Last night I saw the play, At Her Feet, for the third time, since its opening in 2002. This is the 13th run of the play which was written and directed by Capetonian Nadia Davids and performed by another Capetonian, Quanita Adams, for whom she originally wrote the play.
Essentially the play is about the stories of four Muslim women in Cape Town a year after the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York and, as such, it brilliantly brings to life the stories of ordinary women in Cape Town and the effect of the global incident and its repercussions for Muslims everywhere.
The play starts, though, with the honour killing of a Jordanian girl, plunging us straight into questions of race, religion, culture and gender, which run throughout, coming full circle to end with the lamentations of the dead girl’s mother. This theme also provides the background for Auntie Kariema’s poignant realisation of her own link to the dead girl through her experiences as a young child who had lost her mother.
The portrayal of four very different characters – the young Muslim narrator, the slam-dunk poet, the middle-aged ‘Malay’ auntie and the newly-married Indian-Muslim woman – is so real that I could recognise each one of them.
Each time I have seen the play, it has resonated anew with me, but last night’s performance echoed so many of the themes in my research and, ultimately, is representative of Cape Town, and South Africa, as a whole because of its reflection of the legacy of slavery. This 200-year old heritage was intimately connected to Islam and had a fundamental impact not only on the city but on the country. As such it speaks to a much larger audience and its central themes raise questions of complicity of racism and bias while at the same time offering an empathetic window into a way of life and invites us to find our commonalities rather than our differences.
Last night was special, too, because it was a fundraiser for The Sunflower Centre at Zonnebloem School and Davids, as an alumnus, had donated the performance of the play for that purpose. I was invited by Zephne Ladbrooke of The Otto Family Foundation, who I had met in the car park at a shopping mall earlier this year. I had approached her because of the poster advertising the centre on her car, which led me back to my old school. Accompanying me was Trudy Rushin who I had met when we were pupils at Zonnebloem School for Girls and with whom I had lost contact until recently. So, it was extra special because of connections on so many levels that had not been made when I last saw the play. Life seems to move in circles…
The play, a one-woman, one-act performance, employs music, poetry and dance to bring its characters inside your head until you want to weep and laugh with each character (the small Golden Arrow studio at The Baxter Theatre serves to take you almost right onto the stage with Adams) grappling with the very complicated relationships and questions which they conjure up.
[The play takes its name from the hadith, Paradise lies at the feet of thy mother. A hadith, or saying, is a teaching which guides the behaviour of Muslims. Apart from honouring the role of all mothers it also emphasises the importance of women in society.]
The play is on at The Baxter Studio until 8 December. Do go and see it.
I drive past the wasteland of what used to be District Six, on a regular basis, the few houses, places of worship and the CPUT buildings emphasise the starkness, highlighting what is no longer there. But recently, that emptiness struck me anew. Perhaps it was the viewpoint I had from the school which I had attended so many years ago. As I stood in the car park in front of the chapel on the Zonnebloem Estate, looking down the hill towards the ocean, I was overcome by a sense of loss. Through the gap above the wall where there used to be a gate, was only open field. I remembered the rows of houses that had stood there, the women who had made toffee apples, koeksisters and tameletjies, and the children who ran to buy these offerings through the fence, at break time.
Walking around the school gave me a curious sense of déja vu, of having lived in this space which is not quite the same. The buildings stand where they have stood for decades, but are rundown and in desperate need of TLC, the cobbled stones in the avenue we walked up to the chapel, have been covered by tar, and the school seemed smaller than I remembered. Memories came creeping back like the cobbles emerging from under the tar in places, refusing to be forgotten. Assemblies on the tarmac, Wednesday morning chapel, going home with smudges of ash on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, uniform inspections and sitting at our desks eating our lunch before we could go out to play, because “young ladies did not eat outside”, and walking to the new Art Centre, where Mr Hopley taught.
I think of Zonnebloem as the “family school” – an aunt taught at the boys’ school, my brothers and cousins attended the school and various family members, my father included, had trained at the teachers’ college which is now the high school. Zonnebloem was started in 1858 by Bishop Gray who had started Bishops and St Cyprian’s, both for ‘white’ children, while Zonnebloem initially targeted the sons of African chiefs, “to remove them from heathen and barbarous influences and expose them to the full force of civilisation”. Later girls were brought to the Cape to study so that the boys would have Christian wives rather than “heathen girls”. In the early 1920s, the school concentrated on the training of ‘coloured’ teachers, to promote decency and respectability as the path to civilisation.
