Prologue
In 1987/8 I learned of the name Sisulu from Miriam Makeba and Harry
Belafonte's album, An Evening With Harry Belafonte. One of
the songs had the lines, "Bahleli Bonke Etilongweni/ Bahleli Bonke
Kwanongqongqo … Nangu, nangu u-Mandela/ nangu nangu nangu uSisulu
…" My late brother had sent me to pick up the LP record from a trusted
friend who must have been the only person to have possessed this "banned"
album in the black "location" of Ermelo. When I replayed the song,
I could formulate at least a picture of a young, fierce freedom fighter,
Nelson Mandela, because at least that was the person I had imagined
in 1985 when for the first time I saw my township engulfed in a beautiful
revolutionary song, "Ayakhala Ama-Afrika Akhalela izwe lawo". When
I enquired from the older school mates and friends about the context
of the protest song, I was told that this was part of a nation-wide
protest campaign to release Nelson Mandela.
In 1989, when Walter Sisulu was released from prison after spending twenty-six years there, he was still in my head the shadow of Nelson Mandela I had formulated when I first learned of his name in Makeba's song and from my toyi-toying friends. I must confess I even had doubts about Sisulu and his group which was released before Mandela - thinking he must have sold out on Mandela who would still be languishing for a few more months in prison.
When Mandela finally walked out of prison in 1990, I suffered alone as I had to readjust the perception in my head of the image I had formulated from my friends during the "Ayakhala Ama-Afrika" song when I saw a frail, tall, grey-haired old man on TV who was expected to lead us to our desired political freedom.
My poor perception of Nelson was soon to change as I began to witness
the serious attention the local and international media gave to
this protagonist of our dramatic struggle. I was happy when Nelson
Mandela was given the role of president of the ANC instead of Oliver
Tambo or anyone else since this really meant that my beloved Nelson
would occupy everyone's attention as I myself tried to grapple with
his mythical statue. I certainly could not afford to be confused
with more names of political actors like Tambo, Sisulu and "the
others". Mandela really won my admiration as I saw him take on FW
de Klerk in a televised national debate between the two on the eve
of the 1994 elections. I had not imagined that Nelson Mandela could
successfully upstage - notwithstanding his many long pauses during
the debate - the charismatic, articulate, FW De Klerk, who had become
a national hero overnight in the townships - we had even tried to
write De Klerk's name in popular culture by renaming our "pondos"
("pounds"), the new R2 coins, the "De Klerks".
I began to discover the extraordinary details of the colourful life of Walter Sisulu in March 2004 as I began to be involved in the JDA Kliptown urban renewal project through my employer, Ochre Media. One of my initial tasks at Ochre was to write a language policy for the proposed "ecomuseum" in Kliptown, whose name changed to the "Open Air Museum" after debates with community representatives and input from colleagues at Ochre and in the heritage sector. During my first week in Kliptown I met an "informant" from Kliptown who was unhappy in merely performing the language character of Kliptown, who in a slip of a tongue, began criticising the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication as "their square". The informant felt that this heritage and tourism development initiative was ignoring priority development issues like housing, employment, sanitation and health care. The informant felt bitter at the naming itself, saying the "community" was contended with the square called Freedom Square, and that the elevation of Sisulu's name could have the effect of erasing many of the rich histories of Kliptown which are not necessarily linked to Sisulu. The informant told me that many a time he has to caution people who are bent on sabotaging the development, which he claimed, lacks consultation and ignores "Kliptonians". He felt he could say these things to me since I was new to the project and he hoped I could somehow represent his aspirations. He must have assumed, too, that I was a "coloured" like himself.
As I reported on the language policy question, I began to immerse myself in a random search about Sisulu in order to find out the rationality/irrationality of our leadership to name the site of the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication. Months later, after lonely hours of unguided research, I returned to my friend and gave him a list of reasons why I thought the name Sisulu, given what he represented, could be of excellent use to the communities of Kliptown and Soweto.
