jazz Festival, Laka paid homage to this unsung hero of the arts with a piece titled Blues for Geoff Mphakathi.

‘Actors must have union’ Industry needs to be regulated – Sebogodi

By Karabo Ledwaba

Venerable actor Seputla Sebogodi has come a long way from being jailed for his political plays to being one of the most revered actors of our time.

In a candid interview with Sowetan, Sebogodi said not much has changed in the entertainment for black actors.

Despite new opportunities and the inclusion of black people in drama schools, many battles being fought today such as financial hardships have existed since his times at classic productions such as Bophelo ke Semphekgo.

“I want the industry to be regulated and I would love for a union that can take care of

the actors. And I hope development is something that our government can do.

“This is an industry that can create a lot of jobs and is an industry that helped break the walls of apartheid. People knew about apartheid because of plays,” said Sebogodi when asked about his dreams for the entertainment industry.

The Atteridgeville-born actor was a part of the Generations 16 who were fired for standing up against poor wages. Sebogodi said despite the hardships, this is an industry of passion.

“In the olden days, there was no schools for black people to learn how to act. But there was a course at Unisa that taught

you how to teach drama. I did that course for two years and after that I left because it was just books. Nothing practical that I could learn,” he said.

Sebogodi said black plays did not get much attention from mainstream media, but entertainment journalists and critics such as the legendary The World and Sowetan journalist Elliot Makhaya gave the likes of Sebogodi something to look forward to because of his in-depth critiques of their theatre shows.

“When you did a play, you just knew he [Makhaya] was going to come and critique your play and he’s going to give an overview and how is your acting. So that was a big thing.

“When we were doing theatre, it was only Sowetan that

Seputla Sebogodi says not much has changed for black actors. / S U P P L I E D

In 1976 Laka was arrested for his involvement in the June 16 student uprisings. In 1983 he worked underground with Rapitse Montsho, photographer and filmmaker who later served as Nelson Mandela’s cameraman.

It’s interestinghat a decade later Laka would be involved in a different revolution; one which involves ushering in a new pop style that would change the face of contemporary South African music.

When he co-founded Kalawa in 1992 with DJ Christos [Katsaitis] and DJ Oskido (Oscar Mdlongwa) the initiative would anticipate the advent of kwaito music.

Since then the label has generated an impressive catalogue of house, kwaito and Afro-pop recordings. After over a quarter of a century, Kalawa Jazmee is the biggest and longest-running black-owned record label in the country.

It has been home to artists such as Sharon D, Thebe, Mafikizolo, Alaska, Bongo Maffin, DJ Maphorisa, Black Coffee, Big Nuz, Heavy K, Professor, Busiswa, Black Motion, Infinite Boys, Dr Malinga, Uhuru and Candy Tsa Mandebele.

According to Laka, the secret to the label’s success is the single-mindedness of its directors, who are also artists.

“We have a solid team of executives who are industrious and single-minded about their roles and responsibilities,” he explains.

“In the next 25 years we intend to continue being a school of excellence for upcoming artists and to serve as a springboard for new talent. We have a flexible approach when it comes to artists’ contracts.

They are free to leave the company when they want to spread their wings whether they want to sign with other labels or establish their own.”

Sam Mathe is the 2018/2019 winner of the Literary Journalism Award at the South African Literary Awards.

was coming to critique.

“We were competing with people who had opportunities to go to drama schools and you couldn’t even say ‘I’m black, I’m disadvantaged’. You had to fight your own battles.”

He said theatre has slowly died out in the new SA. “I’m actually very worried about theatre. In my lifetime I’ve done 67 plays, but most of them were done before 1994.

We always say that these kids are smoking nyaope ... but it’s because these kids have acting talents and don’t have access to use their skills even in theatres in the townships.”

Last year, Sebogodi costarred with his actor son Thapelo in a play called Flak My Son. Sebogodi said he did not know his son was talented, but was aware that he had good comedy timing after seeing him in a play when he was still in school.