Zonnebloem was one of the good ‘coloured’ schools, relatively speaking. When I recently interviewed a past-teacher, she recalled with fondness the ethos of the school, the dedication of her colleagues. She said that the teachers did the best they could to instil pride and a positive sense of belonging. With dedicated teachers, limited resources but a determination to educate children who the apartheid government deemed lesser than, Zonnebloem produced fine graduates, who returned to teach or to give back to the community in other ways. One of these alumni was Jeremiah Moshoeshoe, the son of King Moshoeshoe, who studied there in 1859 and showed such promise that he was sent to study further at St Augustine Missionary College in Canterbury. Another was Harold Cressy who came to Zonnebloem in 1897 from Natal when he was 8 years old. He graduated in 1905 as a teacher at the age of 16 years and completed matric through studying on his own. Rejected by Rhodes University because of the colour of his skin, he was eventually accepted by the University of Cape Town where he became the first ‘coloured’ person to attain a bachelor’s degree. Cressy left a significant mark on education, so much so that the Harold Cressy High School was named after him in 1953.
Bishops and St Cyprian’s continue to flourish as among the top private (mainly white) schools in the province and country, while Zonnebloem’s buildings and facilities slowly but steadily decline … an indictment perhaps, on our post-apartheid society in which little has changed economically, and the most vulnerable continue to suffer. Ironically, Zonnebloem, because of its prime location, has been designated a quintile 5 school, which serves the wealthiest communities and therefore receives the least government funding. It is a state school on private property in buildings leased from the Anglican church. The pupils, however, are from the most socio-economically vulnerable communities and are largely Xhosa-speaking. Children come on buses and taxis rather than walking like I did with my two brothers.
I had not been back to the school since I left in the mi-1970s but was invited to the Sunflower festival, held at the school earlier this year, by Zephne Ladbrook of the Otto Foundation. Ladbrook and her foundation have over the last two years injected pockets of hope into these potentially dreary surroundings – opening a library that doubles up as an aftercare space, renovating two classrooms and erecting a pre-fab building for two more, engaging in various other projects to improve the experience of learners at the school. She dreams of sports fields which would serve not only the schools on the Zonnebloem Estate, but those in the surrounding area, none of which have access to sport facilities. The school is adjacent to land which would be ideal for this purpose but for a number of bureaucratic reasons, is unavailable for development as such.
I find it inconceivable that we still have to motivate for sports to be part of an inclusive programme to develop children and youth. Apart from the obvious health and fitness benefits, participation in sport has been proven to enhance academic and psychosocial development. Children learn so much more than how to play the game when they participate in sport – perseverance, patience, teamwork and building self-esteem are just some of the skills that enhance development into healthy, well-rounded and mature adults. Sport can also play a major role in reducing criminal activity and substance abuse. I would argue that sport should be on an equal footing with language, maths and science, in developing our children.
Above all that, participating in sport provides opportunity to integrate within, and with other, communities, and here is where I see the overwhelming benefits of promoting sport at Zonnebloem that includes the surrounding schools. Ladbrook has swept me up in her vision of communities coming together to play on the Zonnebloem fields. District Six has become symbolic of the forced removals and destruction of communities that occurred during apartheid. How wonderfully appropriate then it would be if the estate were to become a hub of integration in the area, at once addressing the wrongs of the past, celebrating the legacy of the Zonnebloem alumni and shaping a generation of well-rounded individuals for a democratic South Africa. Perhaps this integration and redress will even include St Cyprian’s in the City Bowl and Bishops in the southern suburbs, drawing increasingly larger circles of inclusion and hope.
Potential projects which the Otto Foundation are hoping to complete are:
A new cricket field in partnership with WP Cricket.
A feeding scheme/vegetable garden in partnership with Ladles of Love and Rise Against Hunger.
Fix up bathrooms spaces and provide ‘dignity packs’ for girls in order to restore dignity.
Water storage and maintenance in partnership with SOS NGO; and an upgrade of security
A while back I met an Englishman who lives in South Africa and, detecting a trace of another accent, I asked him where he was originally from. He said that he liked to think of himself as a fine European blend of British, French and Italian roots. I wondered about that – what made him different to someone who might be a “fine blend” of African, Dutch, British and Indonesian roots? Why should the former be claimed with pride and the latter spoken about in whispers, viewed as sinful and criminal?
Of course, it all comes down to politics – the politics of slavery, colonialism and apartheid – and the pursuit of gold, god and glory, which I won’t go into now. In spite of scientific evidence that proves that all humans are 99% identical, the myths of polygenesis and racial superiority persist and everyday people use terms such as “mixed race” and “bi-racial”, or talk about different “races”. Issues of race and prejudice continue to shape our relations with each other and leave indelible scars on our psyche.
Yesterday I attended a talk by journalist, Sara-Jayne King, whose memoir, Killing Karoline, explores her life as the result of an affair between a ‘white’ British woman and her ‘black’ South African colleague. Born in the 1980s, at the height of apartheid, she is taken out of the country and put up for adoption in Britain, her mother returning to SA with the news that her baby had died (hence the title). In her book, King plots her path of self-destruction through addiction and eating disorders, and explores the feelings of insecurity and poor self-worth related to her identity. Adoption on its own must come with attendant issues of rejection and belonging, but in King’s case it is underscored with the apartheid crime and sin of immorality. I believe that her attempts to destroy herself were in part a sub-conscious drive to punish herself for an inherent sense of shame related to not belonging. It’s this feeling of having done something wrong that is part and parcel of the legacy of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Confronting it needs to start with rejecting the concept of race which is based on the superficial distinction of skin colour, hair, bone and facial features, in order to perpetuate power and control by one group over another.