Introduction
This paper represents an effort at constructing a coherent narrative that speaks simultaneously to the rich legacy of Walter Sisulu, the historic import of the 1955 Congress of the People and Sisulu's role in it, and our imagination, invention, and articulation of the stories of Kliptown. It is a work of advocacy for the support for the Kliptown development and a good piece of propaganda since it is confident that Sisulu's legacy can be appropriated for good use for this impoverished community which hosted the Congress of the People delegates in 1955 to adopt the Freedom Charter.
In 1953, ZK Matthews proposed the idea of an inaugural, most representative multiracial assembly which would adopt a charter of freedom. It should be borne in mind that the 1908/09 South African Convention which resulted in the formation of the South African Union in 1910 had excluded any representation by the African majority. The 1943 African Claims which were written in the context of the Atlantic Charter, history shows us, had been written by a clique of well meaning African intellectuals like Matthews himself and Dr. Xuma. There is a substantial body of evidence that shows the process of the organisation of ordinary South Africans from different backgrounds to gather the demands which informed the Freedom Charter and the election of delegates which adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955 in Kliptown. ZK Matthews, with the support of Chief Albert Luthuli, would after the Kliptown Congress, move for the adoption of this document as a policy document for the ANC. Walter Sisulu, the "moving spirit" behind the liberation campaigns of the 1950s, was part of the secretariat which represented the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress (SAID), the South African Coloured People's Congress (SACPO), and the South African Congress of Democrats (SACOD).
In the foreword of Elinor Sisulu's Noma Award-winning book, Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime, Nelson Mandela writes:
If we as a liberation movement and a nation were to be given the choice of one life story to be told, that story would have to be Walter Sisulu's. In his life and the work of his life are captured and demonstrated the best, the noblest, the most heroic, the most deeply humane that our movement and our country represent and seek to represent.
In June 2005 South Africa will be commemorating 50 years of the Freedom Charter and the Congress of the People at the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication. The writer, in our present context of opportunism, careerism, and lack of imagination and clarity of vision asks us to revisit the aspects of Sisulu which Nelson Mandela describes as "the most heroic, the most deeply humane" that we as South Africans should strive to emulate as we face the abject poverty that confronts present-day Kliptown and many parts of South Africa.
Sketching the life of Walter Max Ulyat Sisulu
Delivering a eulogy at Orlando Stadium during Sisulu's funeral,
Archbishop Tutu described Sisulu's life as one "poured so unselfishly
on behalf of others." At the death of his friend, Nelson Mandela
remarked on Sisulu's exemplary humility and declared that "Sisulu
stands head and shoulders above all of us in South Africa [because]
he pushed all of us forward and remained quietly in the background."
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu, also known as Xhamela, was born at the birth of the ANC in 1912 in the Engcobo district of the Eastern Cape. Sisulu's father was a white civil servant called Victor Dickinson whom according to Elinor Sisulu, "remained on the periphery of Walter's consciousness" and "played no part in his upbringing". It is his maternal uncle, a preacher, Dyanti Hlakula, that had a profound influence on the young Sisulu. Sisulu acquired only six years of formal education (standard four) at the Anglican Missionary Institute at Engcobo. In his formative years at the school, Sisulu was inspired by legendary personalities like kings UShaka, UMoshoeshoe, UCetshwayo, the prophet UMakana, and by the Biblical stories of Moses, David and Daniel. Elinor Sisulu has also been able to trace the influences of men like Clement Kadalile of the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU), Marcus Garvey, Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois on the young Walter.
Many commentators, including Gauteng's Premier Shilowa, make the point that Sisulu's life experience was closer to that of the "average" black South African. When Sisulu was about fourteen or fifteen, he left the mission school to work in Johannesburg. Between 1928 and 1940 he worked in a range of jobs - dairy worker, miner (at the Rose Deep Mine in Germiston), a "kitchen boy" for a white family in East London, a bakery worker in Johannesburg, a paint-mixer for Herbert Evans, a packer for a tobacconist, a carpenter, a part-time teller at the Union Bank of South Africa. He eventually went into business as an estate agent. While doing many of the odd jobs, he was also studying on his own (night school) to improve his education. In the early 1930's he brought his mother and sister to live with him in Johannesburg. Sisulu's mother did laundry for a number of whites when they lived in Doornfontein and for their Orlando neighbours when they finally moved to Soweto.
