Family, for some, is not written into the branches of ancestor charts but lies in the interlocking characters whose lives flow into each other daily. One unlikely family, whose lineage can be traced to the plot of land they share in Savoy Estate at the corner of Louis Botha and Grenville avenues, are a hodgepodge of characters from South Africa, Zimbabwe, West Africa and Bangladesh.
The parking lot on the service road at the intersection of Louis Botha and Grenville avenues in Savoy Estate is crammed with cars stationed in tight spaces between designated white lines. Late Thursday afternoon traffic is moving swiftly across Louis Botha Avenue as minibus taxis careen between motorists to beat the changing of traffic lights.
Steven Marks (47) lets out a resigned sigh which creases his pink face, still weary from the heat. His stomach is stretched tight against the polyester mesh of his metallic blue t-shirt; the glistening silver chain around his neck leaves sweaty diamond imprints on his fevered skin.
Marks watches the fast-moving picture show before him from where he stands outside his apartment building. He nervously surveys the scene to his right.
Thabiso Brian Zungu holds out his winnings and the cards he and his colleagues use to play a game called Sevens. Photo: Imaan Moosa
A group of about 10 African men in their thirties and forties occupy the pavement outside Savoy Supermarket. Five of them are huddled together, their heads bent intently over a card game. Each man takes a turn to swig from bottles of lager beer and trade money between themselves. The toot-tooting of taxis whizzing past becomes background noise against interrupted guffaws from the men.
One of the men breaks away, stumbling his way through broken bottles, sewage and dirt to the edge of the pavement. He unzips his pants and the sound of urine hitting the pavement is muffled slightly against the din of traffic on Louis Botha.
“Yissis, Louis Botha is something else,” remarks Marks. “I’d rather move to Congo or Nigeria. It’s probably safer there.”
Marks rents an apartment at Pearl Harbour on Louis Botha. Pristine tiled walls on the outside of the building reflect passing men and women. Turnstiles and a security pad hinder access to anyone who is not a resident.
“They make a mess. It’s all types of things,” Marks says about the men. “Over the years things change. They don’t stay the same. You either join ’em or you go against them. We don’t bother them and they don’t bother us. Living in Jo’burg, you get used to it.”
Away from home
Resident Steven Marks stands outside his apartment unit, Pearl Harbour, in Savoy Estate. Photo: Imaan Moosa
The building at the corner of Louis Botha and Grenville avenues, which is subdivided between Pearl Harbour, Atlas Finance, Savoy Supermarket, Liqui Moly (a company that specialises in car care) and Pirates Motor Spares, is owned by Bekehal Trust, which purchased the premises in 2011 and rents out 28 apartment units at Pearl Harbour.
Marks, previously a resident in Fairland for 15 years, has been at Pearl Harbour for four years. Struggling to keep his rubble removal business afloat and foot the bill, he moved south-west to Savoy after being forced to downsize from his three-bedroom townhouse.
He takes care of his aging parents, with whom he shares a two-bedroom apartment – a claustrophobic living space of one bathroom, no living room and a kitchen the size of a shoebox.
Marks notes a big difference in the change in face on Louis Botha.
“There are a lot more foreigners now, but the Jewish community sticks together,” he says. “They [Bekehal Trust] will not let foreign nationals into the building. The Jewish and other communities that have been around [Orange Grove] are not around anymore, because everyone has emigrated. Lots of black people have taken over those houses and bought up the area. These guys don’t live here.”
“These guys”, Godfrey Dlamini (33) and James Kustavo (32), are part of the group of men who occupy the pavement.
The next Tuesday, Kustavo and his colleagues share a breakfast of beer bought from Savoy Liquor Store on the opposite corner. Every day the men check in at eight o’clock to offer their auto repair services to potential customers passing by.
“I like it because I am surviving. I don’t steal things from people,” says Dlamini. He toys with a plastic rosary hanging around his neck. “I manage to pay the rent and eat. I send my mum something, but it’s not easy to get a real job.”
Dlamini, who describes his education as “bumper to bumper”, completed his schooling only up to grade 10. The Zimbabwean-born mechanic moved to South Africa in 1992 with his father, who taught him the trade.