A few months ago, while on a visit to the USA, I did what I have been wanting to do for ages – ordered a DNA testing kit. My friend, Mary, and I bonded over collecting samples of sputum and posted them off. I was not sure what to expect since my ancestors have variously been classified as ‘coloured’, ‘white’ or Cape Malay. In the context of South Africa this takes on layers of meaning and is imbued with a gamut of emotions, many of which are negative, like shame and worthlessness. Since I was immersed in my doctoral thesis about representation and identity related to growing up in South Africa during apartheid, I thought that knowing more about my ancestral make up might add some value to my research.
Consistent with what I know of my grandparents, my DNA results confirmed that I was a fine blend of South East Asian and European populations with a liberal sprinkling of sub-Saharan African. I found it quite affirming to have a written record – scientific proof – of a history that the apartheidists sought to erase in their attempts to subjugate and dehumanise us through fixing cosmetic differences and forcing us into prescribed boxes. The time for transcending race and regarding each other as human is long overdue.
King, S. 2018. Killing Karoline: A Memoir. Published by MF Books Joburg.
Every now and then I am moved to pen a few lines of poetry. I certainly don’t view myself as a poet, but there have been distinct moments when I feel the urge come over me! This happened a few months ago, while deeply immersed in the doctoral process. My parents have both been supportive of my process of trying to make sense of our roots. On this occasion my mother had been eagerly awaiting my visit so that she could give me two doilies that my paternal grandmother had crocheted for her many years ago (my grandmother died more than twenty years ago). My grandmother had crocheted to supplement her income and had skillfully produced not only doilies but bedspreads with an impossibly thin crochet hook and fine cotton thread.
Mama’s crocheted doiley
Mama’s crocheted doiley
I remember my mother having different sets of doilies for different occasions; they would be starched and ironed so that they stiffly maintained their shapes. There was something very poignant about the plastic bag she handed to me and the way the unstarched doilies softly fell out into my lap. This is my tribute to my grandmother.
My Grandmother’s Dream Catchers
Mama made these doilies for me, my mother says,
as green and blue tightly crocheted
works of art fall softly
out of the plastic packet she’s kept them in.
I see my grandmother sitting
in her chair, grey hair escaping
from under a white cotton scarf
wrapped around her head;
her fingers hold the thin steel hook
wrapping cotton thread in elaborate patterns,
making poor man’s lace,
creating circles in the air to catch bad dreams.
Her hands are never idle, weaving and spinning
a livelihood to keep her family together,
her work good enough
for even white people, my father says,
the patterns out of a secret book in her head
dipped in starch and ironed to attention.
Round and round she goes
weaving circles of where she came from,
each stitch a link to the past,
a chain from Arab trade routes to Africa,
interlocking loops of yarn,
tiny stitches helping to feed her family.
I wish I had followed that thread
of journeys across oceans,
wish that I had asked her to teach me
how to catch dreams.
Years ago I attended a women’s workshop and, as an icebreaker, we were asked to say out loud the names of the chain of strong women in our genealogies. I remember an American woman in the group who could trace her maternal line back to someone who had crossed on the Mayflower, the ship which had transported the Pilgrims from England to the New World in 1620. That was more than 300 years of history right there. It was with a vague sense of shame that I could only name my mother and her mother. I seemed lightweight, of little consequence, without any history.
I pressed my mother for more details afterwards, unable to comprehend that she hadn’t done the same to her mother. There were things you didn’t talk about, she replied to me, whispers of mixtures that were either shameful or illegal. Her mother had arrived in Cape Town, from Malmesbury, aged 14 with three younger siblings in tow, after their parents had died. They were sent to family who lived in District Six. Soon after, my grandmother went out to work at the Cavalla Cork cigarette factory to contribute to their upkeep. She hardly ever spoke about her parents, and my mother cannot recall her ever going back to Malmesbury.
As I have delved deeper into my history and that of South Africa, I have been taken on a journey that goes back hundreds of years, through apartheid, and all the way back to slavery and colonialism. Each step of the way has been a revelation, since I knew little more of our history beyond the strictly-controlled narrative presented in our apartheid-era schools. Slavery had been a subject glossed over, presented as a more benign version of slavery elsewhere, it had receded far behind the more dominant narrative of apartheid. And yet, 200 years of slavery has fundamentally shaped who we are as people and as a country.
