Celebrating Noordgesig’s history with a prized museum

‘Since when have you heard of kids spending all their time at the local library?” laughs Lavinia Otto, a social activist, teacher and artist who lives in Noordgesig, one of the oldest coloured communities in Soweto.

Since the library opened its local history museum on 24 September, Heritage Day, the kids have been beating a steady path there and staying for hours and hours.

“The museum has certainly delivered,” says Lavinia. “Young children learn by seeing and remembering and it’s captured their imagination, and also the teenagers’.”

The Noordgesig Library is a modern, spacious building with views over the area, which was first settled in the 1950s after forced removals from places like Sophiatown and Vrededorp. It sits alongside a community and sports centre, the local pool and small shops.

There are fabulous murals here, and nearby is the Corridor Link, also known as the Pathway of Success, which connects two streets whose high walls are painted with scenes from Noordgesig’s history. The days when it was semirural with a clean river. The days of beauty pageants, cricket and hockey teams, the great floods of 1978 in an area known as Rock n Roll Valley because there was a train track through it and everyone’s house rumbled as trains passed by.

The idea for a local history museum started a few years ago, says Fabian Otto, Lavinia’s husband, who is also community activist and tour guide. “Parents kept sending their kids to the library asking for information about local history and heroes for school projects. But the library couldn’t assist, so we thought let’s help the community and start a local history space.”

With the assistance of the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, the Ottos went on a week-long tour to the Western Cape to visit some of its community-based museums, like the District Six Museum and the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum in Strand.

Lavinia says the museum has restored pride in the community and benefited the kids and older members. “So many people donated personal items and became part of the process of remembrance. We have also been recording oral history of the elderly. It’s given old people a chance to share their stories and past sadness. The museum has become a place of healing.”

It’s fascinating and poignant. Big display cabinets hold a treasure trove of memorabilia and photographs. The sports section features the boxing gloves, trophies and a gown belonging to the late great Jakes Ntuli, a Noordgesig-born professional fly-, bantam- and featherweight boxer. There’s also a display of the fearsome football teams and women’s hockey clubs of the 1970s.

Two powerful aunties are commemorated: Ma Vee and Ma Glover. Ma Vee, Vesta Smith, was forcibly removed with her family from Sophiatown when she was 18 years old and joined the struggle against apartheid. Despite spells of jail in the Women’s Fort, bannings, detentions and harassment, her spirit was never broken.

Ma Betty Glover opened her home in 1962 to start one of the first feeding schemes in Soweto. It continues to feed about 300 people per day from Noordgesig and surrounds. A skilled gardener, Ma Glover ran her feeding scheme using vegetables from local gardens and was always seen around in her hat and with a garden spade.

There are also simple everyday items on display – crockery and cutlery, old cooking pots, a Primus stove, an ancient metal wash basin, vinyl records (think Percy Sledge and Timmy Thomas), a wedding dress. Poignant reminders of the dispossessed life in the early days of Noordgesig.

Fabian and Lavinia have long been active in trying to uplift and dignify Noordgesig. They worked with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation to put up blue plaques around the area commemorating its people and history. They also offer walking and tuk-tuk mural art tours in the ’hood. DM

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.