...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.”

The Outside Children

Five South African families rent rooms in the house at 46, 8^th Avenue, Bez Valley. I spoke to Richard Yende from Ermelo who lives in one room with his wife, Goodness, and their child, Princess, and Raymond Majola from KZN who also rents a room and stays there with his girlfriend, Valencia, and their three-year old daughter, Shenhlanhla. Both men work in the city and are saving up to buy their own homes in the area.

Almost 60 years ago, the house was owned by Heidi Herb’s family. “The house has changed altogether,” says Heidi, who remembers “a swing in the garden and a plum and a fig tree from which wonderful jam was made”.

 

Heidi’s father immigrated from Bavaria in 1923. The oldest of 11 children, he was 23 and had 10 shillings to his name when he first arrived in South Africa. Initially he rented a room in a boarding house on the Berea side of Rocky Street and worked for the New York Steam Laundry. Later he opened his own textile business at the bottom of 1^st Street in Bez Valley.

Heidi remembers that “…there was also a Chinese shop between 1^st Street and 2^nd Street. As you went down 1^st Street it was on the left hand side. It actually bordered onto the sluit. That is where my dad had his business. There were Chinese people there who had a veggie place. They would get things from the market but they also planted their own vegetables at the back. You could get fresh cabbage, carrots, and beetroot. They had a little stable and a horse. They were lovely people.”

Heidi’s brother and sisters were born in the Bez Valley house. Her parents lived in the house from 1928 to 1944, when her father built a house in Observatory Extension, where Heidi was born in 1947. Childhood memories include playing on the Golf Course or in the large garden of the Observatory House. “We weren’t showered with a lot of presents as children. I had a dolly and a teddy and a pram and that was it. But we played outside. We were outside children”.

The Bez Valley house remained in the family. “My grandmother and her sister, my great aunt, lived there until my grandmother died in 1954. I spent a lot of my youth in that house. I would walk from Observatory Extension down to Bez Valley or my parents would take me there by car, and I would spend the weekend with my grandmother...

The house was very pretty and homely and it was beautifully kept. It was full of lovely old furniture. There was a pantry, which was my ‘shop’. I was the laat lammetjie and I used to talk to myself. I used to play that I was a shopkeeper, and I used to buy and sell things...

At a shop on the corner of 8^th Avenue and 2^nd Street they used to sell big balls of green and pink ice cream. I would be given a penny, or whatever it was at the time, to go and buy this divine ice cream...

 
On the corner of Kitchener Avenue and 2^nd Street there was a general dealer owned by an elderly Chinese gentleman with a very long plait right down to his waist. I was always absolutely fascinated by his plait.”

 

Heidi remembers paraffin being sold from 30 gallon paraffin drums, and huge bags of chicken feed in the shop, and she has vivid memories of going to other local shops with her grandmother. “We would go down to Hacks butchery. It was down 8^th Avenue, then you would turn right into 2^nd Street. On the next corner to the left, there was Brenner’s garage. Mr. Brenner was an old German Jew and a very good mechanic...

 
There was also a haberdashery in the same street. It was in the middle of the block, with houses all around it. I have such beautiful memories of that shop. It had steps going up and it had a wooden floor and bay windows. It was full of materials and cottons. It was wonderful, wonderful. My gran and my aunt used to go there. They used to knit socks for me and they would buy the wool and the needles there. We would go shopping at the haberdashery and then we would go to the Chinese vegetable garden...

I still remember the trams. Once a month my gran and I would catch the tram. The tram stop was opposite the general dealer, just next to the Anglican Church. We would take the tram all the way to Henwoods in Loveday Street and from there we would catch the bus to Westpark cemetery. My grandfather and my uncle were buried there. My grandmother would buy flowers from vendors outside in the street and we would visit the graves, which were not very far in from the gate. This was always a wonderful outing for me. Afterward we took the bus to town and from there caught the tram back to Bez Valley...

My great aunt had the most beautiful antique iron bed and a throw-over that must have come from Austria or Germany, and a gramophone with a horn, you know, like ‘His Master’s Voice’. She used to play ‘Der Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss and I used to dance around the table. I was entertainment for them.”

