Time to build Soweto brand

Toby Chance

Its very name resonates with South Africa and the world, as a symbol of defiance, inspiration, deprivation and hope. Says Toby Chance, managing director of Adele Lucas Promotions, organisers of the Soweto Festival Expo, "South Africa's struggle history is synonymous with Soweto - names such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Hector Pieterson, as are its previous apartheid images but fast-forward a generation and how things have changed."

Unlike Brand South Africa, whose custodian, the International Marketing Council (now renamed simply Brand South Africa), is a private-public partnership between the presidency and big business, or corporate or individual brands, such as Coca-Cola or Tiger Woods, which are meticulously managed by their owners, Brand Soweto has been appropriated piecemeal by all and sundry and does not have a recognised, legitimate owner.

As a geopolitical entity, Soweto is 'owned' by the City of Johannesburg, but little, if any, thought has gone into how the brand relates to or stands apart from its mother city (sorry, Cape Town). Soweto does not even have a logo, though perhaps, the Orlando Towers silhouette is the closest it gets to this.

Malls need to develop Brand Soweto

This begs the question, what needs to happen for Brand Soweto to emerge? To answer this question one first needs to take a look at the treatment of its past.

Much has been achieved since 1994 to preserve and promote Soweto's heritage. The Hector Pieterson Museum, the Vilakazi Street precinct, which takes in the restored Mandela home, well-known restaurants Nambitha's (recently renamed Vilakazi) and Sakhumzi, Freedom Square in Kliptown (home of the 1955 Freedom Charter) and the Orlando Stadium - these are all iconic brands in themselves, collectively contributing to Soweto's urban fabric but missing a central theme linking them to the superior brand.

Much has been written about the transformation of Soweto's retail landscape, with malls like Jabulani, Protea and Maponya bringing Sandton to the kazi. "But a Black Diamond, if he happens to still live in Soweto, with R40 000 to blow on new clothes, still goes to Sandton or Hyde Park," comments Wandi Nzimande, creator of lifestyle brand Loxion Kulca.

The malls are certainly a convenience for Soweto consumers for their everyday shopping, but less has been said about the devastating effect they have had on small retailers who have been priced out of the market.

Have the malls had a positive impact on Brand Soweto? They have added glamour and modernity, certainly, and a sense of pride among Sowetans that they are no longer seen as marginal to the mainstream economy. But wouldn't things be even better if some of the products for sale in these malls were actually made by Sowetans, so they could boast about their creativity as manufacturers and not just shoppers?

Expo grows the brand

After much resistance from organised business in Soweto, which reckoned the show was encroaching on their territory, the Soweto Festival Expo is now a joint venture with the Greater Soweto Business Forum and this year will feature over 400 small and micro businesses in the exhibition and training programme, sponsored by the Wholesale and Retail Seta.

Because of its growth, this year's event moves to the Joburg Expo Centre at Nasrec, now regarded as being part of Soweto. Next door, the FNB Stadium hosted last year's 'Soweto Tri-Nations' game against New Zealand, so keen was SARU to bask in the glow of Soweto's brand. These two events, staged in venues that just two years ago would never have dreamt of having a Soweto label, reveal the gradual evolution of Brand Soweto out of the ghetto and into the wider world, a world eager to embrace it.