{"id":1663,"date":"2025-07-26T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/?p=1663"},"modified":"2025-07-29T00:11:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T00:11:01","slug":"taking-back-the-soweto-night-with-nomsa-mazwai-and-rapsody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/26\/taking-back-the-soweto-night-with-nomsa-mazwai-and-rapsody\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking back the Soweto night with Nomsa Mazwai and Rapsody"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Friday I walked for nearly 3km through the streets of Jabavu in Soweto from 8pm to 10pm on a winter night in July. That might sound crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

I was part of a group of 100 people and along the way we chanted and sang with Karabo Ya Morena, a youth choir from Soweto that were part of our parade. At the front of the crowd, leading us through the streets and keeping the energy up, was Nomsa Mazwai, the originator of Soweto Night Out. At every stop she would yell out \u201cFunk it, I\u2019m walking!\u201d and the crowd would yell back \u201cLet\u2019s walk to freedom!\u201d <\/p>\n

What were we thinking, you might ask? Well, partly it was a unique way to celebrate Nelson Mandela Day. But it was also a chance to meet American Grammy award-winning musician and respected emcee Rapsody, who was in the country working on her next album and who joined in on every step of the way.<\/p>\n

For most of us, the journey started in Rosebank, where we boarded a bus courtesy of the organisers, which was really appreciated because it muted any worries about transport from Soweto back to town, especially after a long night out.<\/p>\n

We arrived at Soweto Theatre where we gathered on the front steps and enjoyed a welcome performance by the youth choir while people clamoured to get their photo opportunities with our illustrious American guest \u2014 including yours truly, because there\u2019s nothing wrong with pausing work mode to have a fan moment.<\/p>\n

After that we started our walk, accompanied by members of the community policing forum, walking up and down the Jabavu streets with white banners with \u201cSoweto Night Out Tours\u201d written on them at the back and front of the procession.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we like to say about ourselves is that we are an alternative protest,\u201d says Mazwai. \u201cWhen you look at us in the street, we look like a protest, but we\u2019re not. We\u2019re a business. Everybody there is making money. We\u2019re solving the unemployment crisis in South Africa. We\u2019re solving the crime crisis in South Africa. It\u2019s a drop in the ocean. We are not government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were the government, it would be far greater impact, but we are not. So we are doing what we can, where we can, in the ways that we can do it. And this is just one of the ways that we do it. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we are a performance to the community of the possibilities of safety because we\u2019ve shown communities that there is an economic value to safety and we\u2019ve unlocked it for the communities that we work in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The origin of these walking tours, which Mazwai now hosts for paid groups of at least 20 people on request, stretches back for more than a decade, when she returned to South Africa after living abroad for years in places such as New York in the United States and Newcastle in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love walking, and I\u2019ve lived in other parts of the world where I walked everywhere, any time of day, all the time,\u201d says Mazwai. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when I came back, I realised I was feeling down because I wasn\u2019t getting to walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

So she said, \u201cFuck it, I\u2019m walking!\u201d <\/p>\n

Mazwai even wrote a Facebook post about how she wasn\u2019t going to let anything stop her from walking around as she did when she lived abroad. It was a friend who encouraged her to make the slogan more child-friendly and so she started saying \u201cFunk it, I\u2019m walking!\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

At first it was an activist movement that would mobilise walks in support of various causes such as for water with the World Wide Fund for Nature. <\/p>\n

But when Mazwai left her job at the Soweto Theatre, where she had spent five years as the general manager, she decided to set her mind to building #FunkItImWalking into a business.<\/p>\n

Mazwai put years of research into developing it into a sustainable social enterprise, drawing on her background in economics as a Fulbright alumna with an MA in international political economy and development from Fordham University in the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a while but eventually we zeroed in on what our mission or intention was. And it\u2019s that #FunkItImWalking aims to make it safe for a woman to walk at any time of day, in any condition. And how it does that is by thinking about sustainable businesses that enable women\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I am an activist woman, I have been part of the marches and the seminars where we call the president to come and account. I\u2019ve been part of all of those things and they\u2019ve yielded zero results. The talking has yielded nothing. There\u2019ll be a law that\u2019s passed. Then they say they\u2019re opening centres but the material condition on the ground has not changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think for myself, I believe that\u2019s because South Africa decided to be a neoliberal country and it decided to follow that economic policy. That economic policy puts capitalism at its centre. It sees capitalism as the answer. And capitalism puts money above all else. And so it became very clear to me that if I wanted to enjoy safety as a woman, it had to make economic sense,\u201d says Mazwai.<\/p>\n