 

"They had gas, electricity, and a coal stove in the house. I remember linen being ironed with heavy irons heated on the coal stove. My gran and my great aunt were great bakers. At Christmas time, the old kitchen table was crammed with freshly baked German Christmas cookies.”

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."

Once there were two rivers

In 1949 Willem Bezuidenhout (son of Frederick Bezuidenhout) sold the land that is now Bezuidenhout Park on condition that it be used as a park for the benefit of the community; that the family home be maintained by the City Council; and that the family graveyard remain on the property.

The Bezuidenhout farmhouse is still there. Now a national monument , it is used by the Rotary Club for meetings and office space. The family graveyard, although vandalized in recent years, is still there too.

The house was built in three portions over a period of time. The main portion was the centre of the house. It was built of mud and brick, with a thatched roof, in 1863 and consisted of a front room, two small bedrooms on either side, a bathroom and a kitchen.

In around 1880 a new kitchen was added at the back of the farmhouse and the existing kitchen was converted into a pantry.

More substantial additions were made to the farmstead in 1887, at about the time that the Bezuidenhouts were selling off the land for the development of Doornfontein and New Doornfontein. These included two bedrooms, a bathroom and typically Victorian ornamental features such as a bay window and barge-boarded gables. The changes have given the house a Victorian character.

City Parks horticulturalist, Alan Buff, who lived in the house from 1981-1986, met members of the Bezuidenhout family when they gathered for a family reunion while he was living there. The oldest descendant at the time was well into her nineties. She told Buff that she had memories as a ten year old child, of being caught up in the activities taking place in the old kitchen, where fruit and vegetables were cooked and bottled; dairy products processed and packaged; and candles produced for sale to members of the Chinese community who had a market located on the site where Darras Centre is now situated.

There was a fireplace in the back room of the house, she said, and the family used to sit there to do the book work relating to the administration of the farm.

In the front room on the right hand side of the property, a mural of Cape Town was painted on one entire wall by an Italian artist who was commissioned by the Bezuidenhout family. The artist apparently came to South Africa to make his fortune but his plans were interrupted when the Anglo-Boer War broke out. The money he was paid by the Bezuidenhout family helped him to get back home.

Originally the Bezuidenhouts planted oak trees and grew a variety of fruit trees, almond and walnut trees. The family orchards extended through the suburb that is now Cyrildene, right up to Gillooly’s Farm. Streets in Cyrildene are named after members of the Bezuidenhout family.

Bezuidenhout Park still contains oak trees planted by a member of the Bezuidenhout family, who brought seeds from Cape Town in the 1860s. Alan Buff confirmed this by counting the annual rings of an oak tree that came down about ten years ago. There were stables where the Oak trees are in the park today.

Water came from a number of sources. There was a well that was in the vicinity of what is today the car park and a natural wetland which the animals drank from, in the place where the sports fields now are. Two rivers dissected the property. One came down with stormwater from Doornfontein. Originally it flowed from Brickfields in Newtown, through Joubert Park, to the dam which is now the Ellis Park Stadium, and on through Bertrams to Bez Valley. It ran through the bottom of the property to what is now Bruma Lake. The other river still exists today. It runs through the Observatory golf course.

After the property was sold to the City of Johannesburg, the municipality decided to build a storm water system and then to develop the sports fields. Once the canal had been built and the water diverted, the wetlands started to dry up. The land was then considered suitable to be used for recreational purposes.

With the British occupation during the Anglo-Boer War, the small cottage on the left hand side of the homestead was taken over.

The Indian horse brigade, which consisted of some 4, 000 horses, maintained by 7,000 non-combatant Indian forces, camped out in the area of Bezuidenhout Park that is now the caravan park. The monument to these Indian soldiers is on Observatory Ridge. Originally a cemetery was established especially for them in Observatory Park, just behind the electricity service station. Only four soldiers were buried there according to Buff. In the 1960s their bodies were exhumed and moved to the Braamfontein cemetery.

