By Nomsa Mazwai
A class of grade one learners is gathered on the playground of a multi-racial private school in Apartheid South Africa. In a swarm of jubilant innocence, a single raisin colour head peers over, her voice weaving its way through to conduct this symphony, sounding the tomorrow freedom promised. I am told, by my beloved father, that voice is me. Evidently, from the age of six, there was a leader in me.
In less than a year, I would experience life's greatest loss. My mothers’ death. Barely seven years old, I wrote a letter to be buried with her, it read, 'Mama, I can spell SAID'. Our last days together had been her dotingly frustrated that I could spell everything and yet this simple word alluded to my brilliance. I still report. Mama, I value being accountable.
The next years would be spent bound to my father. Now singularly responsible for my upbringing, he moulded me by rewarding good behaviour. I actively sought opportunities to be honest. I would wiggle with glee if a cashier gave me the wrong change, an opportunity to make twice as much from my dad, as I knew he would reward my honesty. Makes me wonder, what if government employees were rewarded for doing well, and not just rewarded for doing… even if they don't.
I endured a complex trauma. A 25 years long torment that led to me living with my grandmother who diligently internalized education as the only way to ensure that escape from this abuse was possible. I found refuge and nurturing in boarding school at St Andrews and went on to the University of Fort Hare, alma mater to leaders like Mandela, Sobukwe, Nyerere and Magxeke. Fort Hare flourished my proclivity for service and I was voted in as the first female SRC president. A Fulbright scholarship award took me to Fordham University in New York to complete an MA in International Political Economy and Development. Fulbright, also sat me at a table with the Prince of Asturias. What an escape!
In New York, I discovered my love of walking. I did not know at the time the impact of walking. It took a return home to my country, followed by a residency in Newcastle (UK), another walking city. The chiaroscuro of the walking experiences exposed our inability to walk in South Africa. Thus, on my last day of the UK residency, I took to Facebook and declared, when I get back to South Africa, no matter what, #FunkItImWalking.
Enabling the ability for every citizen to be able to walk without fear in this country will release the spells that bind this nation of broken socio-economic promises.
#FunkItImWalking began as a protest. I walked with students against the auctioning of Steve Biko and Arthur Timol’s autopsy reports. #WalkingInHeels with SWEAT and Sonke Gender Justice for the decriminalisation of sex work. I walked with women mentors and youth mentees, connecting young professionals with female titans of industry in the #100MentorWalk. I walked with the WWF to remind all of us that water doesn’t come from a tap in the #JourneyOfWater. I walked from the peaks of Pietermaritzburg, breathing infantile air blowing from the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. I drank the blue elixir of life directly from mountain springs. I walked along “dump-esque” river banks that now shamelessly froth through all South African human settlements. I watched sewer water tango dangerously close to reservoirs and tanks of drinking water, reminded that water doesn’t come from a tap.
I began to develop #FunkItImWalking and its purpose. To make it safe for a womxn to walk at any time of day in any condition. Womxn, an inclusive identification for vulnerable groups in this country including the LGBTQI+. We are living in a constant and unending nervous condition.
As I walked to work in Soweto, I often imagined the probabilities of a #SafeSoweto.
I visualized the densely populated Soweto anew. The volume of the working population justifies a 24 hour formal economy, even if at first only at the end of the month when queues visibly snake around the many malls. When government offices struggle with capacity, when hospitals and clinics are known to overflow. Extending the working day in Soweto fills a half empty economic glass with new nocturnal job opportunities.
I examined the tourism economy in Soweto, arguably the biggest local employer, and yet this economy goes to sleep after dark. Pre-covid, Soweto was attracting 300 000 tourists per year, majority of them whom do not sleep in Soweto, nor enjoy Soweto’s vibrant nightlife. There is just cause for galleries and historic monuments to operate at night… sometimes. I remember one of my favourite activities in New York, First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum, where thousands of millennials explored a culturally expressive evening experience in the iconic museum. The South African tourism value chain creates more jobs than the mining industry with considerably lower barriers to entry. Safety, the ability to walk, is the fertilizer that nourishes this national industry. Tourism has the potential to unlock countless opportunities, especially for women entrepreneurs. Women dominate the tourism industry in numbers; this would enable their growth in status, too.
I continued to walk in Soweto and as I walked, my senses assaulted by mushrooming illegal dump sites, gushing fountains of burst sewage pipes and general litter, I cast my mind to the parent who is frustrated that their child in unable to access opportunity, condemned to unemployment, dangerous despondency and crippling drug addiction. To access opportunity, one must be an experienced day dreamer, mentally fit to imagine with dare. Walking daily through filth and squalor does not inspire, it stifles and strangles the imaginations of young people as they are preoccupied with keeping human waste off their school shoes.
On this long walk, the programs of #FunkItImWalking were revealed to me. #FirstThursdayNightWalk a variety of night walking tour experiences in Soweto that incorporate:
a June 16 1976 related heritage site,
a shebeen stop for a quart of world renowned South African beer and
dinner at a bespoke Soweto Restaurant… the well kept secrets.
#SowetoSaturdays, a national call to action to do something that benefits your community, the collective, for just one hour. Through #SowetoSaturdays we pick up litter, clear illegal dumping sites sustainably and renew schools the Saturday in January before they open.
We are who we have been waiting for. #FunkItImWalking, let's walk to freedom.
Nomsa Mazwai is the founder of #FunkItImWalking.
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