“You should see bab’uSithole’s hands; they are like this,” Mam’Sipho says and pauses from plaiting her customer who is sitting on a red plastic chair in the middle of Kerk street, to emphaise the point by curling her fingers.
Bab’uSithole is the Zulu man who started the street hairdressing business on corner Eloff Street and Kerk Street back in 1993. This is where Mam’Sipho does hair. Bab’uSithole does not do hair anymore, Mam’Sipho says. He is on pension.
“The way I see it, he has arthritis but he mistook it for a stroke. That’s what he said. I spoke to him and I said ‘no this is not stroke; stroke is not like this. If it was a stroke, you wouldn’t be able to control your fingers’. But you know South Africans, they earn grant for disability and all that,” she says with a mock twang and laughs.
The queen of Kerk Street
Mam’Sipho laughs a lot and flashes a dazzling smile every time she speaks. She is big and bubbly with inquisitive, piercing eyes. She is originally from Zimbabwe but came to South Africa in 1990 or ’91 – she is not too sure. She started working on Kerk Street in 1993 and has been here ever since.
“I have six kids. I did it six times,” she says and laughs, again. Mam’Sipho is 47 years’ old. Age has barely touched her face. She has given birth to six children, two (a boy and a girl) of which are still in primary school. The two visit her every day on their home from school. “The other one is standing there,” she says, picking out her daughter, 9, who is squeezing her way through a mash of people crowding Kerk and Von Brandis Street. She has on a blue tunic and a navy jersey.
Her brother, 11, drags his feet slovenly behind her. The boy’s name is Ramsey but the Kerk street hawkers call him Popo. The girl is Fezile. Through the milling crowd of traders and buyers and the cluster of goods a man calls out to Mam’Sipho upon spotting her “two little ones” as she calls them.
“Mamazala!” the man shouts, lumbering towards her chair where she is still tending to her customer. “Yebo mkhwenyana!” she calls back. “Do you see how big your boy Popo is?” the man says in a hoarse voice. “He needs to exercise. He is even bigger than me?” “Ah Mkhenyana, bigger than you?” “He has a big mkhaba. What size does he wear? I’m sure his trousers are tailored now?” the man says, catching his breath.
“Who? Bobo?” Mam’Sipho laughs. “Vele, it is so, I ordered these ones from Indians. You see yourself that he is shaped like an Indian.” Mam’Sipho has a candour about her that seems to attract vendors and customers to her like moths to a lightbulb. This effect has been good for her business.
On average she make about R800.00 a day, although she is quick to say that when days are good she takes home a lot more. With her hairdressing business she has been able to buy a house in Zimbabwe and pay the R5300 monthly rent for her two-bedroom flat on Plein and Joubert street.
THE BEST HAIRDRESSER IN TOWN:Mam’uSipho (blue top) is the block leader of Kerk Street and her chair is always busy with the young women who come from near and far to get their hair styled by her. Photo: Lwandile Fikeni
Taking a stand against the authorities
However, things have not always run so swiftly on Kerk Street. Bab’uShezi can attest to that. He is part of the original trio – Bab’uSithole, Mam’Sipho, and then him – who started the hairdressing business on the narrow street. Like Bab’uSithole, he also hails from KwaZulu-Natal. His bone of contention has to do with the formal vending stalls that were built in 2010 – for the Fifa World Cup – which were intended to formalise their business.
Clouds quickly gather above the city’s blue sky as Bab’uShezi speaks. “These new stalls were built while I was working here,” he says in isiZulu, his face a lump of grief. “Here they took our IDs to create these structures for us but when they were complete they turned on us and installed migrants in our place. “
The City of Johannesburg announced that hairdressers were forbidden from the new flea market, Bab’uShezi says. They even made us cards and then they came back and confiscated them. That’s when they introduced these new people, he says with visible contempt at the hawkers shielded in the shade.
“We don’t know how these people got their stalls – whether they bought them or not,” he continues, shaking his head and working the hooked needle in his hands around the balding spot of his customer, who’s asked for a weave.
“We hear that this might be the case,” he says grumpily. “R10 000 is the price being thrown around. These were our stands and we were kicked out. That’s why we’re here on the side of the street. They wanted to chase us off this area. I’m the one who fought for this place the most.”