Buff was told that the section of the park that is more or less where the Siyakhana Food Garden is now situated, was where a Concentration Camp for Black internees was set up during the Anglo-Boer War.
(*Blog on Siyakhna below)

Back to Eden... The Siyakhana Food Gardens

The Siyakhana Food Gardens were established in Bezuidenhout Park in 2005 in a partnership between Wits University and 16 Early Childhood Development and Home-Based Care NGOs.
http://siyakhana-org.win24.wadns.net/WhatWeDo/FoodGarden.aspx


Mandla Tshabalala is the manager. A member of the Seventh Day Adventist Reformed Church and resident caretaker of the church property in 8^th Avenue, Bez Valley, Mandla began as a volunteer when the garden was still a dump site.

His knowledge and his love of gardening come from observing his gardener grandmother as a child; from his training at a permaculture school in the Free State and an eco-village in Germany; from the Bible; and from teachings contained in the book  Back to Eden, claiming that everything that humankind needs for nutrition and healing is provided for naturally.

Quoting from Back to Eden and from the Bible, Mandla talks of a wide variety of herbs that can be used for the healing of boils; cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, stomach complaints, syphilis, blood ailments, sinusitis, and many other illnesses. Herbs grown in the Siyakhana Food Garden  include White Clover, Yarrow, Comfrey, Borage, Feverfew, St. John’s Wort, Sage, Calendula, Roux, Peppermint, Fennel, Lemon grass, Oregano, Plantain, Sage and Marjoram.

The first trees were planted by Trees and Foods for Africa activists in 2005. Today the garden contains an orchard full of fruit bearing apricot, peach, pecan nut, plum, lemon, olive and apple trees, and a food garden that produces a wide variety of vegetables including beans, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach. Produce is given to NGO partners in the inner city of Johannesburg.

Dried herbs and a variety of vegetable salts and creams are also on sale to visitors.

Siyakhana has a number of purposes. It is a research site for university students; a permaculture training centre; a site for pionering eco-buildings; and the propagation of plants is important. “Seeds are replanted… Some will be sold to food gardens or NGOs… The idea is to keep the cycle going so that skills are not lost and so we can reach out to others because we now have an abundance of herbs and trees and shrubs,” Mandla says.

There are many visitors to the garden. They come to observe, to learn, to be inspired, and to consult Mandla not only about permaculture gardening but also about healing remedies.  A close neighbour who visits Mandla on a regular basis about growing vegetables and healing herbs, is the man who manages the cleaning of the Jukskei in the Park (see earlier blog, The River Runs Thru).

“Community members consult me about their ailments. People learned about the use of herbs and they came here to get some. I have stopped it because it upset a lot of other things I have do do in the garden, but I still advise people in my personal capacity.”

Fear and the fearless foreigners

A team of traveling ‘eco-mystics’ cycled from Oliver Tambo airport to Rhodes Park on bicycles made from the branches of trees and an assortment of natural materials, which they brought with them on the 'plane from France.  Soon after arriving at the park they set up sleeping arrangements using nets and rope wound round trees beside the lake. 

The group consisting of Mickael (Mika), 12-year old Axel and two women, Laurence (Lo) and Eileen, are from different eco-communities in the south of France, where they live in houses built from bamboo, mud or ancient stone, and grow their own food.

They met at a festival of ‘New Energy’ and three weeks later made the journey together, inspired by a dream in which Mika was told to take a trip to South Africa in September.

Artists, writers, storytellers, healers, they live very simply, close to the Earth, and invite others to travel with them, especially people who are struggling or ill.

After a series of revelations (‘enigma’) over a period of a year, Mika, whose travels include a 13 month journey by bicycle from France to Australia, believes that life on Earth as it exists today will come to an end before long. Indicating with a movement of his hands he says, “The world will turn upside down and the oceans will flood the continents…”

Tony Lopes taught the group how to make a wood gas stove and a local gardener/security guard/Jack of all trades named Albert befriended them and took them to the backroom of the Kensington house where he lives when they were harassed by the police. Albert has no electricity in his room and cooks with paraffin.  He made them a pot of pap and asked them if they wanted him to heat some water for a bath but apparently they said, “We will wait for the rain.”

I was struck by their practicality, their defiance of the conventional, and their absolute trust that they would end up where they were supposed to be. 

We have become accustomed to living in fear in South Africa so this group of people who had no fear brought new hope and energy to the park and to the diverse group of people from the community that felt drawn to them.

They left as unexpectedly as they arrived. Albert gave Tony a note from Mika. It read: “We are headed in the direction of Limpopo.”