For beauty's sake

A small girl surrounded by a sea of hairpieces sucks a lollipop, and sways to loud music and adult conversation. Patrons on plastic chairs submit to the practiced fingers of hairstylists from Lagos, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Maputo, Lilongwe, Harare, Accra, and Luanda.  Coils, knots, braids and beads, sewn, woven, crocheted in pyramids, sausages, swirl and curl, for beauty’s sake. Soft and lovely, light and free, beautiful black mane tumbles onto blue, red and gold fabric in the fading light of a Saturday afternoon in Jo’burg City.

Hairdressing is big in Jo’burg. And it’s everywhere. On pavements and street corners, in shopping malls, main streets and side streets, in converted garages, on verandahs and in backrooms. There are hairstylists in Chinatown, Bruma, Eastgate, Park Meadows, and on every block from Bez Valley to Judith’s Paarl, to Lorenzville, to Bertrams, to Troyeville. From morning until late, seven days a week, hairstylists ply their trade along Commissioner Street, Bree Street, Jeppe Street; in Newtown and onwards to Fordsburg. Hairdressing has become integral to the social and economic life of Jo’burg City.  

The how and where of hairdressing have changed radically over the past twenty years. The greatest changes have been in the last decade with the dissolution of apartheid structures. The influx of huge numbers of Chinese traders, products and accessories and the influence of fashions and trends from other African countries has given new vibrancy to hairdressing and related trades. But whilst the stimulus of influences from a multiplicity of traditions is evident in the proliferation of new hair creations, special skills are required for different kinds of hair so white hairdressers will stick to white clients, black hairdressers to black clients and Chinese hairdressers to Chinese clients. 

However, hairdressing salons (as opposed to pavement hairstylists) increasingly offer a variety of additional beauty treatments (massages, manicures, pedicures, waxes, etc.) and here you will find black clients going to white beauticians and white clients going to black or Chinese beauticians for a vast array of services.

I have had the privilege - and the stress - of observing the vitality of inner city hairdressing at close quarters since my Nigerian neighbour two houses down set up first a hairdressing and then a barber shop in his carport.  The underbelly of the development is the relentless buzz of clientele hanging out on the pavement, and the fact that my neighbour (who has permission to build a carport, not a hairdressing site) has threatened to “deal with” me if I come too close or take a photograph.  

A block away from the carport salon, on Broadway, between 8^th and 7^th Streets, Louise Andrade is blow-drying the hair of an 86-year old client who has been coming to her once a week for 40 years.  The two women chat away in Portuguese. Every now and then Louise translates in broken English. I am aware that I am missing out on chunks of the conversation. Louise’s client, Henrietta Monteiro, originally from Portugal, immigrated to South Africa from Mozambique more than 40 years ago. Like many of Louise’s clients, she lives entirely in Johannesburg’s Portuguese community and barely speaks or understands a word of English.   

Louise is also from Mozambique. She came to Johannesburg in the early 1970s with her husband and son (two more sons were born in South Africa). Thirty-seven years ago she bought the shop, "Maison Sharon", where she had been employed as a hairdresser. She paid R 4,000 for it.

Things have changed a lot since those days: “The shops were nice, the houses, were nice, everything was nice. Now everything is dirty and most of the nice shops have closed.” With obvious nostalgia she reminisces about the chemist, the drycleaner, the butcher and the Greek café owner, Spiro, who sold wonderful bread and cakes and imported cheeses.

Louisa’s husband’s death seven years ago has made her especially conscious of death and dying and its impact on her business: “Every year three or four or five of my clients pass away,” she says with a sad voice.

Louise’s life has been challenging in many ways: She was always the main breadwinner since her husband’s employment was irregular and unreliable, and she has suffered from a series of stress-related illnesses and degenerative conditions related to her trade, which have necessitated several painful back operations.  Her clients have saved her time and time again, she says, by listening to her, allowing her to talk about her struggles, and supporting her various money-generating enterprises (she sells jewelry and a range of fashion accessories that she has created). 

