Heroics of ‘Toivo’ to come alive in Alex exhibition

The heroic fight to overthrow the apartheid regime by one of Alexandra’s greatest sons will be commemorated in the iconic township from June 11.

This is in the form of an exhibition at Alexandra Museum, formerly known as the Alexandra Heritage Centre or Nelson Mandela Museum. The exhibition is a project of the City of Johannesburg in collaboration with the Wits History Workshop and the Vincent Tshabalala Education Trust, and will be hosted in honour of the prominent Congress of South African Students (Cosas) activist and later MK operative, Vincent ‘Toivo’ Tshabalala.

The exhibition will also mark the 37th anniversary of the death of the man who was famously known as Toivo, after one of the illustrious sons of the Namibian struggle, Andimba Toivo wa Toivo.
Toivo was shot and killed by the apartheid security forces on February 9, 1985, on what is today Vincent Tshabalala Road..
This will be the first non-permanent exhibition at the Alexandra Museum and will feature Toivo’s activism and heroic stand-off against the apartheid forces which inspired student and youth struggles in Alexandra and beyond.

“The exhibition will not only portray his struggles and the unpleasant memories of the turbulent apartheid years but will also help those who were born after the dawn of democracy to understand the heavy price their forebears paid for democracy,” said Percy Ndaba, who is the education officer at the museum and curator of the exhibition.
The aim of the exhibition is also to engrave this history in the minds of the present generation with the hope that they will also pass it on to coming generations, Ndaba told Alex News, adding that the programme will produce an exhibition and a publication-based life history and photographs of Toivo, a former learner at Minerva, then a primary school.

The exhibition will consist of documents, artefacts, photographs and audio recordings and will run until September. It will be accompanied by a programme of public engagements including organised school tours and a media campaign. The exhibition will also create opportunities for public awareness of the history of Cosas, Ndaba said.

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