There have been moments of depression while exploring physical, mental and psychological trauma inflicted on our people and despair over how we will ever heal and move forward as a country with such a brutal and dehumanising history. But I have also been buoyed by the spirit of resistance which brought into being a vibrant and diverse culture of music and dance, food, and language, in spite of repression.
Along the way there have been many signposts, guiding and encouraging me – Jacob Lawrence’s exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, documenting the migration of six million black southerners in the early 20th century; Isabel Wilkerson’s book, The Warmth of Other Suns, dealing with the same subject matter; the opportunity to present at a conference on Racism and Social Justice in Charleston, South Carolina, the entry point of the majority of the 12 million slaves from Africa to America, and the keynote address by Dr Lonny Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in the Mother Emmanuel Church on the second anniversary of a racially-motivated shooting.
Another one of those moments occurred about a month ago when I visited the South African Sendinggestig Museum, also known as the Slave Church, in Long Street, Cape Town. It is the oldest existing mission building in South Africa and the third oldest church in the country. It’s a handsome building, with Burmese teak doors, American pine ceiling and stone from quarries on Signal Hill and Robben Island, and oak pews on which the first slaves to be baptised had sat. This led me to the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), or Dutch Reformed Church, archives in Stellenbosch, which in turn led to an interview with Reverend David Botha, the 93 year old former curator of the Slave Church Museum. The role of the church is as fundamental to our history as slavery. A few days ago I followed that path to Genadendal, the oldest mission station in South Africa, but that’s a story for another time.
What does this have to do with my grandmother and the women’s workshop? On a wildly optimistic whim I asked Karen Minnaar, the archivist at the NGK archives, if there might be any information on my grandmother who my mother believed had belonged to the NGK in Malmesbury, before coming to Cape Town. My grandmother had switched to the Anglican Church when she married my grandfather and became a staunch supporter of the church and its women’s fellowship. I wondered if my mother was correct about the NGK. Besides, my grandmother’s surname was Adams and I had very little hope of any success with such a common surname. Hopefully, I emailed Karen her name and date of birth (the day turned out to be incorrect). Later that day, Karen emailed photographs of the baptism entry with the names of her parents and those of her godparents, along with an official document on the NGK letterhead.
I am Nadia,
daughter of Hope Lorraine,
daughter of Ethel Jeanet Silvia,
daughter of Annie.
I somehow feel validated, more solid. And proud. So was my mother when I showed her the proof of her mother’s baptism and the names of her grandparents. That’s what having a history gives you. I feel vindicated on this journey to tell our stories.
Images of my grandmother with me and my mother with me.
Katrina was on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when she felt the faintest kick, almost like a flutter in her belly. She sat back on her heels and cupped her wet hands over the spot. There it was again, like butterflies in her stomach…like the butterflies in Namaqualand…in spring…when the flowers were out. That’s the one time of the year a person could say the place was beautiful. After the rains they’d be rewarded with carpets of yellow or purple, for all the months of emptiness. A person could almost ignore the holes gouged out of the earth by men digging for diamonds or copper, as the broken landscape burst into life. She smiled at the memory of running barefoot through fields of flowers, making a daisy chain to crown her baby sister and holding her breath as a butterfly balanced on her shoulder.
Ag, there she went again, wasting time on daydreams, her madam would say. She shook her head as if to get rid of the images and sighed as she picked up the scrubbing brush again. She’d left the vygies and daisies, the aloes and the orchids, behind a long time ago. She couldn’t remember when last she’d spoken to her brothers and sisters. If it wasn’t for the black and white photograph stuck into the mirror in her room, she wondered if she would even remember what they looked like. Bitterfontein. The name said it all, she thought to herself as she got up with another sigh. The bitterness had even seeped into the water. At least here she had a job; there was one less mouth for her father to feed. It didn’t help to worry about things a person could do nothing about.
“Katrina, I’m leaving now,” Mrs Laing shouted down the passage. “Don’t forget to bring in the washing before you go off. It looks like rain. And make sure the gate is locked properly this time.”
“Yes, Madam,” Katrina replied, poking her head round the kitchen door. “See you tomorrow, Madam.”
Katrina had been working for Mrs. Laing, a white lady, in Roeland Street for a year now. Her madam worked her hard but she was grateful to have a job where she could live in. It also paid better than her previous job and she was off on Saturday afternoons. “But no men and no drink allowed,” Mrs. Laing had warned when she started.
Katrina finished up, washed and changed into a pink floral dress, gathered under the bodice with a generous skirt which skimmed over her hips and stomach. She wanted to go see Hajji quickly this afternoon and maybe there would still be time to watch the new James Dean film playing at the Gem. She walked down Drury Lane towards District Six, to Combrinck Street where the dressmaker lived. The rows of semi-detached houses looked a little shabby but most people had made an effort with their front stoeps – they were painted red or green and polished every week, there was a potted delicious monster plant or two, and perhaps a bench to sit on in the evenings when the day’s work was done and a person had a chance to catch up with a neighbour.