Sowetan Friday October 18 2019

The Black Edition

19

How black women keep it real today

By Thango Ntwasa

F

or many black people the process of acquiring the perfect sleek hair comes in many burdensome forms. From scalp-burning relaxers, headsmacking braids or even worrisome weaves, the journey still seems so deeply steeped in acquiring the kind of hair that passes the pencil test long after its extinction.

From Zulaika Patel at Pretoria Girls High to the young students at Malibu High School in the Western Cape, of late young women have started rising up against the discriminatory regulations surrounding the politics of hair.

This particular ¬journey resonates with author and businesswoman Rosie Motene, who has detailed her journey through her autobiography Reclaiming the Soil.

In the book, Motene even got to reclaim her hair, especially as a young woman who had spent decades conforming to white culture.

“Hair has definitely defined us from an early

Khanyi Mbau

Celebrating her blackness through her hair is how Rosie Motene found her roots again age. At school we were allowed to plait our hair but we weren’t allowed to have funky hairstyles or Afros,” Motene recalls, noting the emotional weight the Pretoria Girls High protest had on her.

“I remember reading the article and I called my friend and I couldn’t stop crying because these were the things we were struggling with then but we didn’t have the voice to step up.”

As part of her journey in reclaiming her blackness, removing her weave was Motene’s first step to stripping away the image brought on by beauty standards that were damaging to her self-love.

“I still relaxed it,” she says of her foray into remov-

Rosie Motene far from the kinks and frills of natural hair. It’s no wonder Mama Africa, Miriam Makeba, made it her business to wear an array of natural hairstyles in rebellion against the un-African coifs of the time.

Disco diva There is perhaps no greater image of South African beauty than Cynthia Shange in the 1970s. From beauty pageants to the bioscope, Shange became one of many faces that rocked the iconic head-turning Afro.

Cynthia Shange ing weaves from her beauty regiment.

The bold bald-do she still wears today came as a form of support for a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. However, after walking out of the salon with a friend, Motene realised this was a huge step in redefining society’s control in how beauty is defined.

“I made a point of walking out with my bald head to say ‘this is who I am’. My beauty or my strength is not defined by what is on top of my head.

That process, without me even realising, elevated into me discovering this thing of identifying myself as a black person.”

Motene was brought up by a white family for whom her mother was a domestic worker. In an environment that was not accommodating of her difference, this spun her adolescence into an identity crisis.

Motene spent many nights praying she would wake up as a white girl but since this miracle was never going to happen, her hair was one of the key elements to upholding the beauty standards.

“I might be too dark to fit into the white narrative but I can look as close to them as possible,” Motene recalls.

While the likes of Patel have become the faces of movements that promote a

Mama Africa, Miriam Makeba

Black like who? positive view on Afro-textured hair, Motene notes that there is still a lack of progress for children.

While shopping with her sister and a young cousin, Motene was mocked after she discouraged her young cousin from purchasing a white doll.

“This little girl is going to grow up to think white girls are the standard you need to look up to,” says Motene.

“For starters, we have got to look at the curriculum – what books are on our shelves, and especially in white areas. White people have got to start reading black narratives and seeing the positivity behind it and not read a black narrative because there is controversy around it.”

Black hair trends through the years have been:

City slickers In an increasingly urbanised world, black women of the 1950s and 1960s kept their hair sleek and straightened,

All that glitters might not be gold but nothing glistened quite like the perms of the 1980s. Look no further than our streets and homes for the Black Like Me and Inecto hair colour cartons for the crazy colour choices of the most bizarre decade of fashion and beauty.

Relax, take it easy Sure, every young woman in the 1990s wanted box braids like Brandy or the ladies of Boom Shaka, but even VMash’s zany hairstyles were easily remixed into glam shoulder- length, relaxed do’s indicative of icons like Basetsana Kumalo and Connie Ferguson. And who can forget the smell of Sta-SofFro, Step 1 or Black Like Me hair under the heat of a curling iron?

It’s unbeweaveable Look no further than Bonang Matheba’s girly curls or Khanyi Mbau’s tresses for indicative style of the 2000s.

Even Somizi’s Madame Gigi had heads turning with blonde bombshell bobs and bangs.

