While we will not forget that we come from Soweto, we will\nalways remember that the township is a monument to dispossession, white racism\nand mass removals <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soweto and its devastating inequality, injustice, drnkeness,\nrape, theft, murder, over crowding, exploitation and dispossession is our\nHistory<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We do not want to celebrate this History of dispossession,\nrejection and self hate<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We want to take what we can from this bludgeoned existence that\nis our past<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what is our Heritage ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We moved to Diepkloof in the early 1960s when my parents\nsuccumbed to the apartheid jackboot of forced mass removals in Sophiatown and\nAlexandra<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They got tired of slum life and allowed apartheid to hurl them\ninto the dry and barren Diepkloof matchbox house <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We want and have chosen the love, warmth, kindness and family\nbonds that kept us united and sane u der dreadful conditions to be our Heritage\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our Heritage is the triumph of the human spirit where both my\nparents, who worked menial jobs, had the courage to wake up to go serve our\noppressors <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our Heritage is the moral strength and spiritual resilience they\nshowed in the face of this brutality that failed to break their spirits <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were very small and unimportant people who, respectively,\nwere a messenger boy and tea-girl, as they were called in those days <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the Heritage they gave and left us was to be fearless and\nbold and have the courage to face and overcome small minds<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, Lord help us, we have come across many in the course of our\ngrowth and development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know our History.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Above all, we know our Heritage<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all History IS Heritage<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what is YOUR heritage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While we will not forget that we come from Soweto, we will always remember that the township is a monument to dispossession, white racism and mass removals Soweto and its devastating inequality, injustice, drnkeness, rape, theft, murder, over crowding, exploitation and dispossession is our History We do not want to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sandilememela.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}