"Heritage is an embodiment of a past we wish to take into our future without losing the benefits of a changing present. It defines not only a sense of belonging, but it also makes the past a form of the present and an abstraction of what a future will look like with us as a presence of the past which is a present we live in now. Like its adjunct tradition, it creates and reorders our background of permanence. It assists us in transmitting the merits of the past to modern-day originality. Such a background anchors the values with which a society can be normed."
On 26 November 2022, I was invited to a function in Mamelodi, my home, ko gae, ko motseng, to facilitate a panel discussion about Mamelodi Heritage by the Mamelodi Heritage Institute at its launch. The MHI is a not-for-profit company organised to identify, collect, preserve, and disseminate heritage. Led by a team of authentic and Mamelodi-born intergenerational team of South Africans, MHI has finally arrived to redefine the narrative about Mamelodi. They have crafted out of many still-to-be-unearthed jewels of stories, a task of being responsible for telling them, establishing spaces and institutions wherein Mamelodi can be visited.
Reverberating at the venue was the intention to redefine the course of South African history and foreground, where it has not been done, the actual contribution of Mamelodi in the lives of South Africans. From the establishment of arguably the first Bantu University to the development of a unique jazz genre of Malombo, from being at the heart of the Maputo Corridor Railway Line to once having been the township with the most significant number of MK recruits for the liberation struggle, from being the South Africa's township with the most important number of educational institutions to the sorry tale of a substantial number of criminal masterminds, this history, the function defined itself as why it happened.
While the rich history of Mamelodi might have gone through an epidemic of loneliness, there is a deliberate effort to build a connection culture for the sake of Mamelodi's heritage. The relationship that children of and products of Mamelodi have with the history of South Africa in all its dimensions of livelihood is what I submit defines the new wave to say 'mara die mense ke ba ko Kasi and/or ba tsene sgila ko kasi'. From Desmond Tutu to Eskia Mphahlele, From Joe Lopez to Advocate Nakedi Ribane, From Solomon Mahlangu to Stanza BOPAPE, From Fabian Ribiero to Moses Chikane, From Phillip Tabane to Vusi Mahlasela, From Don Laka to Aubrey Mogase, From Professor Serudu to Professor DBZ Ntuli, From Professor Nokaneng to Dr Kekana, From Kalamazoo to Mambush Mudau. From HM Pitje to Slow Ramokhoasa, Makhambeni to Judge Aubrey Ledwaba, Ntlatleng to Santaco. Yes, from the way we see the world from our own heritage base, it will be easier and evident that it cannot and should not be difficult to imagine that other people except us can define and tell the actual narrative of Mamelodi.
ALL RISE...
The function was attended by some of the living legends to narrate with themselves as the centre, parts of their lived experience of Mamelodi. The Keynote Speaker was Deputy Judge President of Gauteng Aubrey Ledwaba, through whom the judicial authority of the Republic was invoked to say to the country and society, 'all rise' Mamelodi Heritage is here. In his address, Justice Ledwaba said, 'infiltrate the schools with the history and heritage of Mamelodi'. In his jurist parlance, Justice Ledwaba reminded us that 'heritage as a concept comes from inheritance, and asked what are we bequeathing to future generations about Mamelodi which must never stay unknown'.
In her address to the function Professor Ntebogeng Mokgalaka Fleischmann, reminded the audience of some of the interesting spaces in Mamelodi, most of which author Aubrey Mogase, also present at the process wrote about in his book about Mamelodi. Amongst others she mentioned the Pretoria Bantu Normal College, which was later moved to SOVENGA and became Turfloop, today known as University of Limpopo. Some of the people that came out of PBNC, the alumni, include Bishop Stanley Mogoba, Nobel Peace Prize Laurette Achbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Russel Marivate, Rebecca Namane and others. The Ribiero House, Thebu Cinema, and many other places. (Please get Aubrey Mogase's book that captures many of such places).
