Katy Mazibuko

“I am just doing it. It's on my head. Nobody taught me. I love plants very much.”

Katy Mazibuko is a networker and a gardener.  Years ago she planted a tiny lemon tree in front of my house. Today it towers over my property and provides an abundant supply of lemons.

Katy is constantly on the lookout for a patch of ground to plant a flower or a shrub, or for an unused piece of concrete to plant a tree in a pot.

Her networking skills give her inside insight into life behind closed doors in Eighth Avenue. Once I asked her if she knew of anyone who could sew. Pointing to the house across the road she said, “First there is the Niger, then the Indian, then the Zimbabwe, then the China, then the China with the wife. That wife, she sews.”  I counted off 199 for the Nigerian, 197 for the Indian, 195 for the Zimbabwean, 193 for the Chinese and 191 for the Chinese man with the wife and sure enough, the wife did sew and I paid her to alter my lounge curtains.

Katy lives in one of four backrooms on a property in Eighth Avenue. She has been there since 1998. In the past the tenants were constantly changing because of the ill temper of the owner of the house. These days there is a difference. “I told him he will get criminals here if he is never satisfied. I said, there are no angels in this world”.

Katy has collected flowers and plants since she was a child. Growing up in Newcastle, she would bring them home and put them in glass bottles in the house. 

In 1965, when Katy was 13, her mother, a domestic worker in Bezuidenhout Street, Yeoville, brought Katy to Johannesburg to look after her baby sister.  When she was 17, Katy began work as a domestic worker herself. Gradually she accumulated piece jobs in Yeoville, Kensington and Bedfordview.

“I started to like plants more when I was working in Bedfordview,” she says. “I had a lot of plants and I sent them home. When I went home to Newcastle on leave I planted a big avocado tree.  Everyone knows that avocado tree. Then from there I carried on and carried on and carried on…  When I retire I want to plant and sell. I am growing vegetables where I work in Bedfordview. They have given me a big space there and I have planted potatoes, tomatoes, spinach… everything”.

In the backyard of the house where she lives, Katy has her own garden. In a small contained area outside her room she grows an assortment of plants as well as lemon, guava, orange, mango, and avocado and banana trees - all in pots. I asked her where she found the plastic fence for her garden. “I don’t remember. I just picked this thing up somewhere”, she says. “It protects my plants".