INTRODUCTION

The homes of Walter Sisulu, Bishop Desmond Tutu and former President Nelson Mandela are celebrated in this historic suburb, and the 1976 Soweto uprising is very much present in the memories of residents and visitors alike. But not much is known about the day to day lives of those who live there today.

The streets of Orlando West show the imprint of time. The houses modelled on the NE 51/9 (matchbox) design were the characteristic form that emerged on the South African landscape as apartheid got underway. In some photographs, the original houses built in the 1940s and 50s – or thereabouts – survive, virtually unchanged in all this time, while others have been renovated and altered; their facades are an image of the ways in which Soweto and the residents themselves have changed over time. Photography, as Bronwyn Law-Viljoen reminds us, ‘is a marker of change, a maker, in profoundly ambiguous ways, of history’.

During the course of the project we documented this changing landscape. Together with Sakhile Mthebela (himself a resident of neighbouring Mzimholpe, and the best of photographic companions), my modus operandi was to walk the streets and speak to the residents, who frequently invited us inside their houses. Not many photographers have this opportunity, which makes real its people and testifies to the generosity of Orlando West residents. [This overlaps with but does not visually reproduce the text of this volume.]

Many of the houses here have been passed down from generation to generation: the Theku family on the corner of Vilakazi and Khuele streets are renovating their house to accommodate their extended family; Mrs Dominica Nomsa Modirapula, and Mrs Neo Masike have lived in their houses for decades; and the Ndlovu family have lived in their house since 1949. This is a place called home. In the suburbs of Johannesburg we hardly know our neighbours. We rarely talk to them. Instead we greet them from our motor cars when we pass by. Here people walked, and they greeted each other. Significantly, what remains here is the life of the street, a feature that is strikingly absent in the walled suburbs of Johannesburg.