Dlamini says the police often chase him and the other men away because they are not supposed to be occupying the pavement without a permit from the city council.
The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality street trading by-laws states that street trading is the supplying of goods or services for profit on a public road. As informal traders, the men need to comply with the by-laws to ensure certain conduct is maintained.
The men are in violation of multiple legislations, namely: “Create a nuisance; damage or deface the surface of any public road; or create a health hazard.” Penalties for non-compliance include a R50 fine or, in default of payment, imprisonment of six months.
Five feet away from Dlamini a police car sits idly in the last parking bay on the parking lot. The police officer speaks to one of the men, who is working on a car next to them.
“Some of them are my friends,” Dlamini says, referring to the men on the pavement. “In the street you have to fight for customers.
“If he gets the customer, he gets the job,” he says of his colleague, “but if he doesn’t give me the job then I moer the guy.”
Many of the men who work as informal mechanics outside Savoy Supermarket and Pirate Motor Spares on the corner of Louis Botha and Grenville avenues are migrants who have left their homes and families to seek a better life in the City of Gold. They have become a family, their common ancestry traced to the short strip of pavement they share from 8:00 to 6:00 on Monday to Saturday where they wrangle their day’s income by offering auto repair services.
Malawian Kustavo disagrees with Dlamini’s approach. “I don’t like to fight. Just to approach and talk to customers is enough.”
Kustavo moved to South Africa in 2010. He lives in Alexandra but walks 5.3km to repair cars on Louis Botha.
Sometimes he does not go home but remains on the pavement as night settles and more money from the day’s earnings is passed between the hands of the men who drunkenly keep watch over their strip of pavement.
Gavin Freedman, a resident of Pearl Harbour, says the men create noise only when they drink.
Forty-eight-year-old Freedman lived in Orange Grove before he moved to Savoy in September 2018. Although the move was a short distance, he laments the current state of Louis Botha – buildings hanging tentatively on the skeletal frames of 1950s architecture.
Mike Mosselson, an estate agent for Pam Golding, has worked in Savoy and surrounds for 19 years. He says many Jews who had been living in Orange Grove upgraded and moved on.
“Historically, Orange Grove is an older area. Many residents have retired and moved to old age homes … It has become more commercial. There are very few, limited residential homes.”
Mosselson notes that the houses in Orange Grove are approximately 495m², compared to Savoy where properties are between 1 500 and 1 800m². In 2012 rent prices were between R6 000 and R7 000, whereas now they range between R8 000 and R10 000.
“Have you seen what Orange Grove looks like? That is why I decided to move,” says Freedman. “But it is no better living here [in Savoy Estate].”
He says that for the past 10 days there has been no water and electricity, which he blames on the City of Johannesburg. Although he also says there is too much noise, he stays at Pearl Harbour because he cannot afford to move elsewhere.
The migrant and his brothers
A customer sits inside Savoy Supermarket reading the daily newspaper. Photo: Imaan Moosa
Bangladeshi-born *Hossain Abir (28), who leases Savoy Supermarket with two men whom he considers his brothers, *Uazi Heron and *Farkul Islam, is also bound by circumstances to a country he wants to be free from.
When Abir arrived in South Africa in 2014, one of his first stops was Home Affairs to apply for a permanent residence permit. Waiting in line, he met Heron whom he recognised delightedly as his neighbour from Bangladesh.
The two men exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. The men live alone in South Africa. Their only link to home is each other.
“We came to do good things, to do better things in our lives. We can support our family, friends and community.”
Abir has been saving money to send home for his 22-year-old sister, who is getting married in the coming months.
LUNCH BREAK: Mechanic James Kustavo and his colleagues seek a reprieve outside Savoy Supermarket from the sun and car soot. Photo: Imaan Moosa
“But since I came here, each and every day is too hard. When the black people here [African migrants] come to us they talk like we are not human beings. They think they are human but we are not. They talk like rubbish, like we are shit,” he says.
His words fall broken and jagged from a tongue that is unfamiliar with the English language. He struggles for a second, then continues to talk.
He says the men have stolen from the supermarket twice and force him to give them credit.
“They come with fake money and force themselves to the front of the queue.”