Louise feels a connection to shops and shop owners who have remained in the area: Settlers Stores, Bez Valley Tailors and “the lady who makes the hats”, Dolly the milliner. Dolly was very famous, Louise says.  “Everybody asked for her…”

Many of Louise’s clients (men and women) have been coming to her since she began her business in Bez Valley. Their children and grandchildren have become her clients too.  But business has deteriorated in recent years. She says this is because people are scared to come to Bez Valley and because of the proliferation of hairdressing salons in the city and surroundings: “There is a lot of competition.”

In the old days the shop was open from seven in the morning to five or six at night. These days, Louise opens the shop after eight and closes at three in the afternoon.  “It is too dangerous to stay open late,” she says.

Her prices remain very reasonable. “I don’t put up the prices to much because people can’t afford more…”

Local customers include the owner of ‘Love Craft”, the sex shop two shops down, and “Indian and coloured” clients for manicures, pedicures and eyebrow tinting and shaping.

"Whatever I have done is with my own ten fingers.”

I squinted through the metal grid and dark windows of Broadway Milliner for any sign of life but could only make out a few very dusty hats on a small hat stand to one side of the shop window. Inside, Dolly Sepel was working on a new hat. She has been doing this for 48 years.





Women in their sixties or seventies who lived in Bez Valley as children, told me they remembered their mothers having hats made by Dolly. “She was famous,” one said. “She made all the mayoral hats.” When I went back to tell them that Dolly is still alive and still working, they were flabbergasted. “She must be nearly 90!”

Most people in surrounding shops that I spoke to don’t know Dolly. Only the tailor around the corner, Mr Moti, still chats to her from time to time. “She was a beautiful woman in her day,” he told me.

Dolly grew up in a house in Braamfontein and was educated at the Cottesloe school. Her father worked for the municipality. The family was very poor. “I came from a poor house,” she says. She and her two brothers and sister left school and started working at the age of 16.

“I didn’t have a training, I worked in hat factories. My first job was for a men’s hat factory in Fordsburg. The directors were two married couples from England. Then I went to a factory in Eloff Street Extension and then another factory, and then another hat factory in President Street…”

1952 protests against the banning of Solly Sachs

When she was in her twenties she had an offer from a draper’s shop in Bez Valley. “There was a draper next door and there was a girl working there called Frances and she said to me, 'Why don’t you come and work from our shop? We will give you a little corner and you can sell your hats there'.”

It was a large shop that included the shop that is Bez Valley Tailor’s today. “I started with that counter there, Dolly says, pointing to a white wooden counter with drawers, “and where the tailor is today, that is where I worked. That was my place. That was part of the draper’s shop.” 

Before she joined the Garment Workers Union, Dolly earned 3 pounds 10 a week. Her wages went up to 7 pounds 10 when she became a union member. She speaks in glowing terms about Solly Sachs, who formed the union in 1928. "He was a wonderful man. He helped us a lot." http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/garment-workers-union-gwu

The owner of the building lived with his family in a flat above the shop. As Dolly’s business grew, he built a separate shop for her and two more flats on top of the shops. Dolly dipped into her savings to pay the deposit on a flat and start her own shop. “I had 50 pounds in the bank,” Dolly says. “I was always a saver. I used to save 50 pence a week.”

There was a carpenter next door before the printing shop moved in and a Chinese shop that sold groceries. The Valley Butchery owned by Lilly Green was a block away and there was a big tea-room over the road on the corner. Directly across the road from Broadway Milliners there was a hairdressing salon. “It was a white hairdresser. Now it is a black hairdresser.”

“There have been big changes since those days,” Dolly says. “There were Italians and Greeks and Portuguese that lived here. They have all left now. It is all black people living here now. I had a very big business but my customers were all white and now many people don’t want to come here. But now I have very rich black customers. I have judges, lawyers, businessmen coming here. I am always busy. I do work for a shop in Sandton. She sells my hats for R 1,500. Fashion changes all the time. Smart women still don’t go without a hat. If you are smart you don’t go without a hat.”

