Soweto

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals the story of Dee Mashinini and his family's painful experiences in the aftermath of the June 16th uprisings. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on the 22 May 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Life in exile for the teenagers who survived 16 June 1976 was hard. Some left their homes at 15, adrift in a strange country and without emotional support.

This was true for people like Dee Mashinini, the younger brother of Tsietsi, a student leader who died in Guinea in 1990 - the year most exiles started coming home.

Dee Mashinini (Lucille Davie)

"Many of us were young. I can't forget faces of youngsters crying, wanting to come back home just six months after they left. It was not easy; we cried and consoled each other, we tried to be strong, we grew; and then it was 15 years since we left," he says.

Mashinini spent 13 years in exile, returning at the age of 28. Sixteen years later he's settled in a job as a marketing manager, obtained with the aid of the senior diploma in journalism and mass communications he obtained while in exile.

Mashinini is one of 13 of Nomkhitha Mashinini's children. Three of his brothers, Elvis, Ronald and Tshepiso, died in the 1990s...

In this article from the archive, journalist Lucille Davie reports on the planning and construction of the Hector Pieterson Museum. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 24 October 2001. She also investigates what happened to various key 'June 16' personalities. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

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

These are the words of Sam Nzima, recalling the events of June 16, 1976 in Soweto. Hector Pieterson, a young boy, was shot. He was picked up by Mbuyisa Makhubo, who, together with Hector's sister, Antoinette, ran towards a press car, where he was bundled in, and taken to a nearby clinic, where he was pronounced dead. The moment has been preserved in Nzima's now-legendary photograph.

Iconic shot by Sam Nzima

"I was the only photographer there at the time. Other photographers came when they heard shots," he says. Nzima was a photographer for The World newspaper in Johannesburg, which was banned and closed down only a few months later.

Now those events are to be...

There is a story of a riot with much blood in the early history of the Dube Township in Soweto. It happened 11 months after the Dube hostel opened its doors on 1 October 1956. The Dube Hostel was the first government hostel in Soweto (then called the South Western Townships).

Dube Hostel (via Google Maps)

The government hostel scheme was for South African permit holders from the then so-called Homelands / Bantustans / rural areas working in Johannesburg on contract since the urbanisation – in this case to Greater Soweto / Alexandra – of South African Blacks was no option.

The first group of Zulu migrants in the Dube Hostel included migrants who used to live in Johannesburg in what the press called locations in the sky. These were so-called 'boys' working as cleaners, gardeners, even manjingelanes (night watch men) and accommodated in rooms provided by their employers – landlords owning the buildings – mainly located at the top of Johannesburg flat and office complexes.

Hostel development was in compliance with the hostel law adopted in 1955 to support the 1950 Groups Areas Act in terms of which all racial groups had to live separately in designated areas. Hostels therefore had to be provided for the mentioned 'boys' – as commonly referred to – also for domestic workers (garden boys and kitchen girls) living in...

In the opinion piece below, journalist Lucille Davie looks at the neglected state of Freedom Square and sketches a vision for its future. The piece was first published on her website on 6 July 2020. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

The 65th anniversary of the signing of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown, 26 June, 2020, has come and gone. 

I recall a document I came across in 2005 that spoke of the Freedom Charter as a guide to the “singing tomorrows” when South Africa would be a country of equal rights and freedom for all.

There is such an uplifting tone to “singing tomorrows”, at a time when the country was seven years into apartheid, with a sweep of brutal new laws laying out the vision for South Africa under the new government. The laws were just a confirmation of the unjust discrimination of the past three centuries, but with more vicious teeth.

It was professor ZK Matthews, the African National Congress (ANC) Cape president, who proposed the idea of the Freedom Charter.

He said at the time: “I wonder whether the time has not come for the African National Congress to consider the question of convening a national convention, a congress of the people, representing all the people of this country irrespective of race or colour, to draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future.”

The word went out and submissions were sent in to the ANC office in Johannesburg from...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history behind the signing of the Freedom Charter. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on the 24 June 2005. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Nelson Mandela was there. Walter Sisulu was there. Helen Joseph was there. Father Trevor Huddleston was there. So were 3 000 ordinary citizens, demanding a better life for all under a new, non-discriminatory dispensation.

It was on Saturday, 26 June, 1955, that people from around the country gathered on a dusty soccer field in the middle of Kliptown, to approve the Freedom Charter, in an atmosphere described by Nelson Mandela in his Long Walk to Freedom as “serious and festive”.

Scenes from the Congress of the People (via Restorica)

It was professor ZK Matthews, the African National Congress (ANC) Cape president, who, on returning in 1954 from a year as visiting professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, proposed the idea of the Freedom Charter.

He said: “I wonder whether the time has not come for the African National Congress to consider the question of convening a national convention, a congress of the people, representing all the people of this country irrespective of race or colour, to draw up a Freedom Charter for the...

The article below forms part of Mike Alfred's series on Joburg personalities from the first decade of the 21st century. Click here to view Kathy Munro's fantastic introduction and here to view the series index. The stories were written in 2005/6.