On this last score a twitch of angry satisfaction flickers across his face. Bab’Shezi is a very proud man. He is short and wears a greying goatee, his signature spottie (bucket hat) hangs down one side of his head as he speaks. His hands work mechanically, drawing the threaded needle in and out of his customer’s loose coif of damaged hair. Bab’uShezi doesn’t know how old he is but he says he was born in 1964.
“When was it when they wanted to forcibly remove us from here?” he turns round and asks another hairdresser close by.
“It was that time when they were cleaning up the city,” the woman says with a sigh.
“Yes, that time,” he retorts.
CLICK TO VIEW GALLERY: Kerk Street is a crowded strip in the inner city which has been demarcated for hawkers. While the hawkers have been granted permits to operate in this area, the hairdressers are still being chased away from time to time by JMPD. Photo: Lwandile Fikeni
“I can’t remember very well,” the woman says. “This was during the world cup. That time when they didn’t want any hawkers selling on the side of the road.”
They have contempt for us hairdressers, Bab’uShezi says, dialling up his own contempt at the way the city and its Metro police treat him and his colleagues.
“They say we aren’t needed here. Now that we’re inching closer to december…” “They also came here three months ago,” the woman cuts him.
“Yes, three months,” Bab’uShezi adds. “So that’s the kind of life we live here.”
Bab’uShezi says he has collected the names of the elderly hairdressers who work on Kerk Street and took them to a lawyer “who was helping us; his name was Mantanga, and he took our case to the high court.
In the end they ended up sending us back here, in the street, to continue with our work. But they returned us here, and not inside the stalls. We never got the stalls back. They kicked us out!”
When it rains there is nowhere for Bab’uShezi, Mam’Sipho and their swish of hairdressers to find shelter. They hide beneath the covering of JetMart and sometimes, while they’re there, Metro police come and confiscate their equipment.
And that equipment is never returned.
Unleashing Vimba against tsotsi’s downtown
Kerk Street is a cacophony of cars and taxis and cops comingling with the rush of bodies passing through this section of downtown Johannesburg. Against the steel fence of the South Gauteng High Court on Von Brandis Street. just off Kerk, loiters a group of young men – tsotsi’s – who are attracted by the booming hair business here.
“Tsotsi’s don’t attack us,” says Mam’Sipho with an assuring smile. “They will attack a random stranger. Us, we’re more like a police siren. We are the ones that started this vimba thing.”
Vimba means ‘catch him’. It is an infamous yell, a siren that has become synonymous with hawkers downtown. You often hear it when a tsotsi is on the run after snatching an item on sale at one the hawkers’ stalls. The yell alerts hawkers and bystanders alike and has led to many a vigilante mob that delivers raw justice on the pavements of inner city Johannesburg.
“So tsotsi’s,” Mam’Sipho continues, “they know that when they are here and they start to do these wrong things we just say ‘vimba’ and they get caught.”
“When you ask the Metro police what they are doing they tell you that you are not wanted here,” Bab’uShezi says, angrily. “And the irony is that we were here first. The oldest practitioners here are Sipho and I.
All these other people” – he gestures to the sellers in the stalls – “they found us here. Now we live this wretched life where we are harassed constantly by Metro police.
That’s how we end up fighting. It’s not that we’re fighting them [the other hawkers] but we do so in order to come back here and to do our work.”
Different hairstyles for individual needs
Hairdressers on Kerk Street have mulptiplied since Bab’uSithole, Mam’Sipho and Bab’uShezi began all those years ago – and so have styles. Styles depend on what’s in, Mam’Sipho says while weaving an intricate design on one of her old customers’ crown.
“Most people ask for the style that’s the in-style,” she says, eyes fixed on the young woman’s head. “There was a time when there was the razor cut; there was a time when this style came in (she gestures with her eyes to the young woman whose hair she is plaiting), it is called Pontofina. So it depends on what’s in fashion – it’s like clothes. It’s like a label.
That’s how it is with hair. But there are styles that never go out of fashion like amasingili (singles/braids).”
The young woman being plaited by Mam’Sipho’s studious hands is Simphiwe Maseko. She is a student at the University of Johannesburg. She’s been coming to sit in Mam’Sipho’s chair since 2014, since she started going to varsity.