Rentals for shops in the vicinity are approximately R5,000 per month. “I could have bought this building for 55 pounds more than 30 years ago but I didn’t have the money then.”

Dolly has not had an easy life. Her husband was a bookie who contributed little to day to day expenses and left her for another woman, and one of her two sons died in the SADF at the age of 22.

She has been making hats for so long that she can’t imagine doing anything else.

“You have done it all of your life. You have never done anything else. Most of my life has been in this shop…

Lime green, turquoise, gold, black and white… You just make things… People bring their outfits for me to match. I dye their shoes, their bags, everything…

I used to work seven days a week. Only the last year I don’t work on a Sunday…

Whatever I have done is with my own ten fingers.”

"...a dead end..."

Enoch Yemohson is from Ghana. He and his family live in the flat that Dolly the milliner once lived in, above Bez Valley Tailors and Broadway Milliner.

Enoch's shop is 'Current Audio and Electricals' at 82 Broadway, a few shops away from 8^th Street. 


He came to South Africa in 1989 because of the political instability in his own country at that time, and has been in business for five years.

“Things are not working but we are just trying,” he says.

Enoch has a diploma in electronics. He fixes TVs, microwaves, DVDs and “anything that is electronic and a domestic appliance.”

He pays R 5,000 per month for rent. Electricity and other costs are continually rising in the shop and at the flat. He used to pay R 320 per month for electricity at home. Now he gets bills for R 1,600 per month.

Enoch sold his car because he could no longer afford to run it. This has been bad for business because he can't collect and deliver repairs. 

“Business is very, very poor,” he says. “People on this side don’t have money. This area is a dead end.  Maybe I will have to move out the way things are.”   

Enoch rents out part of his shop to other businesses: A hairdresser, a barber and a tailor.

The hairdressers, Solange and Angie, are from Kinshasa, DRC; the barber, Dalton Nkhoma, is a Malawian; and the tailor, Chester Misiska, is also from Malawi. They all live in Bez Valley.

Chester is friendly with Mr. Moti from Bez Valley Tailors.  The two tailors refer customers to one another.

Chester and his 23 year old son live in a backroom in 8th Avenue.  He calls it a "boy's room". The room is on the same property as Katy Mazibuko's room (see earlier blog). They have lived there for eight years

Current Audio and Electrics: 082-3900-433; Chester  Misiska, Tailor: 078-8313-833 

Anything from a brassiere to a tent...

Mr. Mito as a young man

Mr. Subhas Moti has owned Bez Valley Tailors on the corner of Seventh Street and Broadway for 30 years.  He took over the business from his father-in-law, Mr. Chitta Lalloo Parbhoo, when he retired in 1981.  The shop started out at 15 Broadway, where Midas is today, and moved to the current location in 1962, almost 50 years ago.

The son of a tailor, Mr. Moti was born in Durban in 1947.  His father’s business was on Grey Street, which was a ‘hub of Indian businesses’ in the 1950s.

  

Mr. Moti with his wife and in-laws

From an early age Mr. Moti would go to his father’s shop after school. At the age of nine he shortened his first pair of trousers, made his first buttonhole, and tacked his first button.  When he was 11 his father died suddenly. He and his five siblings were  catapulted into adulthood the three boys into careers as tailors.

Life was tough but Mr. Moti is inclined to focus on the positive. “Between then and the time I came to this business, I frequented workshops and sweatshops and tailor shops. It was an excellent learning ground’.

Mr. and Mrs. Lalloo Parbhoo

He met his wife on a visit to Johannesburg. ‘I had family in Johannesburg so I came here from time to time.  In those days when you crossed provincial borders, you had to go to Home Affairs and get a permit.  On the one trip I met my wife and we got married’. The couple lived in Durban for a while before moving to Johannesburg.  Taking over his father-in-law’s business in July 1981 allowed the tailor to generate more income, though not without hard work and sacrifice.  ‘Those were long days. I was working 12 or 14 hours a day…’

Within 18 months Mr. Moti suffered a heart attack and was forced to rethink how to run the business. He took on one assistant and then others.  They have been with him for 24 years, 18 years, and six years respectively.

