The ticking becomes part of you

George Schnellbach is Bez Valley’s ‘Master Watch and Clock Maker’. He is one of the few remaining qualified watch and clockmakers in Gauteng. “I am 70 years old and I am one of the youngest,” he says.

Clocks are brought to the shop for repair from different parts of the country, “I get old grandfather clocks from small towns where there is nobody to repair them…There is still a demand for antique clocks and pocket watches. Most clocks that come in are wall clocks and grandmother or grandfather clocks that have been handed down from generation to generation.”

George began his career as an apprentice to a Dutch watch/clock maker, Mr. De Vries, in Vanderbijlpark in 1957. He was 15. Both his parents had died when he and his older brother came to South Africa as refugees from Hungary.

“It was the first opportunity that knocked,” he says. “It was very difficult for me because I didn’t speak the language. “ After serving a five-year apprenticeship, George came to Johannesburg in 1960 and in 1965 opened his own workshop at the corner of Commissioner and Von Brandis Streets in the City Centre. “Johannesburg was a lovely place at that time. They were just busy building the Carlton Centre and Johannesburg was buzzing”.

Nine years later he went into partnership with a jewelry shop in Randburg and remained there for 21 years before selling his shares and starting the business at the corner of Kitchner Avenue and 1^st Street in Bez Valley 18 years ago.

He has observed the changes in Bez Valley with interest and obvious enjoyment. “In the early days there was a large Italian and Portuguese community. They slowly drifted out. Now we have a big community of Indian people and people from other countries in Africa. It is a big mixed pot… I have wonderful customers. All the smaller repairs are from the area. My bread butter line comes from the locals…”

Old clients have kept in contact for 30 years or more. They pop into the shop for tea or coffee and to socialise. “People came back year after year after year…. They are very glad that I am still around…“It’s all about relationships,” George says.

The sound of ticking, cuckoos, and chimes is a familiar background buzz. An extraordinarily rich assortment of clocks are brought in to the shop, repaired and taken away again by satisfied customers. George shows me an Australian, hand-painted grandfather clock from the early 1800s, a huge, square clock that was reconstructed from the remains of a clock that once hung in the Kensington Golf Club, an ancient cuckoo clock from Germany’s Black Forest; a clock from a British station or post office, and a French carriage clock. “Most of them are over 100 years old,” he says.

George grins when he describes his work. “It is not something you can get rich from but the beauty of it is that I can still come in every morning and sit here and enjoy my work.”

I ask him whether he has a favourite. “Every old thing is a favourite,” he says. “Once I achieve repairing a clock it becomes a favourite. It is a wonderful thing to give new life to something.”

An old customer and friend, Darral Kreusch arrives. Darral owns 40 clocks. I ask him what kind of clocks he collects. “Dutch clocks, Portuguese clocks, wall clocks, mantel clocks, Westminster clocks, any clock that ticks… as long as there’s no battery movement. That‘s not a clock to me. It’s a Chinese thing.”

I ask whether the sound of 40 clocks ticking doesn’t disturb his peace of mind.  “The ticking becomes part of you,” he says. 

Clock and Watch King, 43 Kitchner Avenue, Bez Valley (cnr 1^st Street). Tel. 011-614-1384.

Suicide for conscience sake - the story of Chow Kwai For

Derby Road connects Bez Valley to Judith’s Paarl, Judith’s Paarl to Lorentzville, Lorentzville to Bertrams and Bertrams to Ellis Park.  Linda Cerbone, the well-known local hairdresser and owner of ‘Hair off Broadway’ told me that Bez Valley begins at 116 Derby Road, so I went looking for 116. Driving down the road I reflected that all these suburbs were once part of the Bezuidenhout family’s farm, ‘Doornfontein.’

I couldn’t find 116 easily so I continued on to 20 Derby Road, just a block away from the Ellis Park Stadium, because of the story of Chow Kwai For, which has been very much on my mind since reading about him in a marvelous book on the history of the Chinese community in South Africa, ‘Colour, Confusion and Concessions’ by Melanie Yap and Dianne Leong Man.

I was surprised to find that number 20 Derby Road is now the offices of the Curriculum Development Project for Arts and Culture, Education and Training. I worked there once.