“I was passing here, actually, and I saw her doing hair and I was like, no, this is nice, then I asked her if I could come do my hair with her and then she was like, you can come, it’s fine, then I came.
She did my hair and I was happy. That’s when I started coming more often.
My first hairstyle was a straight back. It was these same braids but straight back,” she says pointing to the style Mam’Sipho is currently weaving on her head.
Maseko hasn’t had her hair done elsewhere ever since that first day in Mam’Sipho’s chair.
“When I wanna do my hair I just come here,” she adds. “Mam’Sipho is good at what she does; that’s all I can say.”
A glimmer of hope for women in the city
The dangerous elements, which are so ubiquitous as to be the very air one breathes in downtown, have not succeeded in deterring both clients and hairdressers.
Zandile Zwane, an inner city resident, moved into Kerk Street in 2006. Before then, she was a student at one of the computer colleges in town.
“I found out that computers are not my thing, but i had a talent for doing hair but I wasn’t that perfect,” she says.
When she used to pass Kerk Street on her way to her computer course she would stop and ask the elderly men who crochet hair with a needle to teach her how to do it.
“I asked how much it was to train me,” she says with cool smile. “They said it’s R100.00 for each style. They mainly use a needle but they were going to teach me all the styles.”
After her brief training she went back home and practised. She already had a certificate in hairdressing but she didn’t know how to plait and crochet hair. After she was confident she could plait and crochet hair she took up a spot next to Mam’Sipho and has been on Kerk Street ever since.
“So, because I had a small child,” Zwane adds, “I thought it better to come here and do hair. I can come here anytime I like. It’s better than being a house wife. I don’t have to wake up early and come here. I’m able to make food for my kids in the morning and then come here, to the street, and then knock off whenever I like and go back to my children. So I saw it was more convenient, plus, I have a talent for it. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed and loved.”
There’s always a silver lining
The clouds above the city turn a dark grey colour and are pregnant with rain. Few moments pass before the first spittle begins to wet the street. The hairdressers usher their clients to the JetMart canopy.
Soon the rain starts pouring vehemently as the population of Kerk Street runs for cover. Mam’Sipho maintains a jubilant smile even as the rain washes down, turning small rivulets slowly into rivers of waste along the gutters of Eloff and Von Brandis Street. Bab’uShezi looks up at the sky as if quietly cursing God for all the inconvenience.
He casts his eyes back to shock of hair before him, and with his hooked needle begins to weave away.
FEATURED IMAGE:CLICK TO VIEW GALLERY: Kerk Street is a crowded strip in the inner city which has been demarcated for hawkers. While the hawkers have been granted permits to operate in this area, the hairdressers are still being chased away from time to time by JMPD. Photo: Lwandile Fikeni
Many people who work in and around Fordsburg come from all parts of the world. It is not strange to hear cleaners, waitresses, cooks, shop assistants etc. saying they come from countries like India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Malawi. But, a majority of those employed there live just above the poverty line and struggle to survive each day.
Fadzai Gonda poses outside her home in Mayfair. She has been working in Fordsburg for over a year and earns a wage that she says is not enough to support her family. Photo: Zimasa Mpemnyama
There is always a buzz on the streets of Fordsburg, Johannesburg, but the buzz is tricky to decipher for an outsider. The cars drive slowly and the residents walk with a quick urgency.
On the other hand, there are the almost invisible service workers who seem to move in the background of a scene they are not meant to occupy. This means that there are loud and quiet laughs in every corner, some comfortable while others are uneasy.
The area is mainly made up of restaurants, grocery stores, factories, textile and clothing shops that employ many foreign nationals living around Fordsburg, Mayfair and the Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD).
Fadzai Gonda and Sazini Mpala are two examples of those workers. They, like many other workers in Fordsburg, are only a small fraction of a bigger picture concerning worker conditions in Fordsburg, and South Africa. The puzzle in Fordsburg is big and complicated. The history of the place is still intricately intertwined with our present.
One of the busiest streets in Fordsburg is Mint Road. Mannequins with brightly coloured Muslim clothing and restaurant signs showing hot plates of food fill the pavements.
A couple of blocks down from Mint Road there is a bakery and pastry shop. At the front of the store, on either side of the door, there are two gas stoves, one with bubbling oil and the other with assorted desserts and pastries.