One of the main reasons Walter Sisulu "embarked on a path of political activism" was Walter's "passioned hatred" for the pass law system. Elinor writes in the biography of Walter and Albertina that,
Because of his light skin, Walter was not arrested as often as his peers were. He could easily have escaped the trauma of pass arrests altogether if he had chosen to take a coloured identity, as coloureds were not required to carry passes. Some family members and friends suggested this to him, but he found the idea absolutely abhorrent.
Sisulu asserted, writes his daughter-in-law, "I am a black man. I am an African, I am subject to all the laws that affect my people." He refused to use his appearance to unfair advantage because, in his words, "I never wanted to see my colour determine my race. I was an African in every sense of the word, no less, no more".
In 1940 Sisulu joined the ANC. He met Nelson Mandela in 1941 in Johannesburg and the two became friends. Sisulu recommended him for employment with a lawyer. This job, along with "loans" from Sisulu, enabled Mandela to complete his degree at the University of South Africa. It was Sisulu who encouraged Mandela to join the ANC.
Nelson Mandela is known globally as the symbol of South African resistance. His statue and prominence overshadow Sisulu's and those of his other comrades. In a 1987 article, ES Reddy was already warning us that the exclusive attention to and focus on Nelson Mandela was diminishing the role and contribution of other freedom fighters like Sisulu who were critical players in the anti-apartheid struggle. Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in jail with both Sisulu and Mandela, has frequently insisted that "the pair", Nelson and Walter, complement each other. In a November 1996 university of Berkeley televised interview, Kathrada made the remark:
When you talk of President Mandela you cannot leave out Walter Sisulu. They complement each other. They are two different characters but you cannot talk about the one without the other. President Mandela [in prison] was highly respected, admired. But Walter Sisulu was a father figure, loved as a father he is loved.
Madiba has always openly recognised the role and influence of his comrades. He isolates Sisulu, however, as one such person who had a profound impact on his political make-up. He writes in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom:
I [came] under the wise tutelage of Walter Sisulu. Walter was strong, reasonable, practical, and dedicated. He never lost his head in a crisis; he was often silent when others were shouting. He believed that the African National Congress was the means to effect change in South Africa, the repository of black hopes and aspirations. Sometimes one can judge an organization by the people who belong to it, and I knew that I would be proud to belong to any organization of which Walter was a member.
Mandela goes on to describe Walter's house in Orlando as a "mecca for activists and ANC members". In 1943 Mandela met Anton Lembede and AP Mda at Sisulu's house. Nelson Mandela's imagination was caught by the political assertions of Lembede and Mda, who advocated that "Africa was a black man's continent and that it was up to the Africans to assert themselves".
In 1944, together with Lembede, Mda, Mandela, and Oliver Tambo, Sisulu formed the ANC Youth League, which advocated militant action as a means to attain political independence. Sisulu became the treasurer of the Youth League. It was at Sisulu's office that members of the Youth League met to discuss tactics and strategy of the struggle. Historians have noted the role of the Youth League in growing the ANC into a militant, mass movement in the fifties and beyond.
In 1949 Sisulu was elected as the first full-time secretary-general of the ANC, and had to close his estate agency business to become a full-time party organiser. He was responsible for the implementation of the Positive Action Programme of the Youth League which had been adopted by the ANC in 1949. Sisulu, in the words of ES Reddy, was "the moving spirit behind all the great campaigns in the 1950s, as well as the transformation of the ANC in 1960-61 for underground work and armed struggle".
Professor ZK Matthews, Chief Albert Luthuli, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, and the leadership of the South African Indian Congress, like Dr Yusuf Dadoo, the South African Coloured People's Organisation, like Stanley Lollan, the Congress of Democrats, like Helen Joseph, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) united behind the drafting of the Freedom Charter, a "blueprint" of our present constitution. The details of the bitter contestation of the Freedom Charter from "the Africanists" like Leballo and father Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe is not a subject of this input on the attempt to write Sisulu's legacy in present-day Kliptown.