Katrina went around the back of the house through the open kitchen door. There was no one there, but smells of onions braising with cardamom and cloves greeted her. She noticed the chopped cabbage, potatoes and mutton knuckles waiting to be added to the pot. Hajji must be making a bredie. She could hear the sound of the sewing machine coming from the back and called out, “It’s me, Katrina,” as she went in. Hajji was sitting behind the Singer which stood in the corner of her sons’ bedroom. Her head, covered with a scarf, was bowed in concentration as she guided the fabric through the threader and pumped the pedal of the black enamel machine. Four identical dresses in powder-blue satin hung on the front of the wardrobe. As a dressmaker Hajji’s beadwork was very popular with Malay and Christian brides, even the Jewish people came to her. The small room did double duty as her workroom by day. Her sons often complained that they had to watch out for pins in the bedspread or that they stepped onto beads on the floor with their bare feet. Hajji, practical as always, had told them to put on shoes and given them a magnet to pick up the pins.
Hajji had four children, and one from her husband’s first marriage, who was working at a butcher in Salt River. All three boys would soon leave school, one by one, to learn a trade. Hajji’s daughter, Fatima, was already apprenticed to a dressmaker in Walmer Estate.
“Salaam Hajji,” Katrina greeted, respectful of Hajji’s religion, even though she herself was Christian. “I see supper is cooking already. Hajji must be going out this evening.”
“Alaykum Salaam, Katrina,” said Hajji, taking the pins out of her mouth. “Yes, I’m very busy. I have to finish this dress tonight. That Van der Ross girl is getting married tomorrow. She lost weight again. I have to take the dress in. Poor child is already so thin.”
Hajji always did the final fitting the day before the wedding. She said it was bad luck to finish the dress too long before the time. So she made sure to put in the last stitches late at night, her fingers flying over the silk and satin. She delivered the beaded creation herself on the morning of the wedding. Hajji also dressed the bride in petticoats, underskirts of stiff netting, and finally the gown. She was skilled at shaping the gilded medora into a headdress. Sometimes she would be asked to prepare the bruidskamer for the Muslim brides as well, making drapes, cushions and quilted bedspreads with satin and lace.
When Hajji wasn’t busy with a wedding she made outfits for Eid or other special occasions and simple frocks with fabric she bought on the Grand Parade. Katrina and her friends bought these dresses on lay-bye, paying off a small amount every month. Hajji recognized the dress Katrina was wearing today as one she’d made last year.
“Can I make Hajji some tea?”
“Ag, Katrina, I don’t have time for tea now. Is there something you wanted?”
“Ja, Hajji, I have to talk to you about a problem. Hajji can mos see what’s going on with me.”
Katrina turned to the side in front of the mirror, and, placing one hand under her breasts, she smoothed the dress over her stomach with the other. There was no mistaking the curve of her belly when you looked at her profile. Her breasts were also fuller and Hajji realized she was glowing. She recalled that Katrina had mentioned the last dress she made for her was too tight but she hadn’t brought it to be altered yet.
“Ag man, Katrina, you’re pregnant aren’t you? I warned you.” Hajji clicked her tongue. “It’s that Ginger, isn’t it? And where’s he now? You let a white man take advantage of you. I told you, they don’t marry you. The man can pull up his pants and walk away. And then you sit with the problem.”
“Hajji, please don’t be cross with me,” Katrina said sitting down on the edge of one of the beds. “I’m so scared my madam is going to send me away when she finds out that I’m pregnant. What am I going to do? I can’t go home. My Pa will beat me. What about my Ma? She’ll be so ashamed that her daughter is pregnant. What will the people say at church? In any case, what will we live on? There’s no job, not enough food. I think Pa was only too happy when I said I was coming to Cape Town. How can I go home with another mouth to feed?”
“I suppose Mrs. Laing hasn’t noticed what you are hiding behind that big overall and apron she makes you wear. Mind you, it won’t be too long before she does. What if she throws you out? Then what are you going to do? Ooh, Katrina, where are you going to find another good job like this one?”
Hajji had a soft spot for Katrina. Before Hajji and her husband had gone to Mecca the year before, Katrina had come to help with all the visitors even though it was her afternoon off. She’d set the table with plates of biscuits and tarts (all made by Hajji), bowls of dried fruit and nuts bought from Wellington Fruit Growers in Darling Street, and Hajji’s best tea set with the gold teaspoons. Katrina was honest and worked hard, she deserved a chance. She was just attracted to the wrong men, always thinking this would be the one to take her away from it all.
Hajji had known that this Ginger would be trouble. From what she heard from Amiena, whose husband had the corner café, he was charming but unreliable. He didn’t seem to have a fixed job but always had money. Katrina was flattered that he took an interest in her, loved the status of having a white boyfriend. The other girls looked up to her when they saw the two of them together at the bioscope on a Saturday afternoon. They thought she was one of the lucky ones, maybe she could even “pass”, or maybe she and Ginger could go to Botswana or Swaziland to get married.