When Abir and Heron do not serve them fast enough, he says, the men swear obscenities at them.
“The people call it xenophobia: the looting, the complaining of foreigners doing this and that,” Abir says. “They think we are Pakistani, but I am not. So why are they looting us? They say this is a freedom country, but we are not free.”
Abir’s pain, located within the circumstances of his life in South Africa, mirrors Dlamini’s and Kustavo’s. The men, who greet motorists who stop in the parking lot with charm and charisma, have targets marked squarely on their backs by disgruntled locals who see foreigners as the enemy. All three men have no real place to call home in South Africa and a yearning that tugs at their heartstrings for their birthplaces, but they stay because they are their families’ sources of income.
A refuge or a prison sentence?
Five young women stroll into the supermarket. They make a beeline for the checkout counter, where Heron trades sleek, elongated bottles of wine and unpackaged cigarettes with the women.
The women round the corner of Pearl Harbour, their sandals slapping against the pavement. They light up and the smell of nicotine and perfume cocoon them like their figure-hugging dresses, which cling like a second skin.
“Our lives are hectic. Today we were like, ‘Let’s just take a walk’. Not that we are prostitutes, but cars must stop and give us money just for walking out. We made R300,” boasts 18-year-old Asive Myataza.
“At certain times – like half past twelve and half past two at lunch break – we walk out. Nothing much. No strings attached,” she explains.
The matric student moved to Manhattan Place on Louis Botha, which is an apartment complex directly opposite Pearl Harbour, in 2018 when her single mother ushered her and her three younger siblings from Lyndhurst to an area she thought safer.
“There were too many robberies at night. We would hear someone got robbed or shot and killed,” says Myataza. “[Savoy] is much safer. I haven’t heard of any robberies.”
Abir disagrees. He says the noise does not add to his safety.
“All people are not the same. Some people are bad, some people are good. We must trust people and help people who are helpless,” says Abir. “When people come to us crying we must help them, but [black people] kill us mentally.”
When asked where he lives in South Africa, Abir rolls his eyes and raises his voice to stay on topic.
“They give me headaches. It is not good for your brain. I can’t sleep at night,” he says. “Whole day they give me headache and I tolerate it, but when I try to sleep in my bed the headache is killing me. I feel hurt.”
The three groups of men who share the pavement might not like each other or even call each other friends, but they have become a dysfunctional family forced together by fate. The lives of Marks and Freedman, Dlamini and Kustavo, Abir and Heron are a spider’s web, the strands so tightly woven across time and place that at some crosspoint they have intersected, yet they are too caught up in their daily hardships to see how similar they are, while driven further apart by their differences.
*Not their real names.
ABOVE RIGHT: Mechanic *Declerk downs an early Tuesday morning breakfast of lager beer before he begins his shift. Photo: Imaan MoosaABOVE LEFT: Mechanic James Kustavo keeps an eye out for potential customers to offer his auto repair services to. Photo: Imaan Moosa
FEATURED IMAGE: A mechanic working on a car. Photo: Supplied
In-depth 2019: Louis Botha Louis Botha Avenue’s ‘Little Italy’: What is left of la dolce vita? By: Gemma Gatticchi Amid Louis Botha Avenue’s shift in demographics, a few businesses stand out as relics of the former Italian migrant community that made the area home....
Three migrant tailors play tug-of-war with the unrelenting Chinese clothing industry to assert their own economic dominance on a snoozing avenue they call home.
Daniel “Legend” Osakwe is a Nigerian tailor who has been sewing on Louis Botha Avenue for over fifteen years. He primarily creates outfits which reflect the diversity of the African continent’s culture and traditions. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla
Seated in his dark shop that bears his name, Daniel “Legend” Osakwe, a tailor anchored on the corner of Louis Botha Avenue and 2nd Street in Johannesburg, let out a defeated sigh. It was 9am and load-shedding had hit, drawing the life from his electric sewing machine.
“Obviously my work flow is now affected,” said Osakwe, pushing the coral silk cloth he was working on to the side of his large metal workspace. It cascaded onto the adjacent table, which held a colourful pool of fabric cuttings swimming together.