Chow Kwai For was brought to South Africa by his employer, a British doctor named Dr. F.C. Sutherland.  He worked for Sutherland from 1904 to 1907 at his employer’s residence at 20 Derby Road, Bertrams.  Apparently Chow, who came from an island south of the Chinese mainland, spoke a different dialect to the mainly Cantonese Chinese in Johannesburg, so communication was difficult for him.

Legislation introduced to control Asiatic immigration after the Anglo-Boer War, required every Asiatic over the age of eight to re-register.  Under pressure to comply despite his reservations, Chow signed and then, realising what he had done, hanged himself at the Derby Road House. He left behind a letter addressed to the Chinese Association explaining why he had done this. The full text of the letter is reproduced in Chinese on his gravestone in the Braamfontein Cemetery, which was bought by the Chinese community at a cost of £200 in Chow’s honour. The suicide letter read as follows:

‘I am going to leave the world, but I must give a public explanation why I intend to commit suicide. Therefore, I address this letter to my countrymen. Since I came to South Africa, I have only been in domestic service. My dialect is quite different from that of my countrymen, with whom I have very seldom associated. I am always in the house of my employer, who had advised me to re-register. At first I refused to do so, but I was informed that I would be dismissed from my employment.  I thought that I would have to lose my situation. Therefore, I was obliged to register, but I did not know the degradation that would follow until my friend talked to me about the registration matter and showed me the translation of the Law.  I found that I would be treated as a slave, which would be a disgrace to myself and my nation. I was not aware of all this before. Now it is too late for me to repent. I cannot look my countrymen in the face. I hope all my countrymen will take warning by my error.”

At Chow's memorial service, organised by the Transvaal Chinese Association, Chinese inscriptions were hung on the walls and a portrait of Chow, painted on silk, was placed over an altar of flowers and incense. Gandhi, who attended the funeral, later wrote that the "unity, neatness and courage" of the Chinese should be emulated.

 Chow's suicide was interpreted as an oriental way of saving face in the 'Transvaal Weekly Illustrated' in November 1907:

 

To those who understand the tortuous workings of the Oriental mind there is nothing peculiar in this rehabilitation by suicide, and, in fact, an authority on Chinese and their ways predicted some time ago that if there were any registrations among them they would very likely be followed by suicide as soon as they ascertained that they had ‘lost face’. The Chinese ethics of suicide are certainly incomprehensible to the European.

Leung Quinn, a prominent spokesperson for Chinese rights in South Africa, and President of the Chinese Association, rejected these comments, saying that suicide was not common in China and that  a man only ended his life ‘when driven to desperation by much the same causes as induce suicides among Europeans.’

 
Although a stranger in South Africa, and even a stranger within his own Chinese community, Chow’s story is a quintessentially South African story.

"The government was the problem..."

The shop front of Settler’s Stores at 93, Broadway, Bez Valley, has remained the same since the shop was opened by Ibrahim Karolia in 1929.  “The only difference is the shutters, we had wire mesh. The building is the same with the three pillars in front and the shape of the building is the same as it was”.

 
Customers used to call Ibrahim Karolia ‘Abraham’.  His sons and his grandsons were given the same name.  “They called everyone Abraham, whether me or my father or my grandfather.  It was always Abraham or 'Oom'.  We were all called Abraham.  It didn’t worry us at all.  We would all answer when they called us.  There was nothing embarrassing about it. “

Mohamed Ally Karolia is the grandson of Ibrahim Karolia. He was born in the family home at the back of the shop in 1944. Three of his five siblings were also born there. When he was growing up, the house consisted of three bedrooms, a dining/lounge area, a kitchen, a bathroom and a very small garden. Entrance to the house was from an alley running alongside the shop and the house from Broadway.

Today the house has been broken down. Part of the house has become an extension of the shop and part of it has been retained as rooms for staff working in the shop.

Mohamed went to a government primary school in Denver and to high school in Benoni (the William Hills High School). He has happy memories of walking though Rhodes Park on his way to school and still visits the park from time to time.