Describing the changes that have taken place over the years, Mr. Moti speaks of the horrendous journey back and forth from Lenasia in peak hour traffic, and the gradual disappearance of most other tailors in the area.

Mr. Moti takes pride in his work and believes it is valuable. ‘I believe anybody who works with his hands has to make a living.  He is taking the trouble so he must also get a slice of the cake. I don’t want the whole cake...I will never be rich but I can make a decent living’.

Relationships with customers are central. ‘In my line of work I have people who have things to talk about, anything from the money market to weddings and social events and tragedies. So you hear of Johannesburg, you hear of the people of Johannesburg. And it is a vibrant city.  I’m a people person…Eventually the customer becomes your friend,’ Mr. Moti says.

Customers are from all walks of life. ‘You can’t put a finger on who the customers are…very poor, very rich. The poor one will say, ‘Please boss, I don’t have another trouser, give me a trouser so that I can wash the one I am wearing’... And then I get the guy who comes here in a Maserati and I do a fitting for him and he gives me his card and says, ‘When it is ready, please call the office, somebody will come and fetch it’. 

A local magician has been a customer for many years. The relationship led to a massive undertaking to produce items of clothing for 10-12 Reach for a Dream ‘happiness givers’. Outfits consisted of trousers, waistcoats and T-shirts with lots of pockets. ‘A pocket is a tailor’s nightmare’, Mr. Moti says. 

Although business is uncertain from one day to the next, the atmosphere in the shop is vibrant and collaborative. ‘Ours is a team effort but I am in the middle of every single job,’ Mr. Moti says.  ‘Nobody does marking and cutting except me and I give the customer the fitting so I know what I have to do. You get a person who is slender on the waist but big on the seat; and you may get a man who has a paunch and a very small behind.  It is all about measurements and you have to be on top of your trade otherwise they bring it back and you have to redo the job at no cost’.

Asked about some of his more challenging assignments, Mr. Moti says, ‘Our work can be  anything from a brassiere to a tent! Now the brassiere that would come to us is not an ordinary brassiere. It comes from the specialists and it is an awkward size. For instance, one that came to us was a 32 triple H! We provide the necessary workmanship’.

An ‘operation’ with a tent involved sewing zips onto the windows of the tent so they wouldn’t flap in the rain.  A machine was moved onto the pavement to complete the job because the tent was too big for the shop.

Mr. Moti with his wife, three daughters and extended family

Bez Valley Tailors has countered criminal attacks like many other businesses in Jo’burg. On one occasion three armed men relieved Mr. Moti of the R500 float, his personal possessions, and the leather waistcoat he was wearing that day. 

I asked how long he intends to carry on with the business. ‘I will be here for at least another ten years…at least,’ he says.

Still friends...

LILLIAN
 

Lillian van der Merwe was born in 1944. Her family lived at 20, 10^th Avenue, Bez Valley and then moved to Cumberland Avenue when the family home was converted into playing fields for Kensington Laerskool and Sir Edmund Hillary. The house was a face brick house with a red corrugated iron roof.

 

Lillian went to Kensington Laerskool and then to Kensington Hoer, which is now an army base.





Outside school playing fields

 

She remembers Shamrock Dairies at the bottom of 10^th Avenue, next to the sluit, and the laundry a block away in 9^th Avenue. Every day the children used to fetch four pints of milk from the dairy in silver milk buckets. On an average day Lillian would play in the streets until 4 o’clock and then come home and wash her hands, before going to fetch the milk.

Other memories include going to the greengrocer to collect cabbage and other vegetable leaves to feed the family’s chickens that were kept in the backyard.

 

 

 

Shops Lillian remembers include Queen’s Chemist on Broadway and ST Stores on the corner of 8^th Street and Broadway. ST Stores was owned by a Greek café owner called Nick. He owned a café and a grocery shop connected to the café by an inter-leading door. The grocery shop closed at 1 o’clock on a Saturday and nothing would induce him to open it until Monday.