Mandela, at the passing of his friend Walter Sisulu, remembers Sisulu singing one of his favourite songs as they mobilised people behind the Charter:
Libhalliwe na iGama lakho/Has your name been signed/registered
KuloMqulu weNkululeko/In this Charter of Freedom
Vuma Silibhale kuloMqulu/Please let us write your name
WeNkululeko/ In the Freedom Charter
In the words of Beryl Sisulu, her father was honoured that the Freedom Square was named after him, as "Kliptown had a special place" in his heart. Beryl is quoted saying her father had an underground office in Kliptown.
"The Freedom Charter Landed on Us": Contesting the Kliptown Community Archive
The "slips of the tongue" are more revealing and fascinating in present-day Kliptown, where there are various claims and contestations from different groups and individuals over the scripting and presentation of the Kliptown heritage. Vusi Khumalo, Sue Krige, and Gene Duiker, in an initial audit report of the heritage resources of Kliptown, put forward an argument that the sole focus on Kliptown as the historic site of the 1955 Congress of the People has the effect of erasing the many other rich stories of Kliptown. This should not in any way be misconstrued to mean that Kliptonians value this aspect of their history less. In fact, some individuals in the community have bitterly contested the "displacing" of the name Freedom Square to a project like Freedom Park since they regard this as a political act of historical erasure which denies Kliptown its significance in the national memory archive of the histories of the liberation struggle.
Suffice it to say that a lot of the evidence suggests that it was a community initiative which was driven by the Kliptown Our Town Trust that sought to remind us as South Africans of our "ingratitude" to this marginalised and impoverished community which in 1955 had hosted the much talked about multiracial Congress of the People on June 26-27. The leadership and the old residents sought to restore Kliptown to its former glory and beauty when people here were feeling the grip of malice and neglect, hence the theme of the Town Trust exhibition in an old municipality town, "From Neglect To Respect". These efforts received support from the Johannesburg Development Agency, which in the context of the World Summit On Sustainable Development provided infrastructure and funding for the Kliptown Visitors'/Community Centre in which the Kliptown Our Town Trust exhibitions are still housed. These exhibitions trace the story of the Freedom Charter to a community that was here long before 1955, that was there in 1955, and that is struggling in post-apartheid South Africa to claim relevance in the post-apartheid heritage and identity-making projects. It fascinated me when a younger member of one of the families with old allegiances to Kliptown, the Takolias, who have to move to the new square, jokingly said, "The Freedom Charter landed on us, and we are still here"
I learned in March from a Muslim friend from Kliptown, Thamsanqa Mohammed Hlatshwayo, when I joined the project, about the hospitality of Kliptonians. The friend warned me, though, as if he wanted me to get that clear from the outset, " We Kliptonians, kind as we are, are not stupid. We can clearly see through when people are intent on exploiting our hospitality and generosity."
I should admit that Kliptonians do give credit where it is due. I was amazed to learn how a friend from here spoke fondly of persons like Jeremy Cronin, Jurgen Schaderberg, the youth leader Bob Nameng, Eve Mokoka, Vusi Khumalo, Herbert Prinsloo, and even Lindsay Bremmer whom I am told, "is helping us and the Town Trust to put up a business plan to rebuild our cinema, Sans Souci."
The challenge for me and my team has really been to be able to
come up with a tourism heritage product, The Kliptown Open Air Museum,
which is able to speak simultaneously to the personal and collective
histories of Kliptown and the experience of the 1955 Congress of
the People which assembled here to declare the vision of a future
democratic South Africa. Khumalo and Krige's research and The Kliptown
Our Town Trust exhibitions have had to inform our exhibition decisions
and hence the concept of an "in situ" visitor experience of Kliptown
through dispersed nodes in the community which allows visitors to
move from the Freedom Square into the historic town of Kliptown.