Keeping it real

Lira

Women’s hair has taken a long journey to reach the frizzy and free foray into natural beauty. Whether you rock a free Afro like Pearl Thusi, keep it edgy and daring like Nandi Madida or short and chic like Lira. It’s all about keeping it real.

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

20 Opinion Your SMS views

Send your comments to 33664 Each sms costs R1

Outages a plot against Cyril President Ramaphosa is faced with cunning enemies planted everywhere to sabotage him. Last year, there was load-shedding when he was out of the country and it’s happening again. – Lesetja

Schools are now killing fields Schools have turned into killing fields as corporal punishment has been done away with without consulting parents. How are we expected to deal with disobedient children? – Norman Matsebula

Lawless, prayerless schools School kids smoke dagga openly.

Parents are not allowed to spank kids. Alcohol is consumed by all in public. Prayers are banned at schools. And we ask ourselves why the ill discipline? – James Mathye

ANC doesn’t consult people ANC’s claim to be government of the people is hollow because it doesn’t consult the people about its major decisions. Changes to the constitution also do not reflect the desire of the people. – Anon

More revelations, no action More implications against Ace Magashule are being revealed at the Zondo commission but we still don’t see AFU, NPA or SAPS taking any aggressive steps against him and others. – Oriah Choshane

Sowetan Says

A black day of pride, inspiration Tomorrow marks 42 years since the apartheid government banned The World newspaper, Weekend World and 17 Black Consciousness-aligned organisations.

The banning of the two newspapers and the arrest of The World’s courageous editor, Percy Qoboza, left a huge vacuum in the coverage of black news at the time.

That vacuum was only closed with the establishment of Sowetan some four years later.

Therefore, October 19 1977, now commonly known as Black Wednesday, is very close to our hearts here at Sowetan.

But while we appreciate why the day is generally used to shine a spotlight on media freedom and the state of journalism, we believe that the actions of the apartheid state on that day went far beyond attacking media freedom and that they were meant to break the back of a resurgent black resistance movement at the time.

Many of the organisations that were banned on the day were involved in overt political mobilisation, yes, but many more sought to uplift and to improve the black condition of the time by promoting a sense of pride and the ethic of self-reliance among the oppressed.

It is with that in mind that, as Sowetan, we have elected to remember the day by exploring the state of black people in the South Africa of today.

Today we bring to you, dear reader, a special edition of the newspaper focused on celebrating our successes as a people, examining our problems and exploring the way forward.

It may seem odd to some that in a country that is majority black, a newspaper would have a “Black Edition”. But the truth is that even though black people constitute a political majority in the country, they still remain a marginalised economic and cultural minority in the “mainstream” of our media.

Stories of our successes in business, the arts, education and the sciences are not documented enough to inspire, especially the youth, to dream big and achieve great things. With this edition, we hope that we can inspire that sense of pride and self-reliance that kept the resistance struggle burning even during the darkest of hours.

It is that spirit we need now as we rebuild our country and its economy into the giant that it is supposed to be.

Letters Only successful races get respect During the good old days of apartheid, according to some, everything worked perfectly in SA. The crime rate was at its lowest and women were not scared of being raped.

There was no loadshedding and service delivery was first-class.

Lastly, things were in order because... yes, you guessed right, whites were in charge! And today our own black people are in charge and the opposite is happening.

I have noticed that the West has great respect for China and the Japanese.

The Chinese are clever because they can make cellphones, laptops and many other things.

The Japanese make good cars and now can play rugby too! It is true that service delivery is poor under the black

Letters to the editor Sowetan, PO Box 6663, Johannesburg, 2000 E-mail letters@sowetan.co.za Fax 011-340-9637

government. But this government provides services to everyone without legalised discrimination.

Black people must know that white people will only respect them if they outsmart them like the Chinese and Japanese.

If black politicians are lazy, incompetent and corrupt it impacts on all of us; we are painted with the same brush. Black students must outsmart other races at school, college and university to uphold the dignity of the black nation.

Sadly, most black politicians and students do not strive for diligence and competence. Instead, we constantly hear about endless parties, drugs, fornication and failure.

Dancing, singing, rapping and making the most potent sexual concoctions will not get blacks to be respected by the intelligent races of the world.

