The police and firefighters were there in an official capacity – this was required by the permissions process – but in an interesting twist, because of the packed streets they went from being observers to being performers, along with the musicians and onlookers. When we arrived at the new community park, the Boys Brigade walked onto the stage and played their music. This was followed by speeches, then music, dance, and poetry performances – by a traditional singer named David, the percussion ensemble Mosueo, the Kopano Dance Theatre, rappers Griffin of Milk Farm and Laurence King Bee of Galaxy Records, a poet named Alfred, and DJ Bonko, who rounded out the festival with digital music. Heavy rain in the early afternoon prevented several scheduled performers from being there, but in a way this turned out for the best, since in their absence people from the community took the stage and claimed it as their own with their own performances. (Not everyone was included, however: young children unaccompanied by an adult were told they would have to go home at dusk.) That day, all of Ubuntu Park was alive with people socializing – braaing, dancing, talking with friends, or just being part of a special community event called the Soweto Street Festival.
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The Soweto Street Festival is a Performative Action
The Soweto Street Festival was a performative action made by and for the people who live in Soweto. The strength of a performative action is its role as mirror. When the residents looked at the festival, they saw an image of themselves that was one of openness, curiosity, happiness, playfulness, and strength. The mirror said: “This is who we are.”
It was a place with no name: a plot of land that had been designed as a public space in the 1950s but never made it that far; an area people called “the space between Letsatsi Street and Herby Mdingi Street, next to Donkey Church”, defined only by the places around it, not by what it was itself. After the Soweto Street Festival, it was a community-organized public space. It was a place – owned and operated by the community.
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The Soweto Street Festival is a Ritual of Transition
The Soweto Street Festival was a ritual of transition, an act by the residents of reclaiming the space for themselves. Before the Soweto Street Festival, this was a no-man’s land, a dumping ground, dangerous and filthy.
It was a place with no name: a plot of land that had been designed as a public space in the 1950s but never made it that far; an area people called “the space between Letsatsi Street and Herby Mdingi Street, next to Donkey Church”, defined only by the places around it, not by what it was itself. After the Soweto Street Festival, it was a community-organized public space. It was a place – owned and operated by the community.
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The Speech
Paulina, the principal of a local kindergarten and a member of the Ubuntu Park Committee, gave a speech at the opening of the Soweto Street Festival. She stepped onto the platform and said: “This is Ubuntu Park. Before, it was hell; now it is paradise.”
Hell was the past – where nothing ever changed, where residents were suffering without any end in sight. Paradise was reclaiming a space for the community – a place – and reclaiming the idea of a future. In Soweto, Ubuntu Park made a break with the status quo, a break with the endless hell. After more than forty years of doing nothing – an aimless time we referred to as something out of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – we and the residents together transformed a failed public space/dumping ground into a community-organized public park. An important part of the ritual of transition were two performative actions that helped the residents reclaim the space: cleaning up the park area and staging the Soweto Street Festival. An equally important, defining moment came when the former no man’s land was given its name. Paulina was the first person to call Ubuntu Park by its name in public. That day the community understood that their position had changed – from one of dependence to one of self-organization. From that time on, the local residents began holding community meetings on their own, with a cordial invitation to us to attend if we wished.
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Design for the Living World, HFBK 