 

From the age of 12 he helped in the shop after school and during school holidays.  He remembers a time when shops used to close on Wednesday afternoon and be open on Saturdays. Then this changed and the shop would be open all day on Wednesdays and half day on Saturdays. 

Mohamed always hated school and was glad to leave and work full time in the shop from the age of 15. "Although it was a family business, we were all paid a salary of about R30 per month." 

He worked in the shop for 47 years, from 1959 until 2006, when the shop was sold to family friends.

The shop is known as a major supplier of school uniforms for local schools. It stocks uniforms for Jeppe Prep, Jeppe Girls, Jeppe Boys, Athlone Boys, Athlone Girls, Rand Tutorial College, Jules High, Hillcrest Primary, Kensington Secondary, Leicester Road, John Mitchell Primary School, Eastgate Primary, Bedford High, Cyrildene, Sir Edmund Hillary Primary School, Kensington Laerskool, Kensington Ridge, Queens High, Fairview Primary, Bertrams Primary, and Troyeville Primary.

“In my grandfather’s day they sold coal, wood, groceries, and clothing. Then it changed to just groceries and clothing. From 1961 my grandfather and my father and my uncle gave up groceries and concentrated on clothing and materials and curtaining. We bought our supplies from wholesalers in the city, in Market Street. Slowly things changed and we began to sell school uniforms. This is still what is mainly sold in the shop today…

In the days before pre-packaging, we would fill packets of different sizes with sugar, maize meal, flour and mielie rice and the measurement at that time was pounds and ounces, not kilograms. Material was sold at one shilling, 11 pence a yard, equivalent to about 19 cents a metre!"

 
In the early days there were tramlines in the middle of the road, they ran up to Queen’s High School. It was a dead end after that. Broadway only went up to Queen’s High School. "A ticket from Bez Valley to the city cost 10 cents. We would buy a ticket from the tram driver when we boarded."

"There used to be a chemist on the right owned by Mr. Cohen and next door to it a butcher owned by Mr. Green. There was also a bicycle shop owned by Mr. Ferguson, a general dealer owned by Mr. Pon, a clothing shop owned by Mr. Mia, a hairdresser and a Greek café – I don’t remember his name. Mr. Smith owned the hardware shop.  The Chinese shop was across the road, next to a dry cleaner. On the corner of 8^th Street and Broadway there was a small Shell Garage.  All the rest was open ground. There was nothing there…"

There was a feeling of community. "Everyone knew everyone and everyone was very friendly. First there was pounds, shillings and pence, then we went to rands and cents…Our customers were our friends as well as our clients.  Mostly the women came to the shop, and the children used to come with their parents. I remember Mrs. Kruger, Mrs. Venter, Mrs. Heuer, Mrs. Anderson, and Mrs. Coetzee… A few paid at month end, most paid cash…  Nearly all our customers used to walk to the shop. Cars I remember are the ’48 Dodge, ’46 Chevs, Ramblers and Vauxhalls, but most customers walked…"

The family would buy vegetables from a Chinese vegetable garden in 6^th Avenue, opposite where the dump is today, more or less where the clinic is. "Me and my father used to go there together. We bought  spinach, lettuce, cabbage, carrots…It was very, very cheap…”

 

The Karolias were religious.  "We don't believe in photographs..."  The women were traditional and wore traditional clothing. The men went to mosque in Nugget Street, corner of Market Street.  Every Friday the shop closed from 12.00 to 14.00. Family life at the house behind the shop included visits from friends in Maputo and large family gatherings to celebrate Eid.

 
The Group Areas Act made it impossible for the family to continue to live in Bez Valley.

“Group Areas affected us, the government was the problem, there was no problem with the clients. Even today there is no problem.  In those days we were all family and it was  nothing like you are white, you are black, you are Indian.  People used to call me uncle.”

The family was forced to move to Lenasia in 1964.  “We bought land in Lenasia.  We got a truck to move us. Luckily for me, to move was not really a problem because I was already 20 when we had to move. But to get to the shop every day was difficult. We had an Opel and it used to take us 45 minutes. 

...Initially of course it did affect us all.  There was nobody here (in Lenasia).  There was just empty ground everywhere, there were very few houses. Eventually people came and put up a mosque and then they put up schooling for the kids."