“Behind Kitchener Service Station, there was another café. On the other corner there was the garage owner, Shortie, who lived opposite in the flat. Then there was Mr. Green’s butchery and Settler’s Stores owned by old Abraham. All my dress materials and pajama material came from Abraham, because my mother used to sew. We used to take a walk down to Abraham and pick the material. It is one the few original shops that is still there but it is the son now, not the father. The old man is dead. “

RITA

Rita Pirie (nee Landman) and Lillian were childhood friends, and they are still friends. Rita lived at 226, 6^th Avenue with her two brothers and her parents. She was born in 1942 and started at Kensington Laerskool in 1949. Her high school was the Afrikaansehandelskool Parktown.

Rita lived in Bez Valley until she got married at the age of 22. The family went on living there for at least another five years.

Childhood memories include playing in the Chinese veggie gardens and pinching carrots at night, and riding the dairy horse in Bezuidenhout Park.

In the afternoons my brother used to go and fetch the dairy horse and we would take it to Bezuidenhout Park and ride it there. My brother had a friend who worked in the dairy farm, which was next to the old dam, where Avalon is. Avalon used to be a dam. It was a beautiful big old white dairy horse. At the end of the day my brother would take the horse back to the dairy. The horse pulled the dairy cart with those big milk cans. They delivered milk in cans and then later they delivered bottles of milk. If you ran out of coupons you would put your money in the bottle, outside on the pavement. There was no theft.”

Rita’s father was a tram conductor and then he became an inspector. Her mother was a seamstress in a factory in town.

Her father would work in the garden whenever he had a moment. “My dad had the most wonderful garden; I remember the dahlias and any flowers you can dream of. He used to live in his garden. When he finished work he used to change into his old khaki pants and go straight into his garden. People used to walk past and stop and stare and say, ‘Mr. Landman, your garden is the most beautiful garden…’ Ach, yes, he was a real gardener…

Women would dress smartly with hats and gloves and matching handbags: “My mom used to dress up in high heel shoes and long gloves and a hat with a feather in it. She was always dolled up. Every Saturday we used to go to town and we really dressed up in high heel shoes and hats and matching bags. We went by bus. We would walk down to Broadway and catch the bus near the shops.”

Rita’s first job was “in the City of Johannesburg, in the City Hall, on the 4^th Floor in the City Engineer’s Department. "I was in a typing pool.”

 

Rita remembers going to the Chinese grocery shop for her mother. “As a child of seven or eight, my mom used to send me to the Chinese shop. She would say, ’Go and buy on the book, ten pennies sugar and a loaf of bread, or whatever. And they would give it to me and write in the book under Mrs. Landman. And at the end of the month she would go and pay on the book.”



Rita's home today



Settlers Stores also featured in Rita’s childhood. “My mom used to be very good friends with Abraham. She used to sew and he would help her with materials and cotton. And Abraham had a son and my older brother and the younger Abraham used to know one another. The whole family just went on and on and on with Settlers’ Stores.“

The extended family used to visit the Bez Valley house on a Sunday. “On Sundays was a family lunch and then my mom’s sisters would come and my dad’s family would come and we would have this huge skaapbout and veggies and rice. And the whole family came, and the nephews and cousins and all the children used to play outside. It was continuous play…

We used to swim at the swimming pool at Rhodes Park. As children, we would walk up there at 10 at night in our swimming costumes…”

There were a lot of Jewish people in the area. “Both our neighbours were Jewish; Mr. and Mrs. Sanders on the one side and Mr. and Mrs. Ehrlich on the other".

 

...that fell away...

Merle Schubotz (nee Haigh) was born in 1936. When she was four, her parents moved into the house at 109, 7^th Avenue, Bez Valley. “I was four years old when we moved to Bez Valley in 1940. Then my sister arrived five and a half years later. That was a great day. It was just me and my mom and dad before that….I remember rushing home from school to see my little sister, Jenny. I was so excited. My friend Lorraine Hess (now Lorraine Birch and still a close friend) couldn’t understand the urgency to see a baby. She had six siblings!”