Long hours, long days
Mpala, who works in the bakery shop, is from Zimbabwe and has been living in South Africa for over 10 years. Standing behind one of the gas stoves, she casually puts raw samoosa dough into the boiling oil. She is sweating slightly and her torn shoes are testament to her long hours of standing.
“I start work at 8am and finish at 7pm, six days a week. I only rest on Tuesdays,” says Mpala. While most people would cringe at the notion of only resting one day a week, she says she is used to it; after all, she has been doing it for almost nine years.
When Mpala arrives in the morning she cleans and sweeps the store. She then starts frying and preparing the pastries and sweets. From the moment she starts preparing the food from her stall at around 8.30 or 9am, customers start buying and she has to serve them. Mpala says she spends most of her days on her feet, only sitting down for short intervals.
“You know, young kids the age of my children come here and talk in a bad language to us, and we can’t do anything about it,” she says.
Mpala is 42 years old and has four children, aged three, seven, 14 and 18, who all live in Zimbabwe with her mother-in-law. “I feel heartbroken every time I have to leave my children behind, but I have no choice,” says Mpala.
She and her husband rent a room in a three-bedroom flat in Bertrams, Johannesburg, with two other families.
The flat she stays in is one of the half-renovated flats typical of the Johannesburg CBD, painted with bright greens and reds on the outside, but with rusted plumbing and cracked walls covered in paint on the inside.
The building next to hers is covered in soot, it was probably bright and white in its heyday. The streets are much cleaner and quieter than the rest of the CBD though.
A double bed, with a brown headboard, sits on one side of their bedroom, which also functions as a lounge. On the other side sits a chest of drawers with a black 54cm television on top. Behind the bedroom door is a calendar with the 25th of December circled.
The 25th is circled because she is counting down the days till she can go home to see her children. “I always go home on Christmas. Even though I don’t have much to give my kids, I always try my best to bring them some stuff. You know, clothes and sweet things,” she smiles.
Gonda, who is exactly 10 years younger than Mpala, faces the same dilemma each year. She says she tries to go home every year but sometimes feels embarrassed because she can’t give a lot to her ailing mother and her two daughters.
Fadzai Gonda outside her house while she prepares supper for herself and her boyfriend. Photo: Zimasa Mpemnyama
She says life in South Africa has been difficult. “Where I work now, I only get paid R450 per week. We get paid in cash so the money just finishes in your hands, just like that,” says Gonda.
Gonda is loud when she speaks and has a charismatic character. She laughs frequently, even laughing at herself sometimes. She smiles even when she tells the story of the degrading way they get searched every night when they leave work.
“When the shop is closed for the day, we all go to the back, strip to our underwear and get searched by a Muslim lady who works at the store.”
When asked how she feels about this, she says: “I absolutely hate it. It means that they really don’t trust us.”
Gonda lives in Mayfair with her boyfriend and has been in South Africa since 2009. “After 2008 I decided to leave my home country [Zimbabwe],” she says, referring to the violence that erupted in Zimbabwe after the 2008 elections.
The economy of the country fell dismally after that and many Zimbabweans left the country.
Although she has been working in South Africa for close to six years, Gonda will only be getting her official work permit in November. This means she cannot find a permanent job. She says the money she gets paid is so little that she was forced to find a second job, cleaning and washing clothes in a flat in Mayfair.
Work that is uncertain
In Fordsburg, shops of various sizes employ anything from one to 10 employees. While some shop owners choose to employ their siblings and family members, most of the others employ legal and illegal foreign nationals.
Most work around Fordsburg is what labour experts classify as precarious work.
Bandile Ngidi is a master’s student at Wits University and researcher for the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative. He is also one of the directors of Rethink Africa. Ngidi says: “Precarious work is work that is temporary, short term, they don’t have fixed contracts, it’s insecure and they have very poor working conditions.”
Ngidi refers to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) that is meant to, but not always does, protect some of the most vulnerable workers in the formal and informal economy.
“We have a lot of legislation that is meant to protect workers but what is missing is this funny concept called political will,” says Ngidi.
Fordsburg is historically a site of informal labour.
Bandile Ngidi, a minimum wage researcher at Wits University reading in his office. Photo: Zimasa Mpemnyama
The Fordsburg and Mayfair areas formed part of the original Langlaagte farm where gold was first discovered in Johannesburg in the mid-19th century.
