Soweto residents: ‘Ramaphosa is like Zuma, they are all the same’

Charles Molele

President Cyril Ramaphosa returned to the dusty streets of Chiawelo, Soweto on Wednesday morning, a place where he used to play football with other runty street urchins and proposed to little girls with lollipops.

The wind whistled through the township, sirens rang across the township and a South African Police Services (SAPS) helicopter hovered in the sky while an Onyx black drone flew over the school where the president was to cast his vote.  

In Chiawelo, a town created by the apartheid regime to house Tsonga and Venda-speaking people, residents pushed journalists and their camera crews aside, shoved and jostled to take pictures with Ramaphosa, requesting him to stop and smile, shake a hand and sign an autograph.

Despite the onset of the winter chill, residents of Chiawelo emerged from their renovated four-roomed matchbox houses to greet their neighbour who later became a famous lawyer,