James Mpanza

James Mpanza
Born	15 May 1889 Georgedale
Died	23 September 1970 Orlando
Residence	James Mpanza House
Nationality	South African
Known for	"father of Soweto" and founding a party

James Mpanza (1889–1970) was convicted of both murder and fraud but he became a squatter leader in Johannesburg, South Africa from the mid-1940s until the late 1960s. In 1944 he led the land invasion that resulted in the founding of modern Soweto. Mpanza was at one time known as 'the father of Soweto'.

Mpanza was born on 15 May 1889 in Georgedale, today part of Cato Ridge. His father Ventile Mbihlana Mpanza, an ox cart driver, and his wife Evelyn had four children but their eldest son died before manhood. Mpanze studied until year 6 at Georgedale Primary School before qualifying with a third class teaching certificate at Indaleni in Natal. He was a clerk and interpreter at a solicitors office when he was eighteen, he was convicted of fraud in 1912. He came to notice when he was convicted for murder in 1915 of an Indian shopkeeper called Adam. He appealed his own case arguing that he was somewhere else at the time. He was reprieved but he still had a life sentence. He served thirteen years in jail moving from place to place as he misbehaved and attacked warders. At Cinderella prison in Boksburg at the end of World War One he became a Christian and wrote a short book on his ideas and began preaching to his fellow prisoners.

In 1927 he was released and he made his living by teaching in Pretoria before he moved to Johannesburg. Here he would ride a horse thorough Orlando giving rise to an air of eccentricity.

He held public meeting at his home in Orlando and in April 1944, despite being seen as controversial, he persuaded 8,000 people to follow him from Orlando to create a new township called Sofasonke Township with himself as unofficial mayor. By 1946 there were 20,000 people squatting there and Mpanza charged a fee to join the camp and to claim a site and then there was a fee of two shillings and sixpence every week. In return the squatters had their own police force. Mpanza operated informal courts at his Orlando home where family disputes could be settled. Conditions however were poor and there was no health service. The death of Mpanza's son, Dumisani, was put down to poor medical care. The squatters had left the slums of Orlando but their plight will still not certain and Mpanza got the nickname of "Sofasonke" ("we shall all die") as he added his opinion of their outlook if they had no help. It was this rhetoric that got him the nickname but it also encouraged the funding necessary to convert this shantytown into the town of SOuth WEstern TOwnships" or Soweto. It was not just rhetoric however as he used his loyal following to create supportive candidates for the Orlando Advisory Board.

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