‘Alex not a place to live in’
Music legend Mbulu, exiled for over 20 years, laments the state of black townships
LEGENDARY musician Letta Mbulu, whose first visit to Alexandra after being in exile inspired her hit Not
Yet Uhuru, says the township remains “a sad place to live in”.
“Alexandra was not what it is today. I remember it as a clean and very beautiful township. People loved themselves. The yards were always swept and clean. Regardless of the bucket system, they always cleaned their toilets and you could eat inside them,” recalled Mbulu.
She said that when she went to exile in 1964, the township did not have it all, but it was a place one could live in, “until I came back from exile to the messy and sad place”.
The singer was reacting to last week’s service delivery protest, #AlexTotalShutDown, which saw the township engulfed in flames. The ANC and the DA crossed swords and failed to take any responsibility for the neglect under their administrations.
The 75-year-old Mbulu came back from exile in 1991.
“For me, that’s when things started to fall apart. My husband came to fetch me at the airport and we went to his home in Alexandra. The moment I set foot there, I saw a place I have never seen before. The streets were crowded, poverty was written on people’s faces. You could see they were frustrated, the whole place was messy, and I couldn’t comprehend,” she said.
Mbulu said her husband drove her around the township the following morning, and “the whole place looked like there was a war.”
She said when she got home in Soweto, everything had changed.
“I looked around the place, and everything that was happening there didn’t sit right with me. My mind began to record. I sang what I saw. That’s how Not Yet Uhuru came about. Alexandra was part of the song but the state I found Soweto in is what inspired the song. My people were suffering and I felt a need to express my emotions and what was happening at that time through a song,” Mbulu said.
After years of the song being released, Alexandra seemed not yet to have got its freedom.
Mbulu recalls: “There was money that was allocated by former president Thabo Mbeki to help resuscitate the township. But the more money was allocated, the more Alexandra looked even more dilapidated. It’s getting worse.
“I have a family in Alexandra. But it’s hard for me to go visit there and be happy. There are people living in the streets and on the road. Children drown in the river because of the government’s negligence,” Mbulu said.
She believes that the government should have done something about the situation a long time ago.
“The government has tried to build RDP houses in some sections, but they are crumbling. No human being deserves to live like that. Looking back at where we come from as a country, we should not have people suffer like that. If there is someone to blame, both the ANC and the DA should be blamed.”