In Soweto, a South African who celebrated history is mourned
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 9 months AGO
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Benedict Somi Vilakazi had been surrounded by history.
His grandfather was South Africa’s first black lecturer at Witswatersrand University and produced an English/Zulu dictionary, enormous achievements in a country then divided sharply by race. The most famous street in Soweto shares his name, and two Nobel Peace Prize winners — Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu — lived along it.
Vilakazi was proud of that past and put a mural about his grandfather in his coffee shop that was popular with tourists and locals alike.
Some of them gathered, carefully, keeping a distance and many wearing facemasks, on Thursday to mourn the 57-year-old Vilakazi, who died of COVID-19. The pallbearers wore full protective suits.
“Somi knew how to welcome people, serve them a nice coffee and make them laugh,” said his cousin, Sipho Vilakazi, who has a gift shop next door. “So many people will miss him. Our family, our neighbors and many others.”
The coffee shop is located by the Hector Pieterson Memorial, a landmark of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, the previous regime of racial oppression.
“Somi took great pride in telling people about the history of the family and Soweto,” his cousin said.
Vilakazi had taken the coronavirus threat seriously, observed precautions while serving customers and closed the shop well before South Africa went into lockdown on March 27, family members said.
He died on April 11, leaving a wife and two children.
South Africa has confirmed more than 2,500 cases of COVID-19, and more than 30 deaths. Its nationwide lockdown was imposed relatively early and is credited with helping to control the spread of the disease, bringing the daily average increase in cases down from 42% to 4%.
Health experts warn, however, that the disease is expected to continue to spread in the country of 57 million, especially in the crowded, often low-income townships surrounding Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria.
Those townships include Soweto, the most famous of them all.
“We pray that we will all stay safe and healthy,” Vilakazi's cousin said.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.