Parts of the avenue surrounding him were also in a slump. The steely sound from the nearby motor repair shop, synonymous with the Hillbrow-Sandton corridor, had ground to a halt. Trudging cars honked as if trying to will the dead traffic lights to come alive again.
Although visibly annoyed, Osakwe exuberantly greeted everyone who passed his shop. His liveliness mirrored the energy of his active wear. Osakwe wore grey sweatpants and, over a blue t-shirt, a black gym jacket. His camouflage cap almost covered his eyes, drawing attention to his white-speckled beard which gave away his 44 years of age.
A sleeping avenue smothered by the Sleeping Giant
Louis Botha Avenue sleeps – even when it is powered by Eskom. The economy is in need of a revival, due to plodding construction projects, the changing demographics of the area and the scourge of crime, which has driven many traders to safer, more prosperous areas. For those who choose to stay, such as Osakwe, it is a fight for survival.
A tailor meticulously follows every dart from their machine to ensure a quality result. Theirs is a profession to be handled with precision and care. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla
“I named myself Daniel Legend back home in Nigeria when I started designing clothes. I loved John Legend’s music, so I also gave myself that name,” he said.
Osakwe moved to South Africa over 18 years ago and opened Daniel Legend in 2004.
In his shop, Europe rubs against Africa through the beaded lace outfits hanging next to the bold Ankara wax-print garments. Ankara is batik-inspired material with Indonesian roots adopted in West African fashion, giving the colourful material a hard, glossy finish which disappears after the first wash.
“The material mostly comes from China,” Osakwe said, with a hint of exasperation.
China’s clothing and textile industry slyly provides tailors with quality material to make outfits, but beats them to the customer line with its own clothing production.
Simon Eppel, a researcher at the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union, said about 40% of all imported Chinese clothing is smuggled in, avoiding import duties. This allows retailers to sell the contraband cheaply.
“Compare Chinese export data to that of local customs revenue import data. There is a huge gap,” Eppel said.
In 2017 almost half of all South African imported textiles and clothes came from China and was valued at more than R19 billion, said a report released by Cotton South Africa, a cotton industry organisation.
Osakwe said business plummeted in 2010 when the Chinese clothing industry caught up with Afrocentric fashion trends.
“Before then, only a few South African design houses such as Sun Goddess had commercialised traditional prints,” Osakwe said, adding that he would sew about 15 garments a week.
When he got multiple orders, he would hire help to meet his customers’ desired outfit deadlines.
“Nowadays I sometimes see about five customers. Sometimes no one comes through my doors for a whole week.
“Now I am not just fighting the Chinese market for African designs, I am competing against tailors who have popped up on the avenue as a result of the demand,” Osakwe said.
A thirteen-minute walk down Louis Botha Avenue from Osakwe’s shop sat another tailor, Paul Mphando, carefully hemming a side of a voile curtain. He was tucked up in Adom Clothing, close to 8th Street, a shop with a variety of clothes, many of which were light and semi-transparent, with fraying threads visible on closer inspection.
Mphando spoke with measured precision, his speech squeezed out of his stiff, clean-shaved face. His small eyes, however, opened wide while speaking about his garment making journey.
“My time as a tailor has been number one. My customers come here from all over, including Spruitview and Pretoria,” Mphando, a Malawian migrant, said.
Mphando said he was inspired to seek greener pastures in a foreign country by his now late stepfather, a tailor working in Botswana several years ago.
“Louis Botha Avenue was the first place I arrived in South Africa when I came in 2013,” he said, adding that his brothers who lived on 14th Street pushed him to migrate to Johannesburg.
Mphando said he was in the “right place”, but admitted his location gave him unwanted competition with cheap clothing.
“That dress is R250. I sell my dresses for R600. If a customer walks in, which one are they more likely to buy?” Mphando asked, pointing at a blue dress hanging from the open entrance security door.
A stifling crime blanket covers the Hillbrow to Sandton corridor
While China has a vice grip on the tailors of Louis Botha Avenue, the avenue’s own socio-economic fabric also threatens to suffocate the livelihood of the corridor’s businesses.
Osakwe keeps his wrought-iron gate closed as a precautionary measure against the lawlessness that exists in the area.
