The people behind some of the new street names

● Legendary jazzman “Bra Don” Tshomela lived for a time on NY 65 after moving to Cape Town in the early 1950s.

He performed with a number of groups throughout his career, and was a fixture in the blossoming District Six jazz scene, performing with artists such as Dollar Brand and Jimmy Adams. Tshomela died of stomach cancer in June 2004 at Groote Schuur Hospital, aged 73.

● Self-taught artist Gladys Mgudlandlu was born in 1925 in the Eastern Cape. She moved to Gugulethu in the mid 1940s, where she worked as a teacher. When Mgudlandlu was posthumously awarded the order of Ikhamanga by President Jacob Zuma, her citation read: “Under very difficult conditions Mgudlandlu practised her art uncompromisingly to become one of the first black women artists to exhibit their work in public.” The panel that considered her name said she is regarded as one of the foremost exponents of expressionism in South Africa. She died in 1979.

● Christopher Piet, Mandla Mxinwa, Godfrey Jabulani Miya, Themba Mlifi, Zola Swelani, Zabonke Konile and Zanisile Mjobo were killed by police in an ambush in early 1986. In 1996 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony about their deaths from policemen and their families. In 2005 a memorial was built in Gugulethu in their honour on the spot where they were killed. ● The panel said NY 120 would become Shaka Street in “honour of the titanic founder of the Zulu nation, and also in support of the principle of non-tribalism”. Shaka, who through diplomacy and war forged and then greatly increased Zulu power, was assassinated by his half-brothers in 1828. ● US exchange student Amy Biehl was killed by a group of youths in Gugulethu in 1993. At the time she was studying at the University of the Western Cape’s Community Law Centre. In 1998 four men were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for their roles in her killing.

Following her death, her parents set up the Amy Biehl Foundation, employing two of her killers, Mongezi Manqina and Ntobeko Peni. ● Jolobe was a Xhosa poet who compiled an English-XhosaAfrikaans dictionary. The panel said his name was chosen “in honour of his contribution to African literature”. Jolobe was a prolific writer of poems, essays and books. An expert linguist, he also translated works from English into Xhosa.

PICTURE: ROGAN WARD LEST WE FORGET: The Gugulethu Seven Memorial was unveiled in 2005. The seven men died in a police ambush in 1986.