In the heart of Soweto, the vision of one man, local activist Mandla Mentoor, together with the energy of the community have transformed the hill of Somoho from derelict land into a haven for art work, tree-planting and celebration.
On Monday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan climbed Somoho through a buzzing crowd, to receive a declaration from the ‘Children's Earth Summit.’ He told them: "The place where we are gathered is a world summit in its own right. It's always my encounters with young people like you that give me reason to hope for the future... we all share the same ancestry. What unites us is greater than what divides us."
During the final years of apartheid, Mandla Mentoor worked with children in his backyard to create painted sculptures from paper, bottles and scrap metal. From this humble starting point he created the Mountain of Hope and has now set about restoring the wetland system that runs through Soweto township.
Somoho was the perfect place for the 100 children of the Children's Earth Summit to deliver their declaration to the Secretary General. While governments have been bogged down by disagreements at the conference centre in nearby Sandton, a hundred children from around the world, including India, Lesotho, South Africa and the UK, have been debating how young people can lead the way. And they arrived at a consensus.
"Our summit will spark increased awareness of children's vision of the world," explains Vikram Aditya, one of the Earth Summit children from India. “Their problems, their solutions and their common vision."
Their declaration focuses on the five issues of basic rights, education, health, pollution and poverty. It includes the wish to see certain things in schools worldwide, including inspirational and knowledgeable teachers, a firm foundation of environmental awareness from an early age and safe and friendly working environments.
Somoho is the ultimate friendly working environment – and more. At the top of the hill Annan, his wife and the primatologist Jane Goodall were lead to a long table adorned with trinkets and toys. Mentoor rallied the crowds with chants of "ta ta ta." He described how the Mountain of Hope was there to "create meaningful connections between local people, outside visitors and the surrounding environment."
And how columns of tyres standing at the bottom of the mountain, which during the apartheid years had been used to turn people into human torches, "now symbolise the process from disaster to freedom...from horror to hope."
A group of children danced a gum-boot dance, stamping and clapping in over-sized wellie-boots.
"This is an amazingly wonderful and exciting day," said Jane Goodall, who has recently been made a UN Ambassador for Peace. "It's the most exciting thing that has happened during the Summit in Johannesburg. It's a real, real symbol of hope."
After the speeches Annan planted a tree on the top of the hill while the crowd sang. Then he was whisked down the mountain and driven away in a cavalcade of white Mercedes to his helicopter. But the excitement lingered.
"It means so much that he has come here, he's a very special man," said a grinning Humbulani Mulaudzi, 21. Her friend, sixteen-year old Innocentia, said, "He cares so much about young people. We always see him on the television but I never thought I would see him face to face."
According to a local security guard, "This is our Mountain of Hope. We want to sustain ourselves. We have no jobs, but maybe our dreams will come true."
Somoho is next to the enormous Avalon cemetery, all funeral processions pass by Somoho on the way there. There couldn't be a better symbol of hope for change.
© GLOBAL YOUTH REPORTERS PROGRAMME
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