“People are afraid to park their cars to come into my shop, so they rather just drive past me every day.
“There are a lot of street boys who mug people of their possessions and spend their time smoking dope,” he said.
Osakwe, an Orange Grove resident, said many street boys live along Louis Botha Avenue, a high-density housing area lined with high-rise apartments.
Osakwe and Mphando are part of the community of African migrants who moved into the area. About 25% of the flat dwellers in the area are migrants, according to a research paper by Wits University spatial analysis and city planning researcher Alexandra Appelbaum.
Appelbaum said this had been an ongoing effect of the decline in the Johannesburg inner city which began in the 1970s. As a result, rental prices became more affordable for African people to move into neighbourhoods along Louis Botha Avenue close to the city centre, such as Orange Grove.
Back at Daniel Legend, Osakwe rocked slightly in a maroon mesh-covered chair while looking out into the street through his barred entrance.
“You know, whenever African people move in, the white people move out,” Osakwe said, marking white cotton fabric with a pencil. He would regularly slot it behind his left ear as he smoothed the material with his hands.
Garment-making on Louis Botha Avenue is an unpredictable business and tailors have to measure their steps to stay ahead in an upside down economy. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla
Osakwe said he shops around Amalgam’s China Mall and the Johannesburg CBD for fabric for good deals to make sure he gets a third profit off a garment sewn.
When quoting a customer, he includes a return taxi trip to the Johannesburg CBD from Orange Grove, which costs him R22.
“To make a lady’s top, I can buy material and other necessities for about R190, and in the end sell the garment for R300,” Osakwe said.
Mphando, on the other hand, said he makes sure of 50% profit on every garment. He said he buys from cross-border traders who bring back material from other countries.
“I can get it as cheap as R150 for 6m of material,” Mphando said. To maximise even further, he often resells the material he would have bought with a R100 mark-up for himself.
While China exports cheaper fabric, Osakwe said he would never compromise on buying poor quality fabric to lower costs.
“When people see my work, it must show my excellent workmanship,” he said.
Daniel “Legend” Osakwe is a Nigerian tailor who has been working on Louis Botha Avenue for over fifteen years. He speaks on how paying attention to detail allows him to effectively work on an a crime-riddled and sleeping avenue.
Customer service: The personal assistance not even the smartest robot could offer
As Osakwe sat alone in his shop, a petite woman seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She stood outside the entrance, next to a mannequin of similar stature. The life-sized doll was dressed in a Ndebele print-inspired A-line dress sneakily adjusted with a wooden peg at its back to hide the garment’s actual size. The visitor’s body was motionless, eyes moving slightly, as if unsure whether she could window-shop through the wrought iron bars.
Osakwe quickly welcomed her in with a sense of familiarity. Felicia Mlangeni had paid him a visit to potentially get a dress sewn.
What’s up? Osakwe often receives Whatsapp messages of outfits he has been tasked to recreate, like this Pedi-inspired traditional wedding dress. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla.
“It is for my sister’s umembeso. She is getting married next month,” Mlangeni said, perched over Osakwe’s shoulder as she showed him the dress she had in mind on her phone. “Do you have your own material?” Osakwe asked. Mlangeni took a moment to ponder, as if asked a trick question, before sheepishly shaking her head in response. While giving her a quick look at and feel of the fabric options available to her, Osakwe explained that a cotton and polyester mix dress would cost her R600, while if she opted for a pure cotton outfit he would charge her R850 for the design and material.
What started as an awkward business encounter turned into a friendly chat between Osakwe and Mlangeni, as if they were old friends.
“If you are going to be dancing, wear a low heel. What will you do with your hair?” Osakwe asked as Mlangeni bounced off her tippy toes, as if wearing imaginary stilettos.
Clothing alterations: A way to bite back and feed off the Chinese clothing industry
Next door to the shop Mphando was stationed in sat Misheck Mponda in Heartland Boutique, entertaining friends. He was formally dressed with the top button of his blue shirt open, spreading his collar over the white tape measure hanging from his neck like a loose tie.
An elderly man popped his head through the open glass door and shouted “How much?”
His right index and middle fingers mimicked a pair of scissors snipping through the baggy lower left sleeve of his stiff blue overalls.
