For 135 years, Sunlight has lived not only in South African homes, but in the hands that cared for us, the lessons that stayed with us and the everyday rituals passed from one generation to the next. This Heritage Day, that legacy was brought to life at monumental scale on Vilakazi Street, Soweto, through a new mural by South African artist DBongz, created as part of Sunlight Green Bar’s Raised by the Bar campaign.
At the heart of the artwork is an intimate portrait of DBongz as a young boy alongside his grandmother. But around them sits a much bigger story. The people depicted throughout the mural represent the families, communities and everyday figures who shape us, reflecting a simple idea at the heart of Raised by the Bar: who we become is built through the people, places, rituals and experiences that raise us.
For DBongz, that bigger story begins at home.
“My grandmother is at the heart of this mural because so much of who I am started with her. When I think back to growing up, Sunlight was simply part of life. It was there when we were getting ready for school, doing chores over the weekend, even when my cousin used the Green Bar to twist our hair. You don’t think those moments are becoming memories while you’re living them.
“This mural is my way of honouring my grandmother and everything she poured into me, while celebrating all the people who quietly shape who we become. To tell that story through my art, on Vilakazi Street and around Heritage Day, makes it bigger than my own memory. It becomes part of a conversation about where we come from, who raised us and what we carry forward.”
Nothing about these moments felt significant then. That is what makes them significant now.
They are fragments of home. Small memories that, years later, reveal just how much of who we become is formed in the everyday.
Known for large-scale portraiture that brings identity, community and personal stories into public space, DBongz works in a medium uniquely suited to Raised by the Bar. Muralism takes stories that may begin privately, inside homes and families, and places them within the public cultural landscape, allowing communities to recognise something of themselves within them.
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That idea carries particular weight on Vilakazi Street. Once home to Nobel Peace Prize laureates Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the street occupies an extraordinary place in South Africa’s collective memory. Today, it remains alive with art, food, tourism, community and everyday township culture.
Here, DBongz’s deeply personal tribute becomes part of something collective: one family memory surrounded by the faces of community, painted into a street that carries generations of South African history. With the mural positioned right at the street’s main entrance, opposite the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s home.
The collaboration forms part of Sunlight’s 135th anniversary in South Africa and its Raised by the Bar platform, which celebrates the people, places and everyday experiences that have shaped generations.
“For 135 years, Sunlight has been present in the everyday lives of South Africans, across generations, homes and communities. Raised by the Bar is about recognising that heritage through the people and memories that made us who we are,” said Noni Makhanya, Marketing Manager for Sunlight.
Makhanya continues “Art gives those memories permanence. Bringing this story to Vilakazi Street around Heritage Day allows one deeply personal experience to become part of a much bigger cultural conversation. DBongz’s mural captures what this campaign is ultimately about: celebrating the people who raised us, the communities that shaped us and the everyday moments that become our heritage.”
After 135 years, Sunlight’s heritage is not simply measured in time. It lives in the rituals people remember, the communities they come from and the stories one generation carries into the next.
On Vilakazi Street, those memories now have a wall of their own.
