Children

Debbie founded the Little Saints Pre-School on the Kensington/Bez Valley border in 2001. The school is run in partnership with the Bethany shelter for abused women in Bertrams. Madina started the Bismillah Pre-School in Bez Valley in 2003.   Both schools adapt themselves to the realities of the neighbourhood.

The schools take children from birth to six years of age. There are 88 children at the Little Saints Pre-School and 90 at Bismillah. Little Saints opens its doors at 07.00 in the morning and closes at 17.30.  Bismillah is open from 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Afterschool care is offered to primary school children.

Most Bismillah parents are single mothers, generally domestic workers or street traders. More and more Little Saints parents, which is less than a kilometer away, are single fathers or from families where fathers are doing more of the parenting than mothers. 

Children at the schools live in Hillbrow, Yeoville, Jeppestown, Bez Valley, Bertrams, Malvern, Kensington. The majority of children at the Bismillah school live in Bez Valley.

Communication is a daily challenge. Many of the children do not speak English or any other South African language, and nor do their parents.  The children are from South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, DRC, Kenya, Malawi, and India. They come and go, generally because parents lose their jobs or get evicted from houses and are forced to relocate.

“We live in an environment where people struggle to survive. Either there is a single mother who needs to work or we have a lot of single fathers in this school because the mothers are into drugs or alcohol so they are not involved in the child’s life... So you need to be able to educate the child to take care of themselves …If you can empower the child to feel confident enough to speak up if they are not comfortable with what is going on, then you have given them a skill for life,” Debbie says.

She stresses that a parent’s occupation has nothing to do with good parenting. The father of a child who is no longer at the school was clearly a drug dealer, she tells me. He attended all the talks and meetings at the school and implemented what he learned, with very positive consequences for his child.

Single mothers work very long hours and are too exhausted to be good mothers. “There is a lot of neglect,” Madina says. “The child will come dirty, empty bag, crying and not happy at school. There is no love, no attention.  Most are living in backrooms and rooms in houses, sharing rooms. Sometimes there are eight families in one house…  I have one child right now where the mother is going under to depression because of her condition. Her rent is high. She is selling on the streets in town. She comes from Congo.  I am looking at sponsoring the child because this is someone you can see is not lying. This is a reality…She comes in tears, she can’t pay.”

Pre-schools in the area  support one another and share resources. “We speak to one another. Debbie donates extra toys and invites us to functions and courses. She does a lot for the area,” Madina says. 

School fees are not sufficient to cover the cost of food for the children and salaries.

“People must open their hearts. A lot of people are struggling… In the last two years things have got worse and worse. Most end up sending their children to the villages because they can’t afford to pay,” Madina says.

If you would like to sponsor a child or make a donation to one of these pre-schools, please contact me and I will facilitate this (melodyemmett@gmail.com)

Public principle and the individuation of conscience

The current owner of the Juno Street house in Kensington has built a garage blocking access to the abandoned mining cave which the Foster Gang set up as an emergency hide-away after a spate of violent robberies across the Reef in the early history of Johannesburg.

Foster was a charismatic psychopathic personality who, together with two members of his Gang, Johan Maxim, and Carl Mezar, wrought havoc in the small white community of his day. The drama was widespread and struck at the lives of a diverse group of South Africans.

The Gang was wanted for a string of robberies and the murder of three policemen and a passer-by, but nine other people also died. They included a Post Master who committed suicide after Foster and his Gang had robbed the Post office – he had been fiddling the petty cash and feared exposure; a doctor who was on his way to the Springs hospital to assist with an emergency operation; and the great gentleman-general and man of principle, Koos de la Rey, whose car was fired upon by the police, after his driver drove through a road block, believing it to be for his employer. **See note

Most tragic was the scene which played itself out outside the cave in Kensington in September 1914. The police had set up roadblocks around the city and surrounded the cave. A huge crowd had gathered.

The three men decided they would not be taken alive. Mezar was the first to die when Maxim killed him with a single shot. Maxim killed himself.

Foster had the extreme charismatic control of the psychopath, a fact which the Senior Police Officer understood well.  Foster asked for his wife, Peggy, the baby, and his parents and two sisters to be brought to the cave, promising that once he had seen them, he would hand himself over.

The Senior Officer refused to allow Foster’s wife and child to go inside the cave, protesting that he would kill them. Finally, under pressure from Inspector Edward Leach, he reluctantly agreed. 