“R30,” Mponda responded to the man’s price inquiry about alteration. The man disappeared quickly after he heard the figure.
Unbothered by the man’s abrupt departure, Mponda kept his eyes on the darting needle before him.
“People always shop for the best deal,” the 34-year-old said. Mponda, who had been a Louis Botha Avenue tailor for five years, said he thought he had offered the “old man” a good price for alteration.
“For you,” he said, pausing his work to let his eyes run over my face, “I would say R40”.
Mponda said he had no fixed price for altering or sewing garments and would often form a price by judging a customer’s appearance.
Misheck Mponda, an Orange Grove tailor on Louis Botha Avenue, says a method he uses to attract and retain customers is to be willing to be flexible with his const of service. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla
“But it is not a problem, they can reduce the price,” he said, adding that he was open to price negotiation, a competitive small business element that allows entrepreneurs to rope in customers by adjusting prices.
Mponda said altering people’s clothing was a “good” source of income for him, as customers came out of boutiques having bought incorrectly sized clothes.
“Chinese clothes are sometimes too big or too small. When people buy clothing from the shop which they can’t fit into, they come to me,” Mponda said, highlighting his satisfaction with working on the avenue.
“I am just a blind man; God will be my eyes,”
Osakwe, a husband and father-of-two, said he sometimes wishes he could leave Louis Botha Avenue completely.
When he set up shop on the avenue he had hoped the transport node would expose him to many potential customers.
“I just don’t have enough resources to move to places like Sandton,” he said, resting both his hands on the work station in front of him.
Osakwe said he had often been at the mercy of his landlord, struggling to meet the R3 000 rent and utility bills for his shop.
A red bible peeked through folded material near his hands, belonging amid his clutter just as much as the spools of thread and pairs of scissors scattered over the table.
“Living as an immigrant in a country so far away, I need to have strong faith and ambition,” he said.
Far back in his shop hung a painting of White Jesus, draped in red cloth, straddling a lamb while his fair bare feet led a flock of sheep through the wilderness.
“I am just a blind man; God will be my eyes,” Osakwe said, his hands briefly held open in surrender as if reaching to heaven to shine its light on him.
FEATURED IMAGE:Garment-making on Louis Botha Avenue is an unpredictable business and tailors have to measure their steps to stay ahead in an upside down economy. Photo: Ntombi Mkandhla
Wits University held an #AMINEXT march against gender-based violence, following the rape and murder of UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana and UWC student, Jesse Hess.
Hazel Meda tells the story of Mama Yvonne who has been running a soup kitchen in the city of Johannesburg for the last 32 years.
Yvonne Moloelanga has run the soup kitchen at Holy Trinity Catholic Church for the last 32 years. Photo: Tanyaradzwa Nyamajiyah
Yvonne Moloelanga has a shrill voice and powerful lungs. Dressed in a brown beret, blue housecoat and white sneakers, the tiny old woman shouts across the courtyard, telling one of the volunteers he has brought out the wrong box of bread and must go and get the right one.
She runs a tight ship at the 11 o’clock soup kitchen at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, but she also has a soft spot for the homeless people.
At the end of the meal, she distributes small, transparent sandwich bags containing an orange, a few biscuits and a packet of chips.
“Enjoy your weekend,” she says, as she hands the package to an elderly man.
She found her calling in 1980
Mama Yonne, 62, has been running the soup kitchen for the last 32 years but she will retire in three months’ time. The stomach ailment which necessitated an operation and six months of sick leave last year will force her to leave the homeless people who have, quite literally, become her family.
She used to work in a factory, making melamine cups, saucers and salt and pepper shakers. But she found her calling in 1980, when her best friend told her that the Jesuit priests at Holy Trinity were looking for a housekeeper.
Her predecessor, an elderly lady, used to make sandwiches and pass them though the window to the homeless people who came knocking.
A sandwich wasn’t enough to get the homeless people through the day
But Mama Yvonne thought a sandwich wasn’t enough to get the homeless people through the day and suggested giving them a proper meal. She told her bosses she was young and energetic enough to prepare the food, which she did in addition to her housekeeping duties.