A panel discussion composed of Deputy Judge President of Mpumalanga Province, Judge Sheila Mphahlele from D2, one of the legendary persons to define Mamelodi as one of the few, if any, BantuBlack townships to have two Deputy Judge Presidents born and bred within a kilometre radius;
Matron Sebati, one of the pioneer founders and crafters of the Mamelodi Health Care Facilities journey;
Dr Motsiri Itsweng, one of the two Doctors and two businessmen who bought the legendary Mamelodi Sundowns and pioneered its meteoric rise to its present-day greatness;
Aubrey Mogase, an author of several books about the history of Mamelodi reminded us that 'writing is for those who have a story to tell' and this he is doing;
Mr Zainal Arif Manyaka, The High Commissioner of Singapore, shared with the audience the softer yet complex heritage issues that anchor the rise of Singapore to an excellent economy and nation-state it has become;
Nomsa Ntuli, an advocacy journalist from Mamelodi ko di SAMCOR houses, has written and broadcast many stories in South Africa, but not Mamelodi. She angled Mamelodi as a story to be told
Jackie Modikwane, a radio journalist and storyteller working in Mamelodi. He sketched what at his young age continues to inspire him to always be a yearning to repeatedly tell the story of Mamelodi.
Otherwise, there was the facilitator of the panel discussion session, 'n complex clever and mogoe van White City', Bra Lucky wa ko Mams Mathebula, who complemented the very able and gifted storytelling 'clever ousie' van Mams, Makwena Modimole, who was the MC.
Highlights of the Launch Session
Mamelodi Heritage Institute announced opening a space to convert into a pictorial museum where in the world would come in and visit Mamelodi from its origins. The Museum, it was announced, will be opened in 2023.
The Mamelodi Men's club, which is part of the institutional complex threading the heritage of Mamelodi, will be supporting the identification and collection of heritage assets to be registered with MHI.
Judges Ledwaba and Mphahlele committed to rendering support to MHI in the best way their capacity allows them. In particular, Judge Ledwaba announced the existence of the Mamelodi High School Alumni Committee, which can be a resource to MHI in threading the unfolding story of Mamelodi ko Flaka.
Through its heritage faculty, the Thinc Foundation, a policy think tank based in Pretoria East, has committed to the leadership of MHI and its support to the threading of the 'Melodi that must continue.'
The University of Pretoria has already started with an information digitisation project whose data will have a dedicated focus on Mamelodi Heritage and the restoration of spaces that collects our past and repackage it into a whole that makes the present give sense to an unfolding future.
Dr Motsiri, the founder of Mamelodi Sundowns, has committed to getting Mamelodi Sundowns to be an integral part of its history as an essential feature in the telling of the history of sports in Mamelodi.
The Annual Mamelodi Individual Excellence Awards
The announced Annual Mamelodi Individual Excellence Awards to be hosted by the Mamelodi Heritage Institute is now entombed as the single most event that will make it possible for Mamelodi as one of the critical substrates of society to ‘rethink the dispersion of its history in the form of the same, will in itself be a heritage site not only for Mamelodians but observers of how a heritage definition process unfolds.
The Annual Awards should display how far the will of Mamelodians, at home or in the diaspora, can be respected and curated for posterity's sake. This display must add a layer that sediments upon existing ones constituting what makes our national heritage. A heritage which must enable future generations in Mamelodi and of Mamelodi parents, and as part of South Africa, to pursue, without discontinuity, the endless search for Mamelodi's original values it has so much contributed to the overall values of South Africa, Africa, and the World.
The leadership collective of the Mamelodi Heritage Institute, under the stewardship of LOLO Mojela, should be curated into an asset through which the unfolding story of Mamelodi is to be told. As it would be noticed, this rendition, whilst I tried to exit it as a person, has been personal. There must surely be much more to be said than the mere recounting of an incident: about the loves and hates of my people; their desires; their poverty and affluence; their achievements and failures; their diligence and idleness; their cold indifference and enthusiasm; their sense of the comic; their full-throated laughter and their sense of the tragic with its attendant emotional sobs and ostentations signs of pity
CUT!!
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