Fordsburg was named after Lewis P Ford, a private developer who, along with Julius Jeppe Senior, were the first developers to build around the gold-rich piece of land in 1888.
From the onset the area was designated for poor, working-class communities looking for work in the mining area. There was an area specially earmarked for Indians, coloureds, black and white people.
Those who specifically worked in the mines, both black and white men, chose to buy stalls in the Fordsburg area because it was close to the gold mines. The area soon became congested and racially diverse.
With an increasingly multi-cultural population, Fordsburg soon became a vibrant space for commercial shopping enterprises. Mint and Albertina Sisulu roads are still shopping hubs where many buy, work and play.
This legacy, of Fordsburg being a space for the poor and the working class, has continued, but in recent years the power dynamic has changed. Those who were historically employees are now employers.
What the law says
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act stipulates the law for acceptable working conditions for all South Africans in the formal and informal economy.
According to the Act, “an employer must give an employee who works continuously for more than five hours a meal interval of at least one continuous hour”.
It also stipulates: “An employer may not require or permit an employee to work more than 45 hours in any week and … eight hours in any day if the employee works on more than five days in a week.”
Gonda says this never happens at her workplace: “Our lunch break is 30 minutes and we are not allowed to go out. You have to eat inside the shop.”
Mpala shares these sentiments, saying that she has no formal lunch break: “I only eat when there are no customers. If the customers keep coming, I can stand the whole day without taking any breaks.”
‘Mina I can get fired any day, any time’
Ngidi says a huge portion of the South African economy is made up of individuals who work in the informal sector, earning wages that are barely enough to live a healthy lifestyle.
“The wages that many get, even after long strenuous hours of work, are hardly enough for a balanced diet.”
Speaking about the trend of low wages in most informal sectors, Ngidi says: “South Africa’s labour market is such that … the apartheid wage structure is roughly still intact but also we’ve got very high levels of poverty and inequality and a low social security system.”
He says: “What is driving our very low job growth is temporary work, casualisation.”
Fadzai Gonda outside the one-roomed house she shares with her boyfriend, Wiz Yusuf, in Mayfair. Photo: Zimasa Mpemnyama
Ngidi says employers can sometimes get away with gross exploitation, especially of workers who are illegal or uneducated.
Within the labour sector, a broader discussion, spearheaded by trade unions, about a standard minimum wage has been going on for a number of years. Tied to these discussions are questions of what it means to live above the poverty line and how the huge inequality gap in South Africa can be combated using a minimum wage.
Ngidi cites some international countries as examples that can be used to chart a way forward for these discussions. He mentions countries like Germany, Australia, France and Brazil that have recently implemented a minimum wage system.
South Africa is one of 186 countries that are part of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which is a United Nations (UN) agency meant to combat worker exploitation and create a unified working environment the world over.
“Out of all the countries in the ILO, almost 90% of them have a minimum wage and South Africa is not one of those countries,” Ngidi says.
Ngidi says there are other elements and factors that are being considered in trying to figure out what the national minimum wage will be. These include the number of dependants an individual has.
“There is no answer to that question yet but … the local food poverty line is calculated by looking at how much it costs to buy a local diet that gives you 2200 calories.”
A diet of 2200 calories is estimated as enough energy and nutrition to sustain an adult per day.
Ngidi also says that one of the reasons exploitation is rampant in many informal industries is because workers are unable to organise themselves due to extremely long working hours that make it physically impossible for them to meet as a collective.
When asked whether she has ever considered joining a trade union or aligning herself with an organisation that protects worker rights, Mpala exclaims loudly in Ndebele, her home language: “Yhuuuuuuuuuu, do you want me to lose my job?
“If lababantu [these people] could see me talking to you now I would get fired. Mina, I can get fired any day, any time and nothing can happen,” Mpala says.
And that is the story of many workers in Fordsburg, and in South Africa. They walk on tiptoes hoping not to offend their only source of income.
Like Mpala’s worn-out shoes, they have no option but to carry on just another day.
FEATURED IMAGE: Fadzai Gonda poses outside her home in Mayfair. She has been working in Fordsburg for over a year and earns a wage that she says is not enough to support her family. Photo: Zimasa Mpemnyama
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