MORE ON SOWETO

MORE ON SOWETO: Yesterday I didn’t get to finish writing my account of our Sunday visit to and around Soweto with Emily Mnisi. Now, I’m in a hurry, but I want to bring this as up-to-date as possible. On Sunday, we had a traditional African lunch with Emily’s friends Ria and Charles. Then we went to drive around Soweto some with Emily, Ria, and Ria’s daughter Rudo. We went to Vilakasie Street– the only street in the world that is home (or former home) to two Nobel Peace Prize winners! We took a couple of quick pictures at Nelson Mandela’s home, which is now run as a museum by Winnie Mandela-Madikazela. (Desmond Tutu still lives in his house just down the street.)
We also tried to visit the Hector Pieterson Museum, which is at the site where 13-year-old Hector Pieterson was killed, on June 16 1976, at the beginning of the Soweto uprisings which soon spread like wildfire throughout the country and signaled the beginning of the end for the apartheid regime. But it was closed…
So yesterday, we had some time free in the afternoon and went back to the HPM. It was truly worth a visit. It only opened last year. It’s situated on a little knoll right in the middle of the Soweto neighborhood of Orlando West, and has many great presentations about the struggle for democracy here…. No time to write more…
We also had a really serendipitous meeting yesterday morning with Khoisan X (the former Benny Alexander, who under that earlier name was Secretary-General of the Pan-Africanist Congress during the crucial period of the negotiations that ended apartheid.) Luckily, he had some spare time right when we met him. My friend and driver Peter Maselwa had recognized Khoisan and asked if we could sit and do an interview for the project, and Khoisan agreed. So while he ate breakfast in a cafe in a shopping mall here, he gave us all these really interesting and helpful recollections about how the different parties had addressed the issue of amnesty during the ll-party negotiations– a crucial part of what I need to learn for my project.
Sitting in a shopping mall in the blazing sun. Amazing.
Today we have a few really interesting things to do here, then this evening we’re flying to Cape Town.
Last night I quickly wrote a column for the CSM about Mozambique. It should run Thursday. Did I tell you that Saturday or so I wrote a column for Al-Hayat? Sometimes the pace and the sheer variety of different issues I’m dealing with seem a little hectic. But it’s all one big project, I keep telling myself, the true nature of which will become clearer to me over time.