Khotso KD Moleko, Mangaung

Adhere to safety rules when driving This is an open letter to all my brothers and sisters out there. Most of us grew up in households where cars were a luxury we could not afford.

These days it is common for a black family to own up to three luxury cars and this means we have more drivers on the roads. My appeal is directed at those driving around with the dreaded red L for learner, who sit so close to the steering wheel you wonder how they have total control of the vehicle.

My appeal is to use your mirrors.

They are for you to check and make sure it is safe to change lanes etc.

The indicators as they are aptly named are to give an indication of your intentions to either go left or right and not to say I am going right now. A motor vehicle is also equipped with safety belts for you and your passengers, especially your precious bundles of joy, not to wear when you see a traffic official. Children do as we do and not as we say, remember that.

Zakes Nakedi, Ennerdale

Exams offer a chance for matric pupils to put year’s horrors behind them Grade 12 pupils have started sitting for their this year’s matric examinations on Wednesday after a largely stressful year because of the violence in schools.

This year, more children were kidnapped, sexually and physically assaulted, while others stabbed each other to death on a regular basis. This has created an environment of horror that might have led to some losing focus on the main objective of going to school.

The final exams, however, provide the opportunity for the matrics to get themselves out of the life of violence and substance abuse and make a positive life for themselves going forward. That journey begins with them doing very well in their exams.

As SA gears itself up for the fourth industrial revolution, it will need young people who are innovative, who will seize the moment to confront the future. It needs young people who understand that they are part of the solutions for the country’s economic woes that are resulting in high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment. This cannot be done by pupils who carry knives and guns to the classrooms, pupils who see schools as war zones.

To all the matrics, good luck to you and remember the future is in your hands and it begins with you doing very well in your final exams. You have the whole nation behind you and you dare not fail.

Tom Mhlanga, Braamfontein

Friday October 18 2019 Sowetan

36 The Black Edition

Boxing their way to uhuru Fistic clubs were havens of politics

By Bongani Magasela

October 19 1977 is known as Black Wednesday. On this historic day a vast range of political and cultural organisations were shut down and their entire operations brought to a screeching halt.

During this interregnum the popularity of the sport of boxing paradoxically grew by leaps and bounds. What inspired this phenomenal growth and how has the sport developed since then?

Long before the outbreak of the 1976 national holocaust boxers were part and parcel of the countrywide student movement. In the Eastern Cape many school boxing clubs existed side by side with local boxing clubs.

In Soweto, Theo Mthembu’s Dube Boys Club was a home and haven of student activists, notably Ben “TNT” Lekalake.

Many activist teachers operated within the boxing clubs to create political awareness among students.

Boxing also catered for youth outside the schools. It was the cement that unified the vast youth movement inside and outside classrooms.

The muzzling of political organisations rekindled activism of the critical mass – reminiscent of the 1950s.

Boxing SA board member

Ben ‘TNT’ Lekalake, left, was among the 1976 student activists who used the sport to further the aims of the Struggle while Arthur Mayisela was seen as the people’s champ. / J O E S E F A L E / S Y D N E Y S E S H I B E D I Khulile Radu says departed and celebrated national bantamweight kingpin Mzukisi Skweyiya was a leader and commander of this stream of activism.

“He became a colossal figure in the tempestuous politics of the time. After his expulsion from the University of Fort Hare in 1976, Skweyiya, together with other activists of the time, spearheaded campaigns which highlighted the centrality and universality of the sport,” Radu says.

“In many ways he served as a courier and conveyer belt between the student movement and other community-based structures. In this milieu many anti-establishment meetings were disguised as boxing meetings. Many local fighters became firebrand ac-

‘I’m living my best life as footballer’ Kgatlana paves her own future

By Linda Kea Moreotsene

Thembi Kgatlana burst into the broader South African football landscape three years ago, and as a striker, she had the precision and nonchalance of a seasoned sniper.

Since then, the pint-sized player has continued to relentlessly pile on the plaudits.

It was mostly thanks to the goals the 23-year old scored that Banyana Banyana qualified to turn up at a Fifa Women’s World Cup for the first time, and once they arrived in France earlier this year, it was through her boot that they registered their first goal at the tournament.