Mama Yvonne prepares the daily meal for the homeless people of Braamfontein. Photo: Tanyaradzwa Nyamajiyah
She describes her work with the homeless in between preparing vegetables, hamburgers, gravy and rice for the priests’ dinner and answering the phone, which screeches to life every few minutes.
She says she enjoys looking after the homeless and they look after her too. She feels safe walking around any part of the city centre after dark.
“I will just hear them calling ‘Mama Theresa, Mama Theresa!’ from all corners. It’s what they call me, because Mama Theresa used to feel for people.”
“I feel for them. I really feel for them”, she continues. “Especially in this cold weather and in the rainy weather. When you sleep in your warm house you think of them: Oh, the poor children, the poor people, what are they doing now in this weather?”
Even those who are currently being helped at the soup kitchen spare a few rand to buy her treats to show their gratitude.
Her compassion led her to take two homeless boys, Thabo and Dumisani, to stay with her and her family in Soweto sometimes.
“And my children welcomed them. They never said ‘Who’s this? Who’s this?’”
She says Thabo and Dumisani are big men now. Thabo is struggling, doing piece jobs, but Dumisani is doing well, having been sponsored by a parishioner to go to art school to develop his talent.
“Even today they come and visit me. They are part of my family,” Mama Yvonne says proudly.
“They never forget me,” she says, her voice getting higher and louder as she gets more and more excited.
“They always say ‘Mama, if it was not for you, I wouldn’t be this today. Here’s a drink for you. Here’s something for you.’”
Even those who are currently being helped at the soup kitchen spare a few rand to buy her treats to show their gratitude.
Mama Yvonne pulls a small chocolate bar out of her apron pocket. It’s a present from Eric, a homeless man who now helps her to prepare the daily meal.
“He knows I like sweet things. You know, when you get old you like sweet things,” she says, laughing.
She crams the confection into her mouth and chomps on the ball which forms in her cheek.
She got her love of clothes from her mother
Mama Yvonne has always had a taste for the good things. She liked beautiful clothes and has many photos to prove it.
There’s a photo from 1970, when she was pregnant with Clementine, the first of her three children. She wears a fluffy white beret and a housecoat-style blue dress. In fact, the outfit looks strikingly similar to what she wears today, except for the big white-and-red embroidered flowers on the hip pockets, the chunky brown suede heels and the lipstick.
She says she got her love of clothes from her mother, who worked in a menswear factory, and who used to make Yvonne and her three sisters matching Christmas clothes which made them the envy of the neighbourhood.
“We were the best, with our stiff-neck dresses, like wedding dresses. They buy lace and they sew it and they will buy starch and it will look like a peacock.”
But life wasn’t easy for Yvonne and her three sisters and two brothers.
“My mother struggled with us.”
Yvonne’s father walked out on the family when she was 14 or 15. To make matters worse, he used their address to open an account at a furniture shop.
“He take things with our address. He never brought them home. He take them wherever he went after he depart with my mother,” she says shaking her head.
When her father failed to pay for the radio and other items he had taken on credit, workers from the shop came with a truck and took Yvonne’s mother’s furniture.
The family survived thanks to help from Yvonne’s relatives and to her mother’s sweat and “smarts”.
“I have learned a lot from my mother, because my mother used her hands, her brains, to do something. She never just sit and wait for income to just come from her boss,” Mama Yvonne says admiringly.
Her mother sewed clothes for neighbours and also sold food.
“Every weekend, she used to wake up early in the morning. We used to bake koeksisters and samoosas. Saturdays and Sundays we used to go out at six o’clock in the streets to sell all those things.”
“That’s why today I can also use my hands and my brains,” She says.
Mama Yvonne has run a catering and decorating business on weekends to supplement her income since her husband died in 1990.
“When you are a mother … you have to work hard”
She has catered birthday parties, including her granddaughter’s second birthday party, weddings for people in Soweto and Holy Trinity parishioners, and church functions.
She has beautiful photos of some of her work.
She will continue with the catering and decorating to get income when she retires from the church
She says she learned to cook from her mother, who was a very good cook, and decorating comes naturally.
“You know, this is so simple. People are going to school to do this, but if you can just use your common sense you see that something nice can come out of it.”