The Kliptown experience, we have proposed, should be organised and
structured through the different exhibition nodes, like the proposed
"Women's Node" at Charlotte Maxeke's house/AME Church,
The "Freedom Exhibition" at the Jadas, the "Behind
the Scenes" exhibition which allows the community and visitors
to understand, appreciate, and participate in the making of the
"museum", the Gerard Sekoto cultural node and exhibition
at a house which was occupied by this internationally acclaimed
artist who died in Paris.
It is regrettable that I cannot give any details of these and many other fascinating individuals who shaped the multicultural urban identity and history of Kliptown. I take the liberty at this point to speak more of one story that I have recently learned is an integral part of Kliptown and to make the submission that it would be irresponsible of us to ignore it as we write the heritage map in present-day Kliptown.
It is the story of Arthur Lollan and his family. We are once more grateful for the submission of Vusi Khumalo, Gene Duiker and Herbert Prinsloo that the Lollan's home in Kliptown be protected as a heritage building.
"Daardie ou was clever": Stanley Lollan and his family
One of the most profound and touching stories of Kliptown is the
one of Stanley Lollan who, as we have already noted, was part of
the Congress of the People secretariat and a leader of the Coloured
People's Congress. The Lollan's house is known by Kliptonians as
the Mandela "hideout", since Nelson and other leaders
used it when they were in hiding. The present writer feels, however,
that to call the house the Mandela hideout erases much of the history
and direct contribution of the Lollans in the liberation of our
country. Recently, I was delighted to see my former students from
NEMISA interview a man called Oom Poto, or Ernest, younger brother
to the late Stanley. I had a chat with Oom Poto and noticed the
hope in his eyes as he saw that these young people were interested
in learning something about his late brother. He tells me, with
a finger pointing to his head, "Hey daardie ou, my brother, was
very intelligent." When I asked him if he knew Sisulu's "underground
offices" in Kliptown as Beryl has suggested, he was quick to respond,
"Where else Wonderboy - it happened right here in this house. They
were all here. These chaps used to send me to go and buy them braai
meat."
It is disappointing to learn that the internet web page information of a number of the treason trialists, including the information on Stanley Lollan, has not been updated given that at least Arthur Lollan, Stanley's brother, participated in the TRC hearings into the sufferings of his brother, his sister Mavis and himself at the hands of the police and Stanley's subsequent death. It would be a travesty of history, and a sign of ingratitude and dishonour to the memory of Sisulu, Tambo, Mandela, and Stanley Lollan, if the Kliptown Open Air Museum fails to represent the lives of the Lollans who still have the house in Kliptown that was the fertile ground for underground political activity.
The following information on the family is based on an internet-sourced article on the submission made by Arthur Lollan to the TRC in Soweto on the 25th of July 1996.
In the words of Arthur Lollan:
The Lollan family were all activists … My mother, Augustine Lollan, hosted many parties and receptions for people like Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Duma Nokwe, Helen Joseph, George Peak, Alex La Guma, Joe Gumede, Don Mateman, … Freda Katz, Ruth First and many others. My mother's house was always a hive of activity for politicians, church and community leaders.
Oom Poto also spoke to me of his dead sister, Mavis, saying, "Wonder, I tell you, that sister of mine was just like my brother Stanley - both were serious rebels."
One learns from Arthur's submission to the TRC that the late Mavis was a trade unionist in the Industrial Council for the Clothing Industry and a personal friend of Helen Joseph, Maggie and Robert Gesha, and Ellen Kuzwayo. Mavis Lollan was detained on many occasions, tortured, and assaulted. This resulted in her death from brain haemorrhage. Arthur Lollan takes pride in the fact that his other sister, Harriet Lollan, a teacher in Eldorado Park, continues to be concerned with community upliftment initiatives. I learned from Oom Poto that his brother Arthur, who now lives in Eldorado Park, also suffered terribly at the hands of the Special Branch.
During the 1996 TRC hearings, Arthur Lollan recalled a day when about 30 police surrounded his house, which was a block away from his mother's house, looking for Stanley and Nelson. He alerted the two to use another road and for that he was assaulted so severely that he had to be taken to one Dr Nji for treatment. Arthur says that he learned from the police that they had orders to kill the "donders" and shoot them on sight. He says, "I probably saved both their lives that day. I am sure [President Mandela] will remember that day."