“Katrina, look, I don’t mind,” Hajji said, “I can look after the baby for a bit, to help you out. But only for a little bit, ok? Maybe your madam needs time to get used to the idea and then she’ll let you keep the baby there. Your madam thinks we’re stupid but everybody knows her daughter’s baby came six months after the wedding. She must think we don’t know how long a baby takes. Premature, my foot.”
Hajji had been sewing for Mrs. Laing for years; that’s how she and Katrina had met. She’d made the wedding dress for Mrs. Laing’s daughter, Sarah, and had pleated the layers of chiffon to drape over the beginnings of a bump, although no one had said a word.
An extract from a story published in The New Contrast 178 Vol 45 Winter 2017
This area, on the outskirts of what was once District Six, is familiar to me. The Sacks Futeran building next door which now houses the Fugard Theatre and the District Six Homecoming Centre, used to be a general wholesaler where seamstresses and tailors could buy textiles, and we rode the ancient lift to buy clothing, crockery and cutlery. I remember trips to the Grand Parade on a Saturday morning, clutching my grandmother’s hand as she went from stall to stall. And, of course, across the road, is the Caledon Police Station where I, along with many others, experienced the hospitality of the apartheid state in the 1980s.
One hundred years ago there was a vibrant community here of Indians, ‘coloureds’, Portuguese, Greeks and Jews. Freed slaves, merchants, immigrants, artisans and labourers all worked and lived peacefully side by side. They were an eclectic mix of cultures, religions and ethnicities in a melting pot typical of a port city like Cape Town … apparently a threat to the apartheid government which declared it a “whites only” area in 1966. It would take about 15 years to move the 60 000 people out, to the Cape Flats, to areas like Manenberg, Hanover Park and Mitchell’s Plain.
District Six is now unrecognisable from what it was before its destruction but I have fond memories of the area where my grandparents lived and my father was born. Hanover Street was the main artery which ran all the way up from the city centre, into Walmer Estate where I grew up. My life revolved around Hanover Street though: my uncle’s tailor shop, was a hive of activity; the doctor who delivered me in my grandparents’ home, had his surgery there, and Majiet’s barbershop was filled with people not necessarily having their hair cut, but playing dominoes and catching up on the news. A trip into town would inevitably involve a stop for roti and curry from the Crescent Café. My father says that you could buy anything in Hanover Street except petrol.
Tied up with my memories is the music which was played in the streets by minstrels, Malay choirs and Christmas bands. Some of this has been captured by Taliep Petersen and David Kramer in their musicals, District Six and Kat and the Kings. And then there was food with names like bredie, bobotie,denningvleis,frikkadels and oumens onder die kombers. One dish that, for me, represents the Cape with Malay, Dutch and Christian influences blended together with fragrant spices, was pickled fish. I remember my maternal grandmother making it in the last week of Lent, to eat on Good Friday. She would make it well in advance to give the spices a chance to penetrate the fish, and also to free up her Friday when she would spend many hours in church. The fish would have been bought either from the fish market on the corner of Hanover and Clifton Streets, opposite the Star bioscope, or from the fish cart which did the rounds in the neighbourhood. The hawker would sound his horn to alert housewives that he had arrived with the catch of the day and they would come out to the street to haggle.
Weddings and funerals were community affairs. When I was about six or seven I was a flower girl twice in the same year, once for my aunt, a Christian wedding and then for a Muslim neighbour, a dressmaker who sewed all the dresses for the wedding herself. The whole street turned out to see the bride when the wedding cars hooted to announce her arrival, and the neighbours followed behind to the reception in the Princess Street Hall. Funerals were another occasion when everyone would just turn up to pay their respects and support the family in any way they could. Christian men would borrow fezzes and take turns to carry the bier of their Muslim neighbour.
As the bulldozers moved in and the walls came tumbling around her, my paternal grandmother was banished to Mitchells Plain, far from the city centre where she had lived her whole life. She had been a fiercely independent woman, who had to earn a living after her husband died and left her to raise four children on her own. She made koeksisters and konfyt to sell door-to-door on Sunday mornings in District Six, and sewed and crocheted. She used public transport or walked wherever she had to go. What I remember most was her loss of independence. Suddenly she found herself in a foreign place without any infrastructure and no public transport to fetch her pension from the General Post Office in Cape Town. For the first time she had to ask for help.
Central to my motivation for going back to university, was to equip myself with skills to tell the stories of growing up, not only my stories but the stories of those who cannot tell their own. We’re a deeply divided society, still trying to recover from a brutal past. We cannot sweep it under the carpet, sooner or later the bump will trip us up.