Childhood memories are happy and full. “What I remember most are the carefree days of playing in the street with my friends, sometimes until 7 o’clock at night! We played ‘gemmertjie’ and hopscotch and rounders with tennis rackets, and hide and seek.”



Under the grapevine

All the family’s shopping was done locally. “On the corner of 4^th Street and 8^th Avenue there was a little Chinese shop where we bought some of our groceries and cigarettes for my dad. There was a general store, a butcher, a chemist and a café on Broadway. Round the corner from us in 6^th Avenue, there was a Chinese vegetable farm where vegetables were picked fresh as you bought them. A tickey of soup greens was so heavy I could hardly carry it and it made two big pots of soup. I used to walk there and buy the veggies for my mom and dad. It was directly behind our house.”

Merle went to Bez Valley Junior School in 7^th Avenue, which is Rand College today; then to Bez Valley Central, which is now Sir Edmund Hillary; and finally to Observatory Junior High, which is now Athlone Girls. She would walk up the 5^th Street hill to catch the bus in Observatory every morning, and walk down in the afternoon.

Koppie in the background

For several years, Merle was ill and unable to attend school. “…In spite of our healthy eating, I was very ill between the ages of seven and eight, going on to nine years of age. I had Rheumatic Fever, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Yellow Jaundice as well as measles and mumps (that the other children had). My mom nursed me at home with a dear family doctor coming to see my twice a day…

I remember my dear friends coming to visit me after school, talking through the bedroom window! That was so special because I was in bed for months.

Some of those friends are still in touch. Maureen Knox (now Maureen van der Merwe) lived over the road with her five siblings. Now she lives in Pietersburg with her husband and family.  She is still a close friend.”

Extra-mural activities included drama lessons. “When I was 12 I used to go by tram on my own. I took drama lessons and elocution lessons. I used to go to Troye Street for lessons. It was quite a notorious street. All the prostitutes were there.  But my teacher, Kathleen Kelly, had a flat up there. I would get off the tram and walk right up to the top, near Bree Street. I did a bit of drama from the age of 11 until about 15 and then that fell away.”

During the War years, sugar, butter and tea were rationed. Merle remembers doing up parcels for her grandparents who lived in England. She was 12 when she first met them. “My grandmother used to scrape that paper of the butter until there wasn’t anything left. I still do that today…”

Next to the Mulberry tree

Merle’s father worked for the municipality near City Deep and her mother worked for OK Bazaars in town. Merle’s first job was with Prudential Insurance in town, just off Loveday Street.

Tea at the OK Bazaars or Stuttafords and the cinema were weekend treats. “We used to love going to the OK Bazaars in town for tea and cream cakes and to listen to the bands there. And we used go to Stuttafords in town. We used to go on the tram…We used to go to the cinema, to ‘The Gem’ in Troyeville and to ‘The Regent’ on Langerman Drive in Kensington. It eventually became ‘The Fairways’. They changed the name. And then it burnt down. We avoided ‘The Regal’ (near Eastgate) because it was rough. It cost a sixpence to go to the bioscope. I got a shilling and I could either get on the bus or walk and keep the other sixpence for an ice cream.”

“When I was much older my parents had a car. It was just before I got married when they got their first car. It was a little ‘Prefect’”.

“I lived in the house in Bez Valley for almost 16 years, until I got married. Then I went back there for two years after my divorce. I loved our old house. We had a grapevine that spread from the front gate to the front door, and there was a huge apricot tree and mulberry and pomegranate tree. The house is still there but it looks completely different. All the trees are gone and there is a garage where the grapevine was. The property looked huge when I was a child but now when I drive past it doesn’t look very big at all. The garden was in the front. We had no backyard. We had side lanes and we were right on the border of the next house at the back.”

“Once I went there and asked if I could have a look and they let me in. There used to be a huge lounge but they made a passage and another bedroom on the one side. My tiny bedroom had been made into a bathroom with steps going up. My mom’s bedroom became the lounge. We used to have our toilet on the back verandah; they changed that into a breakfast nook. And the old bathroom became a pantry.”