Shoppers Hail New Monument to South African Liberation

Nelson Mandela opened Soweto's latest monument to liberation yesterday, but few of the people pouring through the doors of the huge new shopping mall took much notice of the corner reserved for those who died to make it all possible.

The glitzy glass and steel Maponya mall, modeled on a London shopping center, is the first of its kind in the township, which was the crucible of the uprising that rocked the foundations of apartheid.

Alongside a Woolworth's and a Toys R Us, the first toy store chain in the township, there are locally-owned boutiques, hair stylists and a diamond shop among the 200 stores. The £47m complex also has Soweto's first multi screen cinema.

To some the mall reflects the liberation from racial oppression seen in the uplifting of much of Soweto, from a neglected dormitory town for cheap black labor to an increasingly thriving Johannesburg suburb transformed by investment, public works and a growing middle class. Wasteland has been turned into parks. Property prices are rising and new homes are replacing squatter shacks.

But to others, the sprawling shopping center also represents a disturbing obsession among young South Africans with the pursuit of wealth that is in stark contrast to the values of the liberation struggle.

The mall was built by Richard Maponya, a Soweto businessman who made a fortune in the garment industry. At the opening yesterday he said there was a time when the apartheid regime regarded him as a temporary resident of areas ultimately claimed for "white" South Africa.

"When I wanted to open a shopping mall in the township 20 years ago I was reminded by the powers-that-be at the time that I was a temporary sojourner in the city of Johannesburg. I was also reminded that I belonged somewhere in a corner of South Africa, but I never tired to keep on knocking on doors to get permission to build my dream," he said. "When I saw Soweto people getting into taxis, getting into buses and trains to go to shop in the malls in the cities, then I said Soweto people need a mall exactly like all other suburbs as you can see elsewhere in the city."

More than 1 million people live in Soweto, about 40% of the population of greater Johannesburg, but the township accounts for less than 5% of the city's economy.

A Johannesburg council study concluded that Soweto residents spent 80% of their income outside the township - nearly £600m a year lost to the local economy. Mr Maponya says he wants to keep Soweto money in the township.

But increasing numbers of middle-class Sowetans have decamped to the Johannesburg neighborhoods once reserved only for whites under apartheid laws, and you do not have to venture far beyond the mall's confines to confront the harsh realities that many in Soweto still face: high unemployment, violent crime, overcrowding and poor schools.

The mall commemorates the liberation struggle with a statue of Hector Pietersen, the 12-year-old boy shot dead by the security forces on the first day of the 1976 Soweto uprising that marked the beginning of the end for apartheid.

But yesterday that seemed to matter little to the hordes drawn to the mall - seemingly as many gawkers as shoppers with some people saying they could not possibly afford to shop there.

"Look at the prices here," said Alice Motswe as she wandered among the food shelves. "This is a lot more than we pay here in Soweto. These are white prices."

Back story

Soweto is short for South West Township. It originally housed laborers taken to Johannesburg to work in gold mines. After the National party came to power in 1948 it expanded rapidly as black people were removed from Johannesburg under apartheid law. Soweto was the crucible of the student uprising that began in 1976. Hundreds died and thousands were imprisoned, but the uprising marked the beginning of the end for white rule.