Stanley Lollan managed to escape to Swaziland - which is still the last thing the outdated internet source on the faces of the treason trialists says of Stanley Lollan. Arthur visited Stanley in Swaziland after he had been attacked in his flat by the South African Police. King Sobhuza sheltered Stanley until he was in a better condition to flee to London. The state agents followed him in London, and one day, while addressing a crowd in Hyde Park, he was severely beaten and then hospitalised at the Royal Northern Hospital. Arthur succeeded partly through the help of a Dr Ngyere to visit his dying brother, Stanley Lollan. After numerous pleas, Arthur was allowed by the South African embassy in the UK to return with a sickly and dying brother. Arthur Lollan reminisces:
Back home my brother was a vegetable, he was sickly, aggressive, and moody and kept on saying to me, "Arthur, where are the police, where are the agents, waar is die boere, and I would say Stanley, it's all over now, you are free. Stanley died two months later in my house in Eldorado Park … All his friends were at his funeral, including the late Helen Joseph …
Arthur Lollan further made the submission:
Since the declaration of the Freedom Charter at Freedom Square, where myself and my brother and my sister, Mavis attended, we knew that one day, if God will, we will be free. When our hero, Madiba was released we were there at his humble abode in Soweto to welcome him …
During the hearings, Stanley Lollan's mother had asked her son Arthur to express her dying wish of seeing Madiba after so many years. Humble as ever, Nelson Mandela visited the mother of his late friend in June 1998. The meeting of the 79-year-old Mandela and the 96-year-old Mrs Lollan was captured in a few newspapers. Mandela is quoted by a Sapa-AP article as saying of her, "She may not have hit the headlines but she was one of the persons in those most difficult days who was in the forefront." The blind Mrs Lollan, who could still hear Madiba's voice, is quoted in the same source as saying, "I paid no attention … I didn't realise what they were doing - but that's where all the conniving was going on."
Oom Poto, who tells me he looks exactly like his late brother, showed me a picture from a newspaper of Nelson with his now late mother. Oom Poto allowed me to come inside the house and he kept laughing at me as I wanted assurance from his own lips that Nelson Mandela once slept at his house. "Take it from me - he used to be here and him and my brother used to send me on their errands." The more than 70 year-old Stanley showed me machines that he fixes to earn a living, and I kept saying in my heart it would be an honour to a friend like Oom Poto to write about his brother Stanley and his family and to integrate this narrative directly into the Freedom Charter narrative which is being scripted by our heritage and exhibition team.
There is a visible coloured community in Kliptown and one of the the first persons I spoke to in Kliptown insisted on the unique multicultural identity of Kliptown. When I began the literature review on the Congress of the People, I was interested in finding a story that could make the coloured community, especially the youth, identify with the development happening in their community. Many of the reports I had read in the feasibility studies had identified low morale among the youths of Kliptown as one of the greatest challenges for the present day multimillion Rand urban regeneration project of the JDA and Blue IQ. Little did I then know that a person like Arthur Lollan was "coloured", and that he had worked together with people like Tambo, Mandela and Sisulu for our freedom. When I discovered Sisulu's "mixed origins", I threw this at the friend who had referred to the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication as "their Square", and he was pleasantly surprised. Recently I found him more receptive and in fact it was him who told me that Sisulu was coloured - I am sure Sisulu, who refused to accept the political identity "Coloured" with all its associated benefits in our deeply segregated past, would not mind much today if the evoking of this detail is a good starting point to call on everyone in the Greater Kliptown area to rally behind the development imperatives in present-day Kliptown and Soweto. I am convinced that the story of the Lollan family is a courageous South African story that all of us as South Africans can learn something from.
