Soweto

I know, long time no blog.. well here is a nice fat essay style blog to keep you occupied!!

Last Tuesday (make that Tuesday 24) Monash Abroad took us to Soweto, as you might have seen in the photos on Facebook. The history-rich but poverty-ridden suburb of central Jo’burg is an amazing place, very sad and thought-provoking. It's a place of beautiful people with the most tragic stories- the heart of South Africa's history.

A man playing the South African national anthem with his nose!

We drove into town in a mini bus of just the Australians and Stephanie (who is a German girl that we have befriended who lived in Soweto when she was 17 and whose boyfriend lives around there). As you can imagine, we immediately felt out of place, staring out of our safe little bubble into those completely different lives. Such tourists! It felt a bit wrong to just look, but it would probably happen often considering the history of the place. The pro-vice chancellor international at Monash here, Simon Adams, is an Aussie and has a pretty cool past being part of the ANC in their struggle against apartheid. Our guide Ayunda (spelling.. unsure..) is a friend (“comrade”) of his from back in his ANC days and was a child during the Soweto uprising in 1976. I’ll try to give you a brief history lesson so that the rest makes sense... (don’t quote me, this is more the world according to Yola!!)

So a few hundred years ago, the Dutch came over to South Africa in hordes and like the British in Australia, became the wealthy class and were not particularly nice to the local people. They were known as Afrikaners. Things were pretty bad, especially when the National Party came into power in 1948 and introduced apartheid. As you can imagine, it was pretty grim. Things really kicked off in Soweto on the 16th of June 1976 when the Afrikaners decided that they were going to make Afrikaans the official teaching language in schools. To put that into perspective, there are 11 official languages in South Africa, and only about 13% are first-language Afrikaans even now. So obviously the school children (not to mention the majority of everyone else) hated this because until then the official school language was English (there are heaps of African languages here so they can't use just one) and to make all subjects taught in a language that no one speaks was ridiculous! So on June 16 the school students in Soweto organised a peaceful rally against the use of Afrikaans in schools. Then -this bit is a bit different depending on whose story you believe but it’s pretty obvious who was in the wrong- the police ‘felt unsafe’ and shots were fired into the crowd OF CHILDREN. People scattered, kids started throwing stones and the police got out of control and killed quite a few people 'in defence'. One fourteen year old boy (Hector Pieterson) died on this day, and there is a very famous photo of him being carried down the street which has become symbolic of that tragic day and the apartheid struggle. As terrible as the uprising and deaths obviously were, when the world heard about what had happened they got behind the South African people (not the Afrikaners) and from then on things started to change for the better. It was obviously a really slow and tough process and wasn't until the 90s that real positive change occurred. Victory was felt in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president and finally the majority won their right to be heard.

Nelson Mandela's home in Vilakazi Street, now a museum

Freedom Square

So, back to our day trip... Ayunda was there on the 16th of June, and it was just incredible to know we had him showing us around places that are not only part of South Africa’s history but that were quite personal for him too. They took us to Nelson Mandela’s house in Orlando West (in the same street Desmond Tutu lived) and to the Hector Pieterson memorial where you can see where the children marched. Nearby is Freedom Square, which is where the Freedom Charter was written and signed in 1955 and also where Simon explained that he and his comrades had met (it used to be woods) to plan their movements. Ayunda showed us the church that people sheltered in during the uprising, which has a gallery and messages of peace on the walls upstairs. We had lunch at Wandie’s, which makes traditional meals and was deeelicious! After lunch, we went back to Orlando to go inside the Hector Pieterson museum, which was sad but I’m really glad I went there even just to understand the place a little better.

Regina Mundi church, a safe haven during the uprising

To bring it back home, it made me realise how little we have recognised our Australian aboriginal past. There are so many similarities between the histories of the two countries in terms of the treatment of their black people. Obviously, the scale here is much larger with the majority still not being white, but I think it’s that that bothers me most- the way this is a major part of South Africa’s history that they are not proud of, but have recognised, whereas we are still very much in denial. You don’t see museums and monuments up all over the place in Australia in recognition of the tragedies that happened there. There’s something to think about for a bit!
It was a really fascinating day, heavy at times but definitely something that has to be seen. I feel so enriched to have learnt a bit more of the history of this country, and even from just a day can see why some people have the opinions they do today. For someone who didn’t really like history as a subject at school all that much, South Africa is turning me around!!

~Y