THE City of Johannesburg has approved a plan for the creation of a Soweto Heritage Precinct, which will take in important historical sites - including the Hector Pieterson Museum

November 2, 2004

A PLAN for the creation of a Soweto Heritage Precinct, which takes in important historical sites in Orlando West in particular, has been approved by the City of Johannesburg.

South African and international tourists, as well as local people, have responded enthusiastically to the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, which opened two years ago. Several tourism students are even undertaking research in the museum archives.

Hector Pieterson Memorial

Now the City is keen to capitalise on this enthusiasm by developing a heritage walking trail to take in several significant sites close to the memorial and museum.

The sites - with the Hector Pieterson precinct as the focal point - will be linked by interpretive plaques and panels, public art and arty paving to form a walking trail.

The trail will probably start at the Zeth Mothopeng house in Maseko Street, move up Pela Street, passing the Anglican Holy Cross Church and Belle Primary School along the way. Then it will cross Khumalo Street into Moema Street, before heading up to Vilakazi Street, where two significant South Africans - Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela - have homes.

Mothopeng, a PAC member and a key figure in the liberation struggle, had links to the Anglican Holy Cross Church, as did Tutu.

Tied to the precinct are memories "rooted in the recollections and memory of the local residents of the events of June 16, 1976". On this day Soweto erupted and schoolchildren clashed with the police - one of the first deaths being that of Hector Pieterson, who fell to the ground after being shot. He was picked up by Mbuyisa Makhubu, who ran down Khumalo Street with him in his arms and headed for Phomolong Clinic, accompanied by Pieterson's sister, Antoinette.

The schoolchildren had been marching to the Orlando Stadium for a meeting when the police intercepted them and opened fire. An element of the plan will be to complete the march symbolically.

The trail will take in the house of the Sisulu family, which might be used as "a centre for oral history, a repository of the Soweto archive and the Hector Pieterson Museum arm of civic engagement".

Priority will be given to the Mandela Family Museum in Vilakazi Street. This house was occupied by Mandela in 1946, when he moved from the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg with his first wife, Evelyn Mase. When that marriage dissolved, Mandela brought his second wife, Winnie, to live in the house.

"The house reconnects with the older generation of the 1950s, some of whom went to Robben Island," says Ali Hlongwane, curator of the Hector Pieterson Museum. Over the years the museum has become rundown and is now in urgent need of refurbishment.

A number of bodies have been consulted about the precinct plan: the South African Heritage Resources Agency, the Soweto Heritage Trust, the June 16 Foundation and the national departments of tourism and planning.

Soweto - a sprawling conglomeration of homes and shack settlements about 20km southwest of the city - has about 890 000 residents, according to the census of 2001.

In the past five years Soweto has seen a massive increase in tourism numbers.

The recently approved Soweto Tourism Development Plan proposes a range of interventions to grow the township's tourism potential, among them in-house training for guesthouse owners, more aggressive marketing and branding, tourist buses, improved signage, and brochures and guidebooks.