I urge you to visit the District Six Museum. However painful the memories of apartheid may be, the exhibition there humanises the experiences while celebrating the rich diversity of people who once lived here. For me, it’s like settling into an old armchair and turning the pages of a well-worn family photo album. When I see the barber’s corner, the display case with the games we once played in the road, the photographs of the Peninsula Maternity Home where my sister was born or the wall-hanging with the name of the rugby club my father played for, I feel that our lives mattered. And when I walk up the stairs to the wall that bears the names of families who lived here, and I scroll down to find mine, I feel that our experiences have been validated and dignified.
This is an extract from a talk I gave prior to a performance of the musical, Orpheus in Africa, as part of an educational programme.
In 1989, I was arrested along with hundreds of others during a peaceful protest march in central Cape Town. When the crowd refused to disperse, the police attacked with teargas, batons and a water cannon filled with purple dye. As we were piled into the back of police vans, we carried on singing the freedom songs we had been singing during the march. What I remember most is the camaraderie among the forty women with whom I was packed into the cell at Caledon Square Police Station. I don’t remember who started singing but soon more and more voices had joined in and a policeman ordered us to keep it down. Buoyed by the music, we kept going through the night. By the time we were released, we were united by the conviction that our struggle was just.
The 1980s were characterised by the Defiance Campaign and a state of emergency as the apartheid government dug its heels in and enforced its policies. One day we would be reclaiming the beaches with Archbishop Tutu, policemen and dogs chasing and whipping us. Another we would be dodging rubber bullets and teargas and sometimes live ammunition would be flying in townships like Manenberg. When restrictions were imposed on public gatherings, concerts, clubs and house parties offered an alternative means of getting together. Activists would be at the jazz gigs and musicians would be playing at rallies; often the music concert would be the rally (Milton, 2010).
Funerals were another way to gather in defiance of the restrictions. Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, our unofficial national anthem, would start slowly and build into a crescendo binding us all together, at once an act of resistance and a celebration of the lives lost.
Music was the background to my childhood during the 1960s and 1970s – traditional Malay liedjies sung at weddings, the sounds of the coons and marching bands at Christmas, or sitting on the stoep singing songs that my father had taught us. As children we would be taken to see the troupes parading through District Six. Bunting in different colours would be strung up high across the streets to show support for different teams. The whole community, including the tailors and seamstresses in Hanover Street, would have been preparing for months.
At all hours of the day music would stream from the house across the road, where our friend, Sean, lived. The house on the corner of Park and Princess had something that not many other houses in the neighbourhood had – a piano. Sean could listen to a song on the radio and then play it on the piano. He was spotted at church by the pianist, Henry February, when he was five years old; standing to play the organ so that he could reach the bass pedals. Mr February took him under his wing and Sean was fortunate to have the attention of a skilled teacher (O’Connell, personal interview 2013).
Many talented coloured and black children simply had no access to instruments or tuition. Because of Mr February, Sean was drawn to jazz and by the time he was 17 he was playing in venues in the coloured areas. The Galaxy, a well-known club on the Cape Flats, hosted live jazz bands where musicians like Errol Dyers and Robbie Jansen could be heard (O’Connell, personal interview 2013, April 9). The music played here was quite distinct from the pop music being played in white clubs. Bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago were influential on local music, but because of the isolation brought about by apartheid, a more distinctive sound developed along with a style of “jazz dancing” unique to coloured people in the Cape (Smith, personal interview 2013).
Performing outside of coloured areas was fraught with difficulties. Group areas, pass regulations, and laws forbidding Africans to appear at venues where liquor was served, severely limited opportunities for performers. Sean remembers that when he and his band, Airborne, were booked to play at The Lido in Sea Point, a white suburb, they were not allowed to eat in the restaurant with white patrons and were given a table backstage. This time one of the wives who accompanied them was “not pale enough” to be allowed onto the premises. The band refused to perform and left in spite of the angry Greek owner.
Well-known jazz trumpeter, Ian Smith, recalls that in the 1970s there were only two places where musicians could play together – the Arts Centre in Green Point (now a McDonald’s takeout), or at the Space Theatre which was well-known for mixing of all the arts and was regularly raided by the police. At other venues like The Barn, at the Hohenhort Hotel, black and white musicians were able to perform together but to segregated audiences. Black musicians were not allowed to use the front entrance of the hotels, and often had to play behind a curtain.
Morris Goldberg, Gary Kriel, & Maurice Gawronsky Cape Town early 1990s. Photo: Rashid Lombard
Finding rehearsal spaces was challenging and they usually practised in a back room or a garage at someone’s house. “You had to be creative to find places to rehearse…and work harder to get your music out to an audience. Musicians were colour-blind. We just got on with it” (Smith, personal interview 2013, April 3). He recalls musicians like Merton Barrow, Morris Goldberg and Monty Weber, from the Jewish community, playing a key role in bringing musicians together.
