Cuna de la resistencia al apartheid, Sowet o es hoy una de las urbes más pujantes de la nación africana. La acogida allí del XVII Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes, será un reconocimiento a su h istoria y un apoyo a la construcción de una nueva nación libre de los vestigios del viejo régimen racista.
rhythm has a name in many colors as the melting pot of cultures that define South Africa. Its streets are still alive the memories of human suffering and humiliation perpetrated by apartheid. He also feels the heat of battle and the stoic resistance against the outrageous black man rooted segregationist policies before the establishment of multiracial democracy in 1994.
Soweto. Anyone would think that this is an African name for its sound. But the word was originally an acronym for South Western Township English (South Western Townships). Located in a vast area, 24 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg known as a City of Gold ", Soweto was, from the beginning, a result of segregation plans. There, the racist dictatorship housed blacks who wanted far from the sprawling Johannesburg which hitherto served as labor in the mining industry.
Many black workers moved to Johannesburg from the fields and other neighboring countries in search of work in the burgeoning South African city that was conspicuous by its rich gold mines.
discrimination was institutionalized in a body of laws ranging from prohibiting mixed marriages or "unlawful sexual immorality"-designated as an act "immoral" and "indecent" - between a white person and an African, Indian, or "color." Blacks, in order to pass through areas that belonged exclusively to whites, they should have some sort of pass, a permit to justify their presence where they were forbidden by law disgraceful. Cradle
rebellion
While towering white suburbs by its splendor, the black townships like Soweto did so the very poor and miserable way of life, slums, lack of electricity, potable water facilities ...
injustice, oppression, abuse, tyranny, inequality, the shame ... many exploded ingredients pot rebellion. Soweto became the cradle of resistance and political movement against the apartheid regime.
The Nelson Mandela met there unwavering fertilizer to feed their nationalism and consider a new destination for South Africa.
Student protests were the fuel that speeded up and launched a national movement against absolutism racist culminating in the burial of the white dictatorship. On June 16, 1976, a few thousand elementary and secondary students took to the streets in the black township of Soweto suffered to protest the imposition of the Afrikaans language (a mixture of English and Dutch) in schools, something totally absurd and irrational, because the black population did not speak that language.
Their demands were aimed at an inclusive education system and racist, in which blacks would receive training to perform duties in the service of whites, and against the poor state of health of their neighborhoods.
The magnitude of repression against students, that day is remembered as one of the saddest in the history of South Africa. With stones and sticks, using them as shields lids of garbage cans, young people faced a police officer were shot with bullets. The fateful balance amounted to 572 dead suckers.
That's how Soweto became news for many newspapers. Hector Pieterson, a 13 years old, fell dead in the arms of his companion Mbuyisa Makhubu. The picture went around the world. To remember those events, each June 16 South Africa celebrates Youth Day (Youth Day), which this year shocked with equal force, although the southern nation at that time hosted World Cup.
Although Soweto was the main focus of the struggle against apartheid, the movement spread to other neighborhoods and cities where strikes were carried out and boycotted white businesses to demand an end to racial oppression and exclusion.
In the ghetto, the South African leader Nelson Mandela found support from many other revolutionaries who, like him, struggled to banish white domination and to build a free and democratic society with equal rights for all regardless of skin color.
Today, Soweto is still as hot as in those years of intense fighting against the racist regime. Only now the excitement has different causes. Although
toppled apartheid, the strong labor movement and South African students and progressives do not drop their dreams of equality and social justice. Their support is for a government led by the historic Congress Congress (ANC) and accompanied by the Communist Party and the Confederation of Trade Unions (COSATU), is working to banish the remnants of disgraceful apartheid and build a new nation. It is not easy way, especially since many of the great national treasures remain in the hands of foreign multinationals.
With the advent of multiracial democracy in 1994 and the triumph of the popular voice represented by the ANC, the face of Soweto, and South Africa in general, began to change and today, in a suburb rather than marginal, emerges as motor of one of the most vibrant cities in South Africa, Johannesburg.
In 16 years, many South African families have dejado las chabolas para vivir en hogares decentes, con servicios de electricidad y agua potable, y se incrementan las garantías y programas sociales para los sectores vulnerables.
La lucha continúa. Ahí están los briosos sindicatos y organizaciones juveniles, enfrascados en la lucha por la nacionalización de las minas y otros recursos del país, lo cual permitirá al Gobierno disponer de mayores riquezas para invertir en la solución de las deudas sociales y los vestigios del apartheid.
Recientemente, la ciudad fue una de las más visitadas durante la Copa Mundial de Fútbol. Ello sirvió para abrir los ojos de muchos que creían, por obra y gracia de algunos medios de comunicación, que Soweto was a neighborhood forgotten by the ANC. The sporting event was an opportunity to discover not only that suburb has an impressive history, but still a lot of hope.
Welcome to the Festival this December
When young people committed to the future and a world united in peace, come to South Africa from different parts of the world to rethink and articulate new forms of struggle against imperialism "the common enemy of our peoples, are recognizing the strength of this nation and its desire to build a multicultural and multinational social project of peace, based on the defense of its sovereignty and social justice.
No wonder some of the activities of the XVII World Festival of Youth and Students will be held in Soweto, a city overflowing with love for Nelson Mandela and Fidel, two living legends that marked the destiny of Africa.
The appreciation of these lands to the Cuban Revolution has done everything according to the welfare of these people is immeasurable. Recently, a young Cuban who had been in Soweto told me to appear as a Cuban in the neighborhood, or anywhere in South Africa, is to be welcomed as a brother.
One of the tracks from that trip he remembers with particular fondness is his encounter with a grandmother who, learning that he came from this land for development, held him while he spoke of an incomprehensible way, probably in a dialect. A sentence, however, understood perfectly, "Viva Fidel Castro." And those words are so common there, as admiration for the Cuban leader in Africa.
The next Festival will not only excites the most progressive youth of the world, but also of the ANC and South African leaders who provide support for the event. Welcome home imperialist appointment of this magnitude is for many of them remember those years when the condemnation of apartheid and colonialism, the defense of truth and fight for the release of Mandela, the heart always found a friend of the Festival.
* Images taken from misionmundial.com.ar Soweto, except the historic photo that shows the young Hector Pieterson died in the arms of a fellow .
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