Sore Fire Town. We were moved.

The Sophiatown Arts Festival has been running for the last 3 years in public parks, institutions, private houses, restaurants, and online. The last station at the #39 Steps house in Sophiatown, gave birth to the canvas painting titled Sore Fire Town. We Were Moved. Created by the multi-instrumentalists jazz icon Malcolm Jiyane in 2021, the stretch of work was finally launched on the 19th of March 2022 at the Dr. AB Xuma museum house, Sophiatown.

We had planned to launch it on the 9th of February 2022 at the same venue, to commemorate the 67 years since the forced removals. But our efforts to obtain it were inconclusive due to several reasons. So instead of facing it out with the bureaucracy politics of it all, we made use of the public park in a #Playback Theatre workshop with the people of Sophiatown. We are radical softies like that. ..

The Sophiatown Arts Festival is a name in the streets of the suburb that has always stood by its values of inclusivity, respect, and perseverance of our cultural heritage and history. Since 2019, the collective has gathered individuals, organizations, and even institutions to collaborate in the spirit of cultural exchanges and various community social initiatives. I’ve personally learned that with practical knowledge, and exposure to foreign customs and cultures, we leave a greater impact, and influence on the people that visit our installations. 

South Africa came from a racially and classically unequal society in which an entire community was uprooted and relocated without prior warning. They were then dropped at a new home address that took them almost a month to cram whenever they returned home late in the evenings. That was Meadowlands for the residents of Sophiatown, Cape Flats for the residents of District 6, Occupied Palestine and Israel residents with many other communities whose basic human rights were, and are still violated.

Malcolm Jiyane explores the stories of the relocation as they happen on the canvas Sore Fire Town. We Were Moved. He depicts the Thursday Morning on the 09th of February 1955 with the bulldozers, police vans, the rushing of feet, and huddling of furniture inside large trucks. It is the details that inspired us ultimately to set in motion the educational function side of it. 

By creating a puzzle set for pupils and cultural practitioners to use in schools or domestic leisure. But first, we launch the canvas. ..

The launch took place on the 19th of March 2022 at the Dr. AB Xuma museum house which is a house close to the collective. It was special for several reasons for it is where most of us had met for the first time. It has also been over 3 years since we last held an installation since our launch in 2019. That’s excluding a 2021 lunch symposium we organized with the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS) to commemorate Drum magazine's 70th anniversary, as well as the discontinuation of its print media medium. 

After announcing the date of the event within 3 days, we received an overwhelming number of responses to it that we had to think about the limits of the house and the law. The hours to prepare as we only had access to the house for a couple of hours of the day.

A blessing in disguise was the absence of power in the main house because we didn't need much use of it. We got the little we needed by connecting an extension cord through to the security guard’s room at the back, which he got from the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Center (THMC). Once we charged our devices, the self-amplified speaker was playlisted with favorite tunes and the team was back home again.

The THMC and the Dr. AB Xuma house museum are enclosed in the same fence, but separated by an open garden that was once a wall. This created a large shared space where the two buildings could gather under the trees of the garden.  

By the time the guests trickled in to mingle and chat with each other, the music had awakened the ghosts of Kofifi who echoed within the open garden, and the walls of the 2 storey building of the THMC.

We welcomed our guests from all the corners of the community, city, and country with some fresh popcorn, drinks, music, and then later a biryani dish that went to dazzle our guests. We had invited past and present residents of Sophiatown from Soweto such as the poet laureate Sol ‘Sol-Rah’ Rachilo who also shared a few tales of his own about his experiences in Sophiatown. We were joined by the local youth who had set up their hookah pipes corner under the largest tree. 

I felt obliged to let them know that we were about to begin as Mbali Zwane, the Eyethu Fashion and Tours operator was rendering to the people a Sophiatown poem. It was our queue to begin the launch where we presented ourselves to the guests, as well as led everyone inside the house where Malcolm and the Trio had already set up.

We walked inside a candlelit empty sitting room with chairs set 1 meter apart from each other, and as well the 2nd living room. The candles were set along the walls and wooden window panes of the house. The wooden floor crackled as we walked along it to find a seat or a place to get a better view of the canvas and the jazz cats. A few battery lights lie on the bottom of it as we wait for Katharina Fink, and Yavini Naidoo pulls down the curtain of the canvas in front of the people, and Malcolm and the Trio.

The gents were joined by Urban Village vocalists Tubatsi Moloi and percussionist Kgontse Makhene who turned the house on fire. It was only the bass guitar that needed power as the rest was a trumpet, trombone, drums, and a grand piano. The house was moved, the people sang along and some had to listen through the windows Malcolm and the Trio took us through his album, Umdali.

Sore Fire town. We Were Moved was opened to the public, and now hangs at the Dr. AB Xuma house museum in Sophiatown, Johannesburg.