After leaving Soweto Theatre, we first made our way to Kwa-Khaya Lendaba, the late great Credo Mutwa\u2019s cultural village. Once we entered the compound it was so dark we had to use our phone lights to guide our steps. I asked my friend if we weren\u2019t absolutely sure we weren\u2019t being led to a mass sacrifice.<\/p>\n

\"Sethmazibukoandrapsodybyarthurdlamini2\"
Seth Mazibuko, a June 16 Soweto uprising leader, talks to Grammy winner Rapsody<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fortunately, there were no sacrifices, and it turned out to be worth the journey. Once we got to the centre of the compound we sat around the bonfire and listened to Zamalek Giza, a rasta sage, tell us about the life of Credo Mutwa and the fables about creation and the universe.<\/p>\n

After that we hit the road again, walking past the notorious Jabulani flats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Jabulani flats are one of the most dangerous parts of Soweto,\u201d says Mazwai. \u201cI\u2019m sure people have read about them a lot in the news. There\u2019s always drama there, but there\u2019s never drama when we do our night tours because our CPOs [community policing officers] are within the community and the community understands the value that we\u2019re bringing into that community.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur night walks are incident free to this point. In addition to that, we also work with the Seth Mazibuko Foundation, which is a heritage and youth development-focused foundation. So where we are very focused on women\u2019s safety, they are very focused on youth employment as well as heritage. And so working with Seth, we then started incorporating heritage sites into the routes. Now, because of the way communities have welcomed our work, the museums also came on board and they open at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

We made our way to the June 16 Memorial Acre, which opened after hours just for us.<\/p>\n

And then finally we walked to Native Rebels, a restaurant and our last stop of the night. It was there where we sat down to watch the main attraction \u2014Rapsody in conversation with the legendary activist Seth Mazibuko. <\/p>\n

While some may have initially thought Rapsody would be the one answering questions, it turned out she was interviewing Mazibuko. Their conversation touched on a variety of themes including activism, youth engagement, Pan-Africanism and the future of South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see Rapsody as a voice of the youth,\u201d says Mazwai. \u201cShe has built a career that is very conscious, very grounded, and wholesome, and I love that. And so I believed that for Rapsody to level up, she really needs to hear from somebody who changed the trajectory of an entire nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like myself and Rapsody are soldiers on the same battlefield, fighting on the same side, you know, for the lives and the livelihoods of young black people and for black people and brown people all around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so when I spoke to her, I said, \u2018You know, Rapsody, a lot of young people don\u2019t know Seth Mazibuko, and you don\u2019t know Seth Mazibuko. And so I want you to ask questions that you would ask Seth Mazibuko. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I don\u2019t want to tell you what to ask him, because what I want you to do is to ask him the questions that young people in South Africa are afraid to ask because they don\u2019t want to look stupid.\u2019 I wanted young people to watch their hero not know and be so willing to know and be so fearless in asking because Rapsody has that skill of not being afraid to ask. She wants to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The night ended at about midnight, and I boarded the bus back to Rosebank feeling physically tired but spiritually uplifted and inspired. It was the kind of night that reminded me what\u2019s possible when people come together with purpose, creativity and a little bit of courage. <\/p>\n

In a country where safety is too often a privilege, not a right, a night out reminded me that joy, community and economic opportunity can carve out new paths through even the most neglected corners of our cities. Walking through Soweto in the company of song, story and solidarity, I felt like we weren\u2019t just remembering the past. We were actively imagining a better future. And for a few beautiful hours, it felt within reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Friday I walked for nearly 3km through the streets of Jabavu in Soweto from 8pm to 10pm on a winter night in July. That might sound crazy, but it was actually a lot of fun. I was part of a group of 100 people and along the way we chanted and sang with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}