Mama Yvonne says she will continue with the catering and decorating to get income when she retires from the church.
Her children, Clementine and Patrick, are unemployed and she supports them and her three grandchildren and one great-grandchild, who all live with her in the small house she worked hard to extend.
Mama Yvonne and her husband Henry – also known as Prince because of his good looks and regal bearing – on their wedding day. Photo: Yvonne Moloelanga
Her children help with the business, but it was their late brother Eugene who was a very good baker and cook. Mama Yvonne has a photo of him cooking on a small grill in their garden.
She shows me about 30 more photos of him.
There’s a photo of Eugene wearing a smart black pinstripe suit, Bible in hand.
He was light-skinned, handsome and a snappy dresser, like his father Henry, whom Yvonne says was nicknamed Prince because of his good looks and regal bearing.
A few of the more recent photos are bordered with flowers, thanks to the magic of the digital age.
Most of the photos are from Eugene’s 21st birthday party. There’s one in which Mama Yvonne is giving him a big silver key while balancing a big blue-and-white iced cake.
There’s another one with her planting a kiss on his lips.
Some are from his confirmation. She proudly tells me that he was shaking the hand of Bishop Mvemve of Klerksdorp.
There’s also a tiny photo of a chubby child in red clothes and a white bonnet.
At first, Mama Yvonne thinks it’s one of her grandchildren, but I tell her that the picture looks quite old and that it has the words “seventy three” scrawled on the back in black ink.
He died of a headache
Eugene was born in 1973.
He died in 2011.
Mama Yvonne says he died of a headache.
She says he went to Baragwanath Hospital on Saturday and the nurses gave him Panado for the pain.
When the severe pain didn’t go away, he went back on Sunday and was given more Panado.
On Monday night he called an ambulance and was taken to the hospital, where he waited for hours before being seen by a doctor.
On Tuesday, he was dead.
The doctors said it was meningitis.
Mama Yvonne says she wasn’t angry at the hospital staff.
“What could I do? I couldn’t wake him up,” she says. “When he’s gone, he’s gone.”
She is comforted by gospel music. Her favourite song is Rebecca Malope’s Umoya Wam’.
“When you sing it, you can see there’s something come into you. You feel like you are next to God. You think of all the people that have passed, all the people that have left you behind,” she says wistfully.
She took off the uniform, revealing trendy trousers and started dee-jaying
Mama Yvonne hasn’t let her son’s death rob her of her joy.
She is still fun-loving and mischievous.
About a month after her son’s death she took part in a DSTV programme which was filmed at a church in Soweto.
Wearing a St Anne’s guild uniform which she had borrowed from her sister – she is a devout Catholic but doesn’t have time for all the guild activities – she stood in front of the congregation. She took off the uniform, revealing trendy trousers and started dee-jaying.
“I was dee-jaying. I’m serious. Yes!” she shrills at my amazement. “With all the records and things. And jiving.”
She says they called her DJ Gogo.
She has always loved performing. As a child, she loved reciting poetry and would volunteer to give speeches at assembly when inspectors visited her school.
A fellow detainee begged her not to kill herself
Her performance skills once saved her from spending a night in jail. She had forgotten her dompas or “pass book” at home and was arrested, along with many others, while waiting for the bus one day in 1977.
The police took the group to Booysens Police Station and said they would have to spend the night in the cells unless they told their families to bring R50. She had no way to contact her family and came up with a plan.
Two days earlier, she had gone to the doctor to get medication for the flu and she had the medicine in her handbag.
“I said ‘Oh, I am going to kill myself. I will drink all these tablets. I can’t sleep here.’ ”
Taken in by her act, a fellow detainee begged her not to kill herself, saying his family would pay for her as well.
“That’s how I was safe to go home,” she says, chuckling.
“And since that day, I never left my ID behind. It always stays with me in my handbag, even up to now.”
Societal expectations and experiences can often place pressure on people’s relationships. With Valentine’s Day coming up we have asked individuals questions about their views on certain relationship dynamics especially when it comes to the most anticipated day of the year for some lovers, Valentines Day. Viewers shared their beliefs and Siyanda and Katlego talk about […]
