Soweto’s Vibrant Heritage and Lifestyle
Preliminary remark: In February 2024, a German EVC team took part in a workshop in South Africa (-> Link). On 18 February 2024, Katharina Fink organised a guided hike through Meadowlands for this group. The guide was Masike Lebele, who grew up here. In the following contribution, Masike uses selected photos to explain his concept for these hikes, which he offers to interested parties.
That picture shows the main road of Zone 1 Meadowlands.[1] Here we start. This was my grandparents’ place that we turned into a small tavern and restaurant. It is situated at the corner of that main road. A very busy corner. So it was good to open a business there. We start and end all our hikes here. People can have their coffee and drinks and they can have refreshments and food when we come back from hiking. And use the toilets and safe parking. That’s where everything starts.
My name is Masike Lebele, born in Soweto. I am 42 years old. After my study of travel and tourism in Johannesburg, I worked for various travel agencies. I actually got my experience from Legacy Group, creating travel products for them, to design the ultimate travel experience. That is actually where I took the idea to create a product here in Soweto that is going to be new and also something to refresh tourism in Soweto. A new activity and a new way to see Soweto, other than going to the ordinary places. It was a chance to put communities together, especially after all the apartheid we went through. To create a new atmosphere, because in the end of day we are living here together. I created this five to six kilometers hike. It is a spiritual and formative motivation and educational hike on the periphery of Soweto.
Zone 1 is where my grandma and grandpa were moved to during the apartheid removals from Sofiatown and Alexander. My mother was the 1st born of their 7 kids and I was the 1st grandson in the family. My father was absent most of my life so I took my strict grandpa as my father figure. I grew up next to him learning a lot of skills from him, both life and business. I actually started driving a car when I was 10 years old and trucks from 13 years old.
The area you see here is just 500 meters from the start. That area is considered the Holy Land. Where the people are standing in the white and blue garments, there is a church ritual that is going on there. They are performing a ritual of baptizing, next to a flowing stream. Other rituals are performed at a dam nearby, others by the passing street. These rituals have been going on since forever, because of the running water. That is through African spirituality.
The buildings that we see behind are new flats. Housing development programs are happening here for the community, for the people. The government is trying to source out new ways to accommodate people who haven’t received houses. So it is a new type of housing development, for rent, for buy – others are just given out by the government. This used to be our playground before that - when I was a young boy. We used to hunt rabbits or birds together with our dogs.
In the background of this picture there is a green and yellow mine dump. The yellow sand is the residual that comes when they mine the gold. That is all the soil that comes from underground before they get to the gold. That’s why that has the yellow color. The soil is toxic. When it gets like dusty it blows into the community. That’s why it is covered with grass. This was an environmental project. The municipality and the mine planned to plant grass over the mine dumps.
I recently heard that there is a plan the Chinese proposed to refine these dumps because there is still a way that they can get gold out of this particular sand. That is an interesting thing. We have to see what happens about that.
We have now crossed the road to climb up to the dump. This is the place where the smoke in the previous picture came from. It is already on the dump, but still at the bottom. There are guys who recycle the wires you find inside rubber tyres. They collect the car tyres and burn them, take the residual wires to the recycling centre to get some cash. You can see the wire in the ash.
I don’t think, it is illegal, as it is a way of recycling. It’s just that it damages the environment with felt fires and smoke pollution. It’s not much money they get. So the nyaope addicts are the ones who usually do it as it is a quite dirty job. Having to separate the wires from the burnt black ash. They get about 5 Rand (0,25 Euro) per tyre, not much, but it pays the bills for the addicts. (Nyaope or whoonga is an illegal local drug based on black tar heroine. It is widespread in South African townships since 2010.)
This is halfway through the hike. It is our refreshment post. We call it France, because the first group that we hosted at our refreshment post was a French group. So, what happens here is that we get water and snacks - or lollipops for kids. But then we conclude everything that we have seen on the hike. I am asking the participants what they have seen so far, on their perspectives, how they feel.
We just discuss and then I do a secrete, private prophecy for everyone – because, when we start, I ask them to pick up a pebble or a stone that connects with them. Each person keeps the stone with them until the announcement. That further notice is when we get to this place. We then put all the stones together in a pile. You can see this pile in the bottom centre of the photo. Here I explain the transparency and the uniqueness of our individual lives. We all have dreams, aspirations and different visions. We have things we want to accomplish.
I am just trying to point out that we are all different and unique in life. There is no one who could ever do all the things you have thought of. So with the stone prophecy I am just trying to show them that there is no other stone that can be the same as yours. I also explain some other stone and life prophecies in depth. It is very interesting. I don’t know how I got to do it, but it always opens up a lot of people’s minds. After that we go up the mine dump.
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Footnotes
[1] Meadowlands is a neighbourhood in Soweto (Johannesburg, South Africa). The district was founded in 1955 in accordance with the Group Areas Act of 1950 and the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954 as a settlement for black people, in particular for forcibly resettled residents of the Sophiatown neighbourhood of Johannesburg. The residents were divided into ethnic groups within Meadowlands. The houses were built using the most cost-effective methods possible. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowlands,_Gauteng). See as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowlands_(song)