Emeka Nwandiko
It is 1pm and a muezzin issues a wailing call to prayer from a mosque in Dlamini. The faithful come from all around – Klipspruit, Rockville, Meadowlands – to give praise to Allah. But being Muslim in Soweto requires more than His Mercy.
“It is difficult to be a Muslim because people think we’ve been colonised by Indians,” says Salama Motsoatose, a Sotho woman who converted to Islam in 1971.
This perception is hard to dispel considering the number of coloured and Asian Muslims – half-a-million – in South Africa. African Muslims will just manage to fill Odi stadium with more than 43 000 faithful, according to Statistics South Africa.
Little wonder passers-by cast curious glances at the Dlamini mosque which has a crescent moon and star on its roof. They are bemused by the greetings of “Asalaam-hu aleikum [Peace be upon you]”, punctuated with “hita” and “sharp, sharp”.
Motsoatose admits that she too fell prey to South African stereotyping of one of the world’s largest religions as an exclusively “coolie thing”. She might have been surprised to learn that there are about one billion Muslims worldwide and that for about three centuries African Muslims have chanted “Allah-hu-Akbar [Allah is great]” – from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east each time they pray.
In 1971, Motsoatose lived with a Muslim family for a month before realising “Islam was my religion”. Her second husband, Amanat Zwane, converted out of love for her last year.
Motsoatose says she told her husband-to-be that she would not change her beliefs. And to make sure he understood the message, she uttered the declaration: “You can leave.” He asked what Islam was all about.
A hankering for traditional values and discipline in a township racked by violence and crime saw 18-year-old Thabajubula high- schooler Suriey Mohlau end her life of “jiving” by converting to Islam.
Her mother – a non-Muslim – had given her a wake-up call: cruising the streets of Klipspruit in a tight pair of jeans and a flimsy blouse would end in tragedy.
Now dressed in a dowdy green burkha (a long gown that reaches down to the shin) and matching trousers, Mohlau talks of her previous life of sin. “I had no respect for elders or for anyone.”
One of her friends mischievously reveals, much to Mohlau’s embarrassment, that Mohlau changed boyfriends like they were going out of fashion. Mohlau says that she “is happy” with her new-found religion.
Last Sunday, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki called on all churches to do something to repair the nation’s damaged soul. But Omar Ali, or Safiso Ngwenya as he prefers to be known, thinks Christian churches are not the cure but the curse exacerbating the moral bankruptcy afflicting society.
Ngwenya, a diminutive figure with large sparkling eyes and all of his incisor teeth missing, says his Anglican parish priest did little to help his marital problems at home.
After he was fired from his job as a labourer in 1990, Ngwenya’s home became a virtual battlefield. He constantly fought with his wife about how money, which she earned, should be spent.
He became a heavy drinker just before he was fired. “I drank at work, I drank before coming home from work, even at home I would drink.”
But he found little assistance from his priest. “Some of my friends who presented their drinking problems to the priest were rebuffed. In fact, the priest was drinking with us in the shebeen!”
Ngwenya says that since he has become a follower of Islam he has stopped drinking, but he is not comfortable with the change of his name: “Safiso is such a lovely African name why should I change it?”
One of Motsoatose’s twin sons, Abdulazeez, says his Muslim name is tolerable. “If you pray, you pray directly to God not through a messenger as is the case with ancestral worship. That is what is happening in Soweto. People connect spiritually through their ancestors. If they have bad luck they slaughter a cow and all that stuff.
“Islam says you must connect directly to with God. But people in Soweto have a wrong idea what it is to be a Muslim.”
Abdulazeez’s twin brother Abubakar agrees: “Kafurs [non-believers] think Islam is about praying for money, others think Allah was once a rich man.
“By wearing a topee,” he says gesturing to his crocheted skull cap, “they think I have joined the coolies.”
Abdulazeez says he understands why black non- believers mock him. “Most blacks don’t like Indians. As employers they do not treat blacks fairly. They exploit us. Blacks wonder why we are following an Indian church. Last year I worked for an Indian as a manager of a grocery store in Devland. He made me do everything – sweep the floor, clean toilets and he didn’t pay good money.”
Yaqoob Sipho, who converted to Islam in 1986 while in standard four, says the religion taught him that all “before the eyes of Allah are equal with no notion of superiority of white over black”.
Sitting with his arms spread out on a settee at his Dlamini home, the 25-year-old finds Islam does not cramp his style: “I do go out to watch soccer. I don’t go to parties unless it is that of a close friend.”
There is, however, one major problem facing Muslims living in Soweto: access to halaal meat. “We have to travel 15km to get meat,” says Motsoatose.