The tournament was a baptism of fire for Banyana, but Kgatlana, who had been plying her trade in the United

States for the Houston Dash until then, soon packed her bags and headed for China, where she now plays for Beijing BG Phoenix.

When observers expressed surprise at her decision to opt for the Far East, instead of any of the more established bastions of the women’s game like France or Sweden, her fearlessness and willingness operate outside her comfort zone when she said she wanted to be part of the growth that is taking place there.

“The league they have there is growing. There are a couple of Africans that are already there. It’s a market that’s growing and they’re attracting a lot of Africans. Most of the times in the leagues we are not easily accepted. You first have to have a lot of achievements before someone gives you an opportunity. I’m living my best life now in terms of exploring my football and if a team wants to give me a job I go

tivists and respected community leaders.”

Lekalake was one of these firebrands before he left SA for military training.

“In Port Elizabeth [1976], he vilified both his nemesis Nkosana Mgxaji and Norman Sekgapane for their participation in a boxing tournament – slam-bang in the middle of the

‘‘

Many fighters became activists and community leaders

1976 student uprisings – actually he called it a sellout deal.

That speech alone forms part of boxing folklore in this country. That speech speaks volumes of the role boxing and boxers have played in transforming our society,” adds Radu.

Down the years amateur boxing clubs continued to flourish. They were mostly affiliated to the nonracial sports body, the South African Council on Sport . Internecine battles were fought with homeland tinpots who wanted to force these clubs to affiliate to them to no avail.

“June 1976 characterised the intensification of the struggle against apartheid in all its forms,” says Radu.

“The mass politicisation of the people morphed into the

Thembi Kgatlana has taken women’s football by storm through her sterling performances for South Africa. / S Y D N E Y M A H L A N G U / B A C K P A G E P I X wherever I need to go.”

Meanwhile, off the field, her bold approach is being rewarded as well, with her nomination by the Ministry of Sports as one of the best athletes in the country prove of that. The honour follows closely behind the prestigious gSport award she won in August.

The reigning African Women’s Player has defied expectations, and refused to fit into the mold all her life, her mother Koko has said.

Despite the mother’s best efforts to dissuade her, her little girl insisted she belonged in the street kicking a ball around with her brothers and

people’s war of the 1990s. Boxing was thus an integral part of the popular resistance movement.”

Notably, Arthur “The Fighting Pantsula” Mayisela was the hero and role model to the youth of the day, especially in Soweto. He was the very epitome of the brashness and selfconfidence of the youth.

Through boxing they developed into manhood, full of religious and political convictions.

Radu adds: “The muzzling of political formations was meant to further suppress the masses of our people. Paradoxically, the constant harassment and suppression strengthened the resolve of the masses to push for changes in the status quo. Lo and behold, boxers were at the forefront of these struggles.

“Likeable Thoza Guga was incarcerated for his participation in community-based struggles. The People’s Choice – Duncan Village stalwart Zandisile “Dudani” Thole – died at the hands of police, to mention a few,” says Radu.

“In the unity talks around sport, boxing held sway and was consequently one of the sports which were allowed international participation even though the sports boycott was still in place.”

Recently, the sport has attracted women participants.

This is a worldwide trend. The popularity of boxing and the surge for survival and sustenance in the sport can surely be traced back to those years of subjugation and isolation.

their friends. Koko Kgatlana has since changed her mind.

“I am beyond proud of her. I did not want her to play football when she started at primary school. She was also in the athletics team, and I preferred athletics, since I was also an athlete. Unfortunately for me at that time, she chose the sport her father played, which is football,” she said.

Above all, Kgatlana is already a catalyst of change. A year ago, South Africans flooded social media, demanding from the authorities that they start paying the women according to their worth.

Prior to that avalanche of support, opinions had always been divided on whether women footballers deserved to be paid on par with their male counterparts.

“Thembi has always been humble, respectful. She does her talking with her boots. I am glad the girls are getting the support they deserve,” Kgatlana’s mother says.

“As a family, we actually started to back her when she went to high school. That was when we saw that she had inherited her father Matlhomola’s talent.”