Conclusion
I hinted in the prologue of my ignorance of persons like Sisulu and Tambo. I am also continually discovering how little I know of Nelson Mandela, despite his international popularity. I cannot claim to have fully grappled with the details of these individuals and those that preceded them, but at least my involvement in some research aspects of Sisulu has landed me the opportunity to discover many lives which exemplified commitment to freedom. In 2004, when unprincipled party political allegiance has become a ticket to personal advancement, I could not avoid sharing my honest impressions of some of the stalwarts of our freedom when an opportunity availed itself for young writers to express themselves. I admit and accept my opportunistic venture into the sacred world of young writers when I could not avoid to confront myself when I learned about the lives of individuals like Sisulu, ZK Matthews, Nelson Mandela, Yusuf Dadoo, JB Marks, Ben Turok, Eskia Mphahlele, Bishop Reeves, the Rev Thompson, Anton Lembede, Sobukwe, Arthur Lollan, John Mtini, Ida Mtwana, Charlotte Maxeke, Eve Mokoka, Gerard Sekoto and many others who in many ways are associated with Kliptown. In my yearning to understand Sisulu's relevance in an impoverished, marginalised community of Kliptown, I could not avoid noticing these impressive personalities and their courageous deeds and I asked myself what they could have done to assist in the reconstruction of the "hometown" of the Freedom Charter. As I read more about Walter "Xhamela" Sisulu, I knew that Sisulu would never mind that his memory and that of the Freedom Charter could be used to ask pertinent questions of community capacity, women and youth development of the oppressed classes and the African community to which he dedicated his life.
I could not ignore, either, the racial dynamics of present-day Kliptown, and after reading about the low morale of its "coloured youth" I took it upon myself to find just one courageous example that we could say they could emulate - and I discovered by chance Oom Poto, who gave me some insights into his late brother, Stanley Lollan. I have only regurgitated what I have found on the internet on the life of Stanley and I trust that people will be encouraged to research further the lives of the Lollans - I cannot erase from my mind the tears I noticed coming from Oom Poto's eyes when I said it is possible to reconstruct the life of his late brother and his family and that these could be represented in the Kliptown heritage package.
The paper was written with a friend of mine in mind as my audience - a Kliptonian called Pappi, who is never too tired to walk me down the streets of Kliptown and introduce me to people here. Pappi, I haven't forgotten what you said during our first meeting: "Wonder-Man, let us do it for the youth." (Bob Nameng - I have recently passed at your centre/home and was inspired by the activity of the youth there. I am still coming to learn from your wisdom about how is it that you seem to be a magnet for many of these youths from Kliptown and Soweto - I meet them in the streets looking for your address as I try to understand the political map of your community.) To return to you, Pappi, this is my own small contribution to the debate about the contested memories of Kliptown and I trust you will find it encouraging as we plot the strategies of development for all the youths of Kliptown and Soweto.
I also wrote this piece trying to imagine what is it that Sisulu, Dadoo, Tambo, Mandela, Luthuli, Slovo, Helen Joseph and Stanley Lollan could have been engaged in on the eve of the commemoration of the 50 years of the Congress of the People. It is my hope that my input into the Young Writers' Conference could once again fire up our imagination about the leadership of the 1950s and the commitment of ordinary South Africans to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. May the young writers participating in this conference find it honourable to define their role in our struggle to reconstruct our histories and to imagine our futures.
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Wonderboy Peters is one of the principal
researchers and public programmers for Ochre Media's Heritage,
Education and Tourism (HET) division, where he is involved
in heritage projects like the Kliptown Open Air Museum and
Constitution Hill. He holds an honours degree (1st class)
in African Literature from Wits University and his BA (Zulu
and African Literature) was awarded with distinction by Wits
in 1997. He is a published literary critic and an experienced
educator in literature, drama, language (isiZulu and English),
African media studies, communication etc. He has taught at
institutions like Wits University, University of London (SOAS),
and the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa
(NEMISA). He is the first isiZulu content editor of the Department
of Communication's internet language portal. He has reviewed
literary manuscripts for publishers like Heinemann and Unisa
Press, and the manuscript for his autobiographical novel,
The Unveiling, is being evaluated for publication.
He is 31 years old.
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