Many whiteys prefer Soweto to Sandton. Tangeni Amupadhi and Thokozani Mtshali talk to the township’s paler inhabitants
Soweto’s majita (the guys) wave at Rudolf “Thokozani” Blignault as he travels the township selling coal for household use.
Blignault is well known in large parts of the country’s biggest township, not only because he works there but because he is a Sowetan – a white Sowetan.
He is among a growing number of white South Africans opting for life in the township, largely for economic and cultural reasons.
Instead of renting a room for R400 a month in Hillbrow, for instance, you can pay as little as R50. Some rent fully furnished rooms. Others must be content with small backyard shacks without cement floors.
But they say it is better than the suburbs. In the suburbs, which are dominated by whites, says Blignault, there is no sense of community spirit.
“When the umlungu [whitey] sees you suffering, they don’t even give you a bottle of water,” says Blignault. “They’ll just watch you die. Here [in Soweto] people will help you.”
That is the overriding reason Blignault moved from the northern suburbs to live in some of the poorest parts of Soweto.
He was desperate when he moved here several years ago, but at 29 Blignault finally feels he has found a place to settle. Living in Soweto, he is convinced, has put an end to the nomadic lifestyle he became accustomed to from the age of six. He has tried living in Witbank, Pretoria, Botswana and Namibia.
Blignault, who shows an excessive exposure to the sun, stops the company truck and jumps out to share his story: he was born in Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg.
When his parents disappeared, he and six siblings were placed in an orphanage. He joined the army at 16, but says he was bored by the time he completed his two years’ national service. He was married before he turned 20, but the relationship did not last.
It was in 1992, while working as a welder and truck driver in Booysens, that he met a friend from Soweto. He says he found it hard to work for white bosses “because they are behind you all the time like policemen and they are stingy”.
Blignault says he asked his Sowetan friend to take him home to Soweto since he could no longer afford living in Sunninghill, Sandton. He had been sharing a house with white colleagues.
Blignault boasts of working for a black man. He says experiences with fellow whites – a divorce, bad bosses and treacherous friends – has left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I liked Soweto immediately. I will never leave this place. They will bury me at Avalon cemetery.”
His friends are in Soweto. Sifiso Radebe is Blignault’s best friend and colleague: “When I first saw him I thought he was a policeman because it is unusual to see whites in Soweto,” said Radebe. “But when I kept seeing him I realised he lived here, in Seneoane.
“He is a very nice person. But he is moody when he has not smoked dagga. When we are free we get together and have a zol.”
He has settled well. Blignault has a 10-month-old baby girl with Mpulukeng Moloi, whom he met in Seneoane almost two years ago.
“I met him at his work place, but I didn’t take him seriously,” says Moloi. “I never expected a proposal from a white man, although I used to see him around. But he found out where I lived and started coming here. Then I just told myself it’s a new South Africa.”
It’s the new South Africa for Lalavuka Gideon Strydom too. He was a hobo in the suburbs of Durban. Two years ago a good Samaritan brought him to Soweto where he now lives like anyone else. Even without a full-time job he never starves as he used to.
People like Sipho du Preez were attracted to Soweto for cultural reasons. He was chronically ill with what was diagnosed as epilepsy. Sangomas told him to join their profession, saying chronic ailments were a sign of a calling.
Since enrolling as a sangoma student two years ago, he has not had a seizure. Now he is too happy in Meadowlands to go back to Yeoville.
Says Du Preez: “You get freedom here – to beat the drums, to dance and to slaughter a goat. People in the suburbs don’t understand, they freak out.”
According to Du Preez, he used to get stared at by people in the township because he is white and involved in sangoma practices. But whites living in Soweto are welcomed by the Sowetans.
It took a while for the Du Preez family to accept his change of culture, however.
Contrary to the general perception, crime is the least of a white Sowetan’s worries.
Many of them say they feel safer in Soweto than in town. “Soweto is quite peaceful. There is a sense of community here,” says Du Preez.
Blignault says many whites enjoy living in Soweto, particularly because it is easy to get a job. But he could not explain the absence of white women.