Taking back the Soweto night with Nomsa Mazwai and Rapsody

This past Friday I walked for nearly 3km through the streets of Jabavu in Soweto from 8pm to 10pm on a winter night in July. That might sound crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun.

I was part of a group of 100 people and along the way we chanted and sang with Karabo Ya Morena, a youth choir from Soweto that were part of our parade. At the front of the crowd, leading us through the streets and keeping the energy up, was Nomsa Mazwai, the originator of Soweto Night Out. At every stop she would yell out “Funk it, I’m walking!” and the crowd would yell back “Let’s walk to freedom!” 

What were we thinking, you might ask? Well, partly it was a unique way to celebrate Nelson Mandela Day. But it was also a chance to meet American Grammy award-winning musician and respected emcee Rapsody, who was in the country working on her next album and who joined in on every step of the way.

For most of us, the journey started in Rosebank, where we boarded a bus courtesy of the organisers, which was really appreciated because it muted any worries about transport from Soweto back to town, especially after a long night out.

We arrived at Soweto Theatre where we gathered on the front steps and enjoyed a welcome performance by the youth choir while people clamoured to get their photo opportunities with our illustrious American guest — including yours truly, because there’s nothing wrong with pausing work mode to have a fan moment.

After that we started our walk, accompanied by members of the community policing forum, walking up and down the Jabavu streets with white banners with “Soweto Night Out Tours” written on them at the back and front of the procession.

“What we like to say about ourselves is that we are an alternative protest,” says Mazwai. “When you look at us in the street, we look like a protest, but we’re not. We’re a business. Everybody there is making money. We’re solving the unemployment crisis in South Africa. We’re solving the crime crisis in South Africa. It’s a drop in the ocean. We are not government.

“If we were the government, it would be far greater impact, but we are not. So we are doing what we can, where we can, in the ways that we can do it. And this is just one of the ways that we do it. 

“And we are a performance to the community of the possibilities of safety because we’ve shown communities that there is an economic value to safety and we’ve unlocked it for the communities that we work in.”

The origin of these walking tours, which Mazwai now hosts for paid groups of at least 20 people on request, stretches back for more than a decade, when she returned to South Africa after living abroad for years in places such as New York in the United States and Newcastle in the United Kingdom.

“I love walking, and I’ve lived in other parts of the world where I walked everywhere, any time of day, all the time,” says Mazwai. 

“And when I came back, I realised I was feeling down because I wasn’t getting to walk.”

So she said, “Fuck it, I’m walking!” 

Mazwai even wrote a Facebook post about how she wasn’t going to let anything stop her from walking around as she did when she lived abroad. It was a friend who encouraged her to make the slogan more child-friendly and so she started saying “Funk it, I’m walking!” instead.

At first it was an activist movement that would mobilise walks in support of various causes such as for water with the World Wide Fund for Nature. 

But when Mazwai left her job at the Soweto Theatre, where she had spent five years as the general manager, she decided to set her mind to building #FunkItImWalking into a business.

Mazwai put years of research into developing it into a sustainable social enterprise, drawing on her background in economics as a Fulbright alumna with an MA in international political economy and development from Fordham University in the US.

“It took a while but eventually we zeroed in on what our mission or intention was. And it’s that #FunkItImWalking aims to make it safe for a woman to walk at any time of day, in any condition. And how it does that is by thinking about sustainable businesses that enable women’s safety.

“Because I am an activist woman, I have been part of the marches and the seminars where we call the president to come and account. I’ve been part of all of those things and they’ve yielded zero results. The talking has yielded nothing. There’ll be a law that’s passed. Then they say they’re opening centres but the material condition on the ground has not changed.

“And I think for myself, I believe that’s because South Africa decided to be a neoliberal country and it decided to follow that economic policy. That economic policy puts capitalism at its centre. It sees capitalism as the answer. And capitalism puts money above all else. And so it became very clear to me that if I wanted to enjoy safety as a woman, it had to make economic sense,” says Mazwai.

After leaving Soweto Theatre, we first made our way to Kwa-Khaya Lendaba, the late great Credo Mutwa’s cultural village. Once we entered the compound it was so dark we had to use our phone lights to guide our steps. I asked my friend if we weren’t absolutely sure we weren’t being led to a mass sacrifice.

Fortunately, there were no sacrifices, and it turned out to be worth the journey. Once we got to the centre of the compound we sat around the bonfire and listened to Zamalek Giza, a rasta sage, tell us about the life of Credo Mutwa and the fables about creation and the universe.

After that we hit the road again, walking past the notorious Jabulani flats.

“The Jabulani flats are one of the most dangerous parts of Soweto,” says Mazwai. “I’m sure people have read about them a lot in the news. There’s always drama there, but there’s never drama when we do our night tours because our CPOs [community policing officers] are within the community and the community understands the value that we’re bringing into that community.

“Our night walks are incident free to this point. In addition to that, we also work with the Seth Mazibuko Foundation, which is a heritage and youth development-focused foundation. So where we are very focused on women’s safety, they are very focused on youth employment as well as heritage. And so working with Seth, we then started incorporating heritage sites into the routes. Now, because of the way communities have welcomed our work, the museums also came on board and they open at night.”

We made our way to the June 16 Memorial Acre, which opened after hours just for us.

And then finally we walked to Native Rebels, a restaurant and our last stop of the night. It was there where we sat down to watch the main attraction —Rapsody in conversation with the legendary activist Seth Mazibuko. 

While some may have initially thought Rapsody would be the one answering questions, it turned out she was interviewing Mazibuko. Their conversation touched on a variety of themes including activism, youth engagement, Pan-Africanism and the future of South Africa.

“I see Rapsody as a voice of the youth,” says Mazwai. “She has built a career that is very conscious, very grounded, and wholesome, and I love that. And so I believed that for Rapsody to level up, she really needs to hear from somebody who changed the trajectory of an entire nation.

“I feel like myself and Rapsody are soldiers on the same battlefield, fighting on the same side, you know, for the lives and the livelihoods of young black people and for black people and brown people all around the world.

“And so when I spoke to her, I said, ‘You know, Rapsody, a lot of young people don’t know Seth Mazibuko, and you don’t know Seth Mazibuko. And so I want you to ask questions that you would ask Seth Mazibuko. 

“‘I don’t want to tell you what to ask him, because what I want you to do is to ask him the questions that young people in South Africa are afraid to ask because they don’t want to look stupid.’ I wanted young people to watch their hero not know and be so willing to know and be so fearless in asking because Rapsody has that skill of not being afraid to ask. She wants to know.”

The night ended at about midnight, and I boarded the bus back to Rosebank feeling physically tired but spiritually uplifted and inspired. It was the kind of night that reminded me what’s possible when people come together with purpose, creativity and a little bit of courage. 

In a country where safety is too often a privilege, not a right, a night out reminded me that joy, community and economic opportunity can carve out new paths through even the most neglected corners of our cities. Walking through Soweto in the company of song, story and solidarity, I felt like we weren’t just remembering the past. We were actively imagining a better future. And for a few beautiful hours, it felt within reach.