Soweto Archives - MICHAEL O. ALLEN

VISIT TO SOWETO_INSIDE THE NECKLACE Pointless deaths but real victims

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers, Wednesday | April 6, 1994

SOWETO—He was an unidentified man, a weekly newspaper reported, and lucky for him that the police and paramedics came along when they did.

He was walking past the Dube Hostel, a decrepit barracks-like encampment where the so-called Zulu royalists live, when a man from the hostel came up and shot him in the face as the day sank toward night.

“Bastards!” he screamed, through his fractured jaw.

But the shooter and some other Zulu royalists were not finished. They wrapped the man in plastic, put him in a cardboard box, doused the box with gasoline and set it afire.

May 4, 2009

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VISIT TO SOWETO_A tormented past, uncertain future Poverty, violence crowd out hopes

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, April 10, 1994

SOWETO—Seeing this famous black township brings to mind ruins of war, of battle just done.

On nighttime approach—home to the Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and Tswana tribes—the flames of random trash fires send millions of sparks into an eerie sky heavy with the stench of rotting animals.

This is Soweto—land of misery, despair, and heartbreak, of senseless deaths, crushing poverty, frightening crime and urban squalor.

Funeral parlor owners have the most lucrative business, the most beautiful homes and affluence that rival that of Johannesburg’s wealth white suburbs.

May 3, 2009

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Blacks live in N.Y.—that’s no put on

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers | Monday, April 11, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—This is a time and a city for keeping a journal:

Yes, Princess, New York is in the U.S.A. and black people live there.

Most black South Africans have had little contact with American blacks, so little that Princess Mgwebi, a security officer at a hospital in the black township of Soweto, was astonished last week when a black reporter from New York introduced himself.

“I didn’t know there are black people in New York,” she said.

Told that indeed black people live in New York and all over the U.S., her jaw dropped. “New York is part of the United States?” she said, wrinkling the vertical facial scars that indicated she was of the Ndebele tribe.

“Yes, and many blacks live there.

“Well,” Mgwebi said, not entirely sure she was not being put on. “I know there are blacks in the United States because that is where Michael Jackson is from, and I know he is black.” Read More

May 2, 2009

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S. AFRICA IS EYING THE PRIZE

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, April 24, 1994

SOWETO—With rousing gusto, Nelson Mandela and some 60,000 frenzied supporters celebrated the approaching end of a bitter journey yesterday here in the place where their freedom quest began nearly 20 years ago.

They did the toyi-toyi, the dance of celebration. They sang songs, waved placards, set off fireworks and hoisted a coffin bearing the words, “Farewell Apartheid.”

April 26, 2009

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DEMOCRACY MAY BE FACING A DIFFICULT BIRTH

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Sunday, April 24, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—After living much of her life with the perverse indignities of apartheid, voting in South Africa’s historic first all-race elections this week comes down to one thing for Louisa Rakale:

“I’ll vote if somebody comes to take me to the polling station,” the 85-year-old Soweto grandmother said.

By the reckoning of racial separation laws that governed their lives, Rakale and her sisters Jeanie Khali, 86, and Alsie Makgamele, 87, were born “colored” to a white (Scottish) man and a black (Xhosa) woman.

April 25, 2009

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CASTING OUT APARTHEID: White Rule Dying Amid Ballots

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Wednesday, April 27, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—Filled with indescribable emotions, South Africa’s liberation hero, Nelson Mandela, will vote today for the first time in his remarkable life.

Mandela, the former political prisoner poised to become the first president of the new South Africa, is set to vote in a school founded by one of the men who preceded him as leader of the once-banned African National Congress.

“There are certain feelings one cannot express in words. . . . What I feel is beyond words,” he said yesterday while meeting with a world press corps here to witness the death and rebirth of a nation.

April 22, 2009

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NATION HEADS TO POLLS: South Africans Turn Out in Force in 1st All-Race Vote

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Thursday, April 28, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—Their freedom finally at hand, millions upon jubilant millions of blacks voted for the first time yesterday and began sending the last colonial outpost on the Africa continent into the history books.

On an epic day of stirring images across South Africa, the newly enfranchised experienced the joy of democracy—and discovered that democracy is not always easy or pretty.

The turnout was so great the nation’s election machinery—assembled only four months ago—broke down at numerous points, prompting much controversy and raising the chances of a disputed outcome and renewed strife.

Most of the breakdowns occurred in the distribution of ballots—not enough in urban areas, too many in the countryside—and election officials began printing 5 million more ballots for today’s last day of voting.

Trying to defuse the crisis and assure everyone the opportunity to vote, officials declared today another national holiday and vowed to keep the polls as long as voters are in line.

“Every effort is being made,” President F. W. de Klerk said. “This election is the most historical event in the history of South Africa. We must make it a success.”

April 20, 2009

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NATION HEADS TO POLLS_Family Steps Out of Shadows

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Thursday, April 28, 1994

SOWETO—As dusk turned to dawn on the historic day, Wilson Gwala forgot about his bad heart and his recent kidney problems, and refused to wait.

Someone was supposed to come take him to the polls later in the day, so Gwala — an apartheid lifetime of arrrets and detentions now behind him — could vote in an election in South Africa for the first time. But sunlight streaming through his tiny home was a symbol too powerful to ignore.

“It seemed like it was the first time the sun rose over Soweto,” the 70-year-old grandfather said, “like I was seeing the sun for the first time, like someone peeled the scales off my eyes, like I was born again.”

April 19, 2009

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Harlem Rev Snubs de Klerk

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Thursday, April 28, 1994

SOWETO—The preacher from Harlem paid no mind when the president from Pretoria made a surprise visit to a church here yesterday.

While dozens of people, including some of his fellow American preachers, crowded around South African President F. W. de Klerk and even shook his hand, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker of the Canaan Baptist Church stayed to the side.

“How can you shake that man’s hand?” Walker asked members of the group here with him to observe the first election in this country in which blacks have been able to vote.

April 18, 2009

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NEW CHALLENGES FOR A NEW NATION: Sharpton Sees Lesson in South Africa Voting

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers | Sunday, May 1, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—After a whirlwind, emotional visit, the Rev. Al Sharpton flew home to New York yesterday with stars in his eyes.

“If only I could bring home in a bottle the hope and spirit I saw here, it would change New York politics forever,” said Sharpton, who’s challenging incumbent Daniel Moynihan for the U.S. Senate democratic nomination.

April 14, 2009

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