Europe Correspondent Brett Mason in South Africa
“Come! Dance with me my brother!” screams a gyrating man in his fifties, wearing cargo shorts, an ill-fitting tweed jacket, beret and the biggest smile I have ever seen.
This is Soweto, 8:00 am on June 16. It's Youth Day.
And the 1.3 million locals – about one third of Johannesburg's population – are ready to party.
There's a DJ mixing music on the back of a flattop truck, his deafening tunes explode from six of the biggest (and worst-secured) speakers I have ever seen.
A group of drummers rises to the eager crowd's encouragement, playing so frantically they drip with sweat, while brightly dressed school children giggle as they spin and twirl in the street.
Hundreds “play” along excitedly with their plastic vuvuzelas, a reminder of the 2010 World Cup and my first visit to the chaotic maze of brightly coloured homes that together form the heart of the Rainbow Nation.
The man's barefoot mates clap and cheer as I awkwardly try to mimic my instructors' impossible dance moves, twisting and shaking my entire body on our dusty dance floor outside Naledi High School.
I have come here to meet the former student whose arrest locals believe ultimately sparked the Soweto riots of 1976.
Enos Ngutshane was detained at school on June 8 after writing a politely worded letter to the education board to complain about the forced teaching of Afrikaans in schools.
The assembly area is now named in his honour and his mural greets students as they stand neatly to attention each morning.
“To the regime I was a criminal. Not a person or a student,” he told me.
Within half an hour of touring the schoolyard where young boys fought with the police in a bid to stop them from arresting their classmate, I began to realise an uncomfortable truth.
There are some in this community who resent, even dislike, Nelson Mandela.
“It seems as if on Robben Island it was only President Mandela alone” says Robert Soga.
“And he was not alone. There were many others, like myself.”
The 57-year-old tells me he spent 15 years in exile after joining the anti-apartheid fight.
He is angry that so much emphasis has been placed on one “soldier” when many other freedom fighters still seek justice.
“All the President gives, it just goes to him. What about us?”
“At the end of the day I am behind and my children are just hungry. It's always Mandela, Mandela, Mandela. What about my family? Nothing.”
In the nearby Regina Mundi Church - a safe haven during the apartheid years and where many of the Soweto Riot victims were laid to rest – locals gather for the annual Youth Day speeches.
“I get very disturbed every time I listen to the radio, watch TV and read a newspaper and we are told that the nation must pray for Mandela,” says Pan Africanist Youth Congress of Azania spokesman Sello Tladi.
“What is special with Mandela that is not special with the ordinary man in the street of Soweto?”
“Mandela is not the only longest serving prisoner from Robben Island. He betrayed us by rubber-stamping the 1913 Land Act through the adoption of Freedom Charter.”
“The problem with the Freedom Charter is that it made African people to be landless.”
“He is greedy as well because we have the majority of poor people dying of various diseases because they have no access to the expensive medication that Mandela is receiving.”
African National Congress spokesman Keith Khoza told a newspaper in response that history has proven that Nelson Mandela served the people in the best way possible.
“History will judge him and his words” he said.
While I've spoken to dozens of South Africans who share these frustrations, they are drowned out by the many millions who have been praying for the ailing 94-year-old.
In the very spot where he was arrested 37 years ago, I ask Enos if the fight was worth it.
“Oh, it was worth the fight” he answers emphatically.
“We fought very hard, some of us. We were in exile for 15 years. Today we've got a democratic Government that has addressed all those issues that we fought against.”
For some, like Robert Soga, that fight continues.
WATCH Brett Mason's report: Remembering the Soweto uprising