South Africa’s rich legacy of music can be traced back to the 17th century when the indigenous Khoi people first played European folksongs on a ramkie, the guitar-like Malay instrument. Music was a highly valued skill which could ensure a higher price for slaves who often formed part of the estate’s orchestra. The Malays, who were brought to the Cape from the East Indies by the Dutch, blended their music with Dutch ballads. Further musical integration happened between Coloured and African labourers brought to work on the diamond mines in Kimberley.
The Lutheran missions and the Salvation Army, which offered free musical education, contributed to the development of African choral traditions. The most famous example of this, Enoch Sontonga’s Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, came to symbolise the struggle for African unity and liberation in South Africa (SA). Another influence on local music was minstrelsy, which took hold after McAdoo’s American Jubilee Singers toured SA at the end of the 19th century. This influence can still be seen today in Cape Town’s annual coon carnival (Donaldson, 2000).
It was jazz that would influence and shape most black music, fusing with mbaqanga,marabi and kwela, and with rock and popular music (Coplan, 1985: 192). “By the 1920s and 30s, the churches, schools, clubs, drinking houses, parties and dance halls of the black locations were producing a new generation of performance professionals. Versatile musicians absorbed almost everything, played for almost everyone, and gave birth to an authentically South African jazz” (Coplan, 1985).
When the National Party came to power in 1948 they set about institutionalising racial segregation and started dividing communities through laws governing the movement of black people. As the government bulldozed what they called “black spots” like District Six to make way for whites, clubs and halls were destroyed, musicians were excluded, and jazz was gradually deprived of its multi-racial audience. Despite censorship, musicians used song lyrics to comment upon social issues within the African community. The sounds of resistance were being spread on the radio, in the community clubs and halls and shebeens.
Passive resistance and anti-pass campaigns characterised the 1950s but amid the aggression and brutality of the struggle, the arts flourished. In the early 1960s Hugh Masekela with The Jazz Epistles helped to establish a strong culture of jazz amongst urban blacks. He got his big break when he joined the orchestra of the musical, King Kong, which toured the world for two years. After the Sharpeville Massacre, Masekela went into exile in the USA where, with the help of Harry Belafonte he became a star (Pfeifer, 2011).
Black performers had to choose between limited careers and second-rate treatment in SA or cutting themselves off from their communities to go into exile abroad. Even musicians like Dollar Brand who famously declared, “Julle kan ma New York toe gaan, ek bly in die Manenberg”, (You can go to New York, I’ll stay in Manenberg) eventually left along with Miriam Makeba and others, disillusioned with conditions in South Africa (Miller, 2007). Those who stayed behind believed that the exiles were being treated well while they were left “to throw stones”, i.e., to carry on the struggle (Smith, personal interview 2013). But many black SA performers achieved international recognition and were able to broadcast anti-apartheid messages to an audience that the musicians left behind could not reach under the censorship laws. In the early 1990s when people like Louis Moholo, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba started returning, they were given a hero’s welcome (Lombard, 2010).
Dollar Brand returned home in 1968. In 1974 against the backdrop of another wave of forced removals which spelled the destruction of District Six, he (now known as Abdullah Ibrahim) along with Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Monty Weber and Morris Goldberg, recorded Mannenberg, which was to become the beloved anthem of hope and resistance for South Africans at home and abroad. Playing this piece in clubs and parties was guaranteed to get the crowd going. Its success was due to the combination of many different forms of SA music which listeners of all kinds could identify with. It was an affirmation of the validity of our music culture (Valentine, 2006).
When I tried to source photographs of this time, I was told, “We were too busy with music…or the struggle…!” The few which I was offered were either out of focus or badly composed. It was left up to professional photographers, like Rashid Lombard, who were also grappling with recording protest action and police brutality, to capture some of the history. Lombard is well-known for his photographs of the mass democratic movement in SA during the 1980s when he was a freelance photographer for the BBC, NBC and others. During this time jazz became a form of healing and therapy for him (Lombard, 2010). The musicians became his friends and family, evident in his empathetic and intimate portrayal of his subjects. His images celebrate who we are.
“Today I am still amazed at how, in such totally difficult times, so many different voices came through in the jazz scene. Our music has this depth thanks to all those musicians.” (Lombard, 2010: 48)
Jazz seems to have been born out of a need for freedom of expression. More than once during this project, I heard the comment hesitantly put forward that, in some bizarre way, apartheid forced photographers, musicians and other artists, to be more creative, in ways that they may not have explored. Jazz helped to integrate musicians and audiences and got them speaking a common language. As American playwright, August Wilson, commented, “Because you can sing that song, that’s what enables you to survive. It wasn’t that “Aww, we sufferin’. It was like, we’re the people, we’re here, we’re vibin’” (Lewis, 2004).
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPH: Jazz lovers at a concert in Cape Town 1987
PHOTOGRAPHER: RASHID LOMBARD
This article is an edited version of a paper submitted towards my Public Culture in Africa course.