Grey haired, Charles Rhangani Furumele, a man exuding great seriousness, gentle courtesy and a yesteryear dignity, saw times tough enough as his young life unfolded, but, it seems, that his major life challenge was to successfully launch his children into a highly demanding world. The great key to advancement, Furumele asserts, is education; and furthermore, the two main door openers are competency in English and Mathematics. His own English is notably expressive and sharp too, is his arithmetic. He enabled his five children to receive their university degrees and college diplomas in financial circumstances which would have caused a less extraordinary man to despair of ever seeing his children move beyond basic, compulsory standards.

Charles Furumele grew ill while we were collaborating on this profile. He died without seeing its completion. I attended his funeral with an enhanced sense of loss. Later, his eldest son, Musa Stefane Furumele, assisted in completing the task. Some of what was first written in the present tense is now unfortunately, written in the past.

Charles, a widower lived with two sons in a house in Chiawelo, Soweto, an area originally designated for residents with Tsonga and Venda affiliations; in other words, those from the far north. It’s a house that no longer resembles its...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history behind this landmark day. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on the 24 May 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Known these days as Youth Day, it commemorates the deaths of about 200 school children in Soweto, on 16 June, 1976.
 
Lest we forget the significance of the day, a museum exists to keep the memories fresh. The Hector Pieterson Museum, in Orlando West in Soweto, is just a few blocks from where students and police met in a violent confrontation.

Sign for the Hector Pieterson Museum (The Heritage Portal)

The sahistory.org.za website puts the number of dead at 200, in contrast with the official figure conservatively given as 23, according to Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal in Soweto, A History.
 
On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of school children finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression.
 
Bantu education was introduced by the National Party in 1954. Prior to this blacks either didn't...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie speaks with Hector Pieterson's sister and mother about the tragic events of June 16th. The piece first appeared on the Media Club South Africa website on 16 June 2014. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Antoinette Sithole, Hector Pieterson's sister, finds that schoolchildren want to touch her to see if she is real, once they have heard the story of 16 June 1976, and see the famous photograph of her running alongside Mbuyisa Makhubu, who was carrying the dying 12-year-old Hector in his arms.
 
"They find the story unbelievable," she says now, 38 years later. On that fateful day, police opened fire on thousands of schoolchildren who were protesting against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in township schools. Hector was the first child to die on the day, in uprisings that spread across Soweto and the country in 1976. By the end of the year, there had been more than 500 deaths around the country.

Sithole now gives tours at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Orlando West in Soweto, built just a few blocks from where her brother was shot. The children say that the event happened a long time ago, and it's hard to believe it took place. "They just keep on touching me – I am the past and the present, and it is very exciting."
 
It is striking that the children of today don't appear to have unity, she says; she explains to them that back in...

Ahead of the annual Youth Month anniversary on June 16, a heritage plaque will commemorate Mbuyisa Makhubu, one of the most tragic victims of the mass shooting by police of protesting students in 1976.  

Aged 18, Mbuyisa became the most recognised face of the Soweto student revolt, after his agonised figure was shown around the world carrying the murdered Hector Pieterson in the iconic image by journalist Sam Nzima. Mbuyisa picked up Hector Pieterson when he was mortally wounded, and took him to the nearest clinic.

After the photograph was published, Mbuyisa was harassed by security police, and forced to flee South Africa. He was given refuge in Nigeria, but disappeared in 1979, and his whereabouts have remained unknown. Ever since, speculation has swirled about whether he is dead or alive.

Mbuyisa was among a number of young South African activists who took refuge in Nigeria in the wake of the Soweto Uprising. His mother, Nombulelo Makhubu, testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that in 1978 she received a letter from her son in Nigeria, but that she had not heard from him since.

Known in family circles as “The Queen”, Nombulelo Makhubu worked for the South African Council of Churches, and was chosen as part of a team that promoted international sanctions against the apartheid regime.

A grief-stricken Nombulelo died from heart failure in 2004, without knowing what had happened to her son Mbuyisa.

Mbuyisa’s sister, Ntsiki Makhubu, now aged 65, still lives at the family home in Litabe...

Seth Mazibuko’s home located at 1806 Msimango Street, Orlando East dates back to the 1930s when it was used by the community as a founding headquarters of the Mahon Mission Church in the African Township, presided over by his grandparents who were deacons of the Church. 

Seth Mazibuko (born 1960) led a group of students at Orlando West Secondary School (now known as Phfeni Secondary School) into boycotting classes on the 28th April 1976 against the continuing use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at Soweto schools, in particular Orlando West Secondary School.

Planning meetings for the student revolt of June 1976 were held at this house as well as at the Donaldson Hall (DOCC), also in Orlando East, with the likes of Tsietsi Mashinini, Murphy Morobe, Zweli Sizani and Sibongile Mkhabela holding secret meetings at this home. During the last planning stages of the June 16 1976 march, PAC leader Zeph Mothopeng paid visits to the Mazibuko’s home to offer political advice to the youth. 

The site became a meeting place of SASM leaders such as Billy Maseltha, Tsietsi Mashinini, Sibongile Majakathata, Murphy Morobe, Zweli Sizani, and many other leaders of 1976. It was also visited by Steve Bantu Biko to meet with leaders such as Thenjiwe Mthintsho, Kenneth Rachidi and Aubrey Mokoena (these were then senior leaders of the Black Consciousness movement).

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