(Back to) Soweto

Well, it's been a long time...

But here is a glimpse of my first trip to Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship) in South Africa.

“We can turn left up here,” said Dimpho, pointing towards a gravelish-looking road through a field that seemed either to be under destruction or abandoned construction. “Here?” I ask, uncertainly, looking at the ruts in the mud and smoke blowing across the field and the small group of people standing by. Soweto was not really the place I wanted to have a flat tire. Or spend the night.

“Yes, we can turn right here, yes, you are ok, and stay close to the left side that way we are out of the way, you know, if the bakkies want to come through.”

Dimpho was taking me through Soweto that afternoon, after I met her for the first time that morning about thirty minutes later than I was supposed to meet her because I, in my fear and general driving paranoia, could not find the parking lot for Carlton Center (the highest building in the Central Business District) in the CBD and because I was afraid to look at the road map for more than thirty seconds at the robot and to look, really, for more than thirty seconds for anyone and anywhere. So in my fear and general paranoia, I texted her for the third time, admitting, am lost : (, arranging to meet, instead, at the Market Theater complex: a five minute drive for me at that point and a twenty minute walk for her. And after chatting nervously with the car guard (well, a hozzit?, and molo and a very American attempt to talk about the sunshine) and anxiously kicking my right foot under a table in an outdoor café drinking tonic water, she had come, smiling and breathless and sweat dripping down her brow, and hugged me as if I were her sister, or at least her second cousin on her mother’s side.

Sitting down at a picnic table under a nearly- blooming jacaranda tree, I ordered a glass of mango juice and she, a glass of orange juice. And in the same breath, she began excitedly telling me about the meeting from which she had just come where the man was going to give her a several thousand rand loan towards her current project to build a bed in breakfast in Soweto. Our juices came: thought the cool velvety sweetness, we shared with each other about school, our families, being single, surviving Jozi, and why to keep going. “You know

And with that, I drove with her to Soweto.

Taking in my interest in coal mining, our first stop was in this field with two giant cooling towers, one painted brightly with people and trains, and the other, a giant advertisement for First National Bank. Known as the Orlando Park Towers, the two stacks were cooling towers for the Eskom station, providing electricity for Johannesburg’s white, wealthy northern suburbs. “And can you guess where all the pollution went?” Dimpho starts, angrily, sarcastically, putting her hands in her pants pockets and walking away, as I lock up the car and walk to meet her field by the towers.

Turning 180 degrees, from the towers towards the rows of Soweto settlements, I become slightly nauseated with a sharp smell of rotten eggs, garbage, smoke, and some other unidentifiable noxious odor blowing towards us with the wind. A couple of younger males in trousers and blue shirts walk by the road holding plastic bags; a few more bags are caught in the disturbed dirt behind us; one breaks free and blows up above me with the next trail of wind.

As I catch up to her in the field, Dimpho asks me if I recognize any of the figures painted on the mural, pointing specifically to a female near the top of the tower. I study it for awhile, and guess Miriam Makeba, about the only South African female musician I know besides Brenda Fassie. Dimpho laughs a little and asks how I know Miriam Makeba.

I tell her I have some of her music, and respond, rather defensively, “We isn’t she like, a famous South African musician? I mean, aren’t you supposed to know her? I wanted my iTunes purchases to count for something…

“Yes, yes, you are right. So is that what you think we do here in South Africa, dance around and listen to Miriam Makeba?” She is still laughing as I try to give her a serious response, then eventually corrects me, laughing, by telling me that the woman with the blue headdress is Yvone Chaka Chaka, a native Sowetan. Embarrassingly, I have to ask her to repeat it three times, and then, even though I don’t quite know why, have a good laugh at myself with her.

She points out a few other people, Nelson Mandela, soccer great, Jomo Somo, stopping a few more times quiz me on more of the brightly colored figures (all of which I fail). In addition to famous people, portraits of the yellow train running through Soweto and into the city, music stands, soccer balls, and street scenes fill up the space of the tower.

Looking beyond the right pictorial tower, I ask her what sort of building project is in the works. She grows serious, looks me in the eye, and shakes her head, kicking at a clod of grass, stirring up the dust.

”Yes, yes, about that one. That used to be the power station, you know, and now they want to turn it into another big shopping mall.” Because, you see, for them, that is the sign of progress – for them that is development. But this is not our sort of development, this is Western Development. Does this help my people here? I mean, yes, they say it will create jobs, sure, but what kind of jobs? The kind where you stand all day long and get nothing because they can always replace you with someone else if you want more rand or are sick or something, you see what I’m saying? Is this progress?

Her voice grows more animated. “I mean, sure it is fine to go shopping for whatever, but these are not goods from Johannesburg or even all from South Africa. How is this helping our economy here? Is this really what people want? I mean, we already have the Southgate (shopping mall), and that’s fine, people were excited about that because it will bring development, bring jobs. Do you think this is what people want?

I’m silent for awhile, thinking about the plastic bags in the dirt and the lady who tries to sell me a Sowetan every day as I leave Wits. “No, but maybe that’s only because it’s not what I want. I don’t like to shop too much, but I feel like I can’t say to people they shouldn’t want that.

She nods her head. “Yes, but you see what I mean, this is what people want. They want to spend their money in malls buying clothing that looks like, excuse me, what the girls in America wear. I mean, is this what we fought for, you know? Is this what the kids in June 1976 marched in the streets for…for this? For shopping malls? Is this what all these people on the mural I just told you about wanted? Is this our freedom? Is this helping my people?

“No. It’s apartheid again, keeping us in this Western market system. Why shouldn’t we be selling our own goods to the world, selling something that when you come here, you see something South African, something different that you can’t find anywhere else. My people, we should be offering goods that are unique, something of ourselves.”

I can only nod in agreement with her, offering here and there small bits of my own frustration with my culture of consumerism. But otherwise, I am silent.

“This is why I want to have my bed and breakfast, to have a place where people, local people, can come out and sell their crafts and have decent jobs, to come out and offer something unique, not just –malls.”

For the first time in ten minutes, I notice that she breathes.

Looking back again at the site of the future development, she shakes her head and turns back to face me. “I’m sorry. Maybe you think I am too much? Am I too much? I just think…

“No, not at all, I say quietly,” digging my toe into an exposed patch of red dirt. And we both turn our backs on the power station, the towers, facing full-on the largest black township in South Africa, in the mid-day sun, smoke blowing, and walk, heads down, back towards my car.

This picture belongs in another scene, but whatever. Dimpho is standing with me here in the top of the Regina Mundi Church where a great deal of the planning/meetings (and, unfortunately, shootings) took place during the struggle.