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But even the usual small pleasures have been denied to many Sowetoans this Christmas. The township is in unofficial mourning for its many hundreds of missing. The mourning period was mounted by students still at liberty in Soweto, as a mark of respect for their absent colleagues. After some initial resistance, Soweto's elders generally complied with leaflets distributed by SSRC calling for a moratorium on Christmas presents, parties, the exchange of greeting cards and any other outward sign of celebration. One group of students went so far as to break up a wedding ceremony as "inappropriate"; since then, many marriages have been postponed. One SSRC leaflet warns "it is on such occasions that liquor is served and people generally tend to be drunk and merry."
Shut Up Shebeens. There is another reason why there was less heavy drinking in Soweto this Christmas—government-owned beer halls and liquor stores, burned down by students last June in protest against white authority, have not been rebuilt. Moreover, yet another SSRC directive demanded that the hundreds of illegal shebeens (speakeasies) close down during the mourning period. After the fire-bombing of a few that stayed open, the shebeen queens (women operate most speakeasies) duly shut up shop, and Sowetoans did their Christmas drinking quietly at home.
Student power, in effect, rules Soweto today. Says David Thebehali, 37, who as chairman of the Urban Bantu Council (U.B.C.) serves as Soweto's unofficial mayor: "The parents were shocked at first by how the kids behaved during the riots. However, a lot of us soon realized that the students were only fighting the battles we should have fought years ago but didn't have the courage to fight. Now the parents solidly support the students, while they don't always agree with the tactics."
Although born and bred in Soweto, Thebehali is not popular there because he is an appointee and therefore considered a stooge of the white government in Pretoria. But he is doing his best to improve essential services in Soweto. Last 26 week Thebehali joined the mayor of Johannesburg in establishing a fund, targeted at $115,000, to help rebuild some of the facilities destroyed last June.
Soweto today is still pock-marked by the burned-out hulks of buildings destroyed in those riots. But Thebehali points out that, shebeens aside, virtually every damaged structure was a symbol of white control: Bantu administration offices, banks, schools, police stations. Useful facilities, like clinics, and privately run cultural centers, such as the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., were purposely spared. The "government claims that the violence and destruction here was mindless," says Thebehali. "But see for yourself what was burned and what wasn't. The kids knew what they were doing."
Thebehali carefully steers clear of politics. Says he: "My job is to provide a better quality of life and better services to the people. I leave it to others to pursue the political role."