For a while it seemed the idea would work, but after about an hour, Foster’s family stumbled out of the cave with the baby but without Peggy.

The crowd waited in silence and then a shot rang out, followed by two others.

Tormented by his culpability in the death of Peggy Foster, Inspector Edward Leach, committed suicide a few days later.

The Foster Gang saga is a drama of great classic theatre. It raises questions around sanity and insanity; the challenge of public responsibility; the dynamics of money, charisma and power; and relationships between men and women.

Perhaps this is one of the last occasions in which greater values played themselves out in a public event in the lives of ordinary people on the Witwatersrand. Perhaps it is a story of the end of public principle and the beginning of the individuation of conscience.

**They were on their way to meet the Boer rebels hoping to take advantage of the outbreak of World War One to liberate the old republics. De la Rey, personally, did not feel this wise, but in conscience, and out of loyalty, felt obliged to go and engage with his compatriots on the matter.

The Piano Tuner

Founder of the famous piano company, Steinway & Sons, Henry E. Steinway (1797-1871) began his career in the kitchen of his house in the town of Seeson in Germany. In 1836 he built a grand piano that became known as the “kitchen piano”. Today it is on display in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If it’s good enough for Steinway, it’s good enough for Brian Lawson, whose kitchen has been given over to the reconstruction, restoration, and repair of pianos. In fact virtually the entire 7th Avenue house has been devoted to pianos since Brian moved in, in 1999. 

He built a second story to make room for life without pianos but even then, there is only one chair in front of his computer. This is not a house for socialising or relaxing. It is a workshop.
 
After he finished school in Essex in the UK in the 1970s Brian, who says he grew up on the Beatles and prefers rock to classical music, went on the dole. His father was a trained classical pianist who eventually became a piano teacher in the local area. He persuaded Brian to register for a three year course in Piano Tuning, Repairs, Construction and Design at the London College of Furniture.

After working in the UK for a few years, Brian emigrated to South Africa in 1983 on contract with Kahn's Pianos. He went on to work for local piano retailer and then for 'The Music Shop' before setting up on his own in the Bez Valley house, which was previously owned by a fridge mechanic who used the front room - now crammed with pianos - as a night school for fridge mechanics.

“It is a question of adeptness and patience as well as excitement and passion,” Brian says, demonstrating the intricate process of cutting and sticking identical strips of leather eighty-eight times for the eighty-eight keys of an average piano.

Mice cause the most damage so five well-fed cats play an integral role in the life of the workshop.

Piano design has been dictated by fashion over the years, Brian says, pointing to an art deco piano.  “A modern family in the 1930s and 1940s needed a small piano”.

Pianos today are even more streamlined and mostly imported from 12 or more Chinese manufacturers.

A piano's value hinges on the quality of the sound it makes rather than its antiquity, Brian stresses, comparing a piano made in the 1890’s to a more recent Broadwood.

Generally pianos are tuned once a year but pianos in recording studios are tuned every day and concert pianos after rehearsals and again an hour or so before  a performance.

One of about 15 piano tuners in Gauteng, Brian leaves the more stressful work to others unless called upon to fill in when they are away, and avoids pressurised work if he can. "Why should I make somebody else's bad planning my emergency?" he says.

 www.lawsonic.co.za

More about dogs

Speaking on a panel with other poets and short story writers at an event to celebrate the shortest day of the year, Chris van Wyk, who grew up in the historically very poor area of Riverlea, said if people in his community wanted a dog, they went out into the streets and got one. There are many streetwise dogs, or 'brakke' as they are known, in Bez Valley and surrounding suburbs. There are also more and more feral dogs moving around in packs, scavenging for scraps in piles of waste on street corners or outside local shops. 

Occasionally more refined dogs can be seen roaming the streets, such as the emaciated giant black poodle that wanders up and down Stewart Drive. 

My dogs are too insignificant in stature to be valued in my neighbourhood; an elderly Maltese, known as Miss Daisy or Fluffy, and a bad- tempered, overweight Dachshund, Ansel, who is only loved by his mother (me).

Bucks is my next door neighbour's dog.  There is no garden next door (it was covered over with concrete, the favoured option in many Bez Valley properties) so he gets his exercise by hurling himself down the concrete corridor alongside the house. Occasionally he is let out onto the pavement when my neighbour comes home from work.  My neighbour says he doesn’t have the time to take Bucks for a walk in the park and anyway, being constrained makes Bucks vicious, which is useful. But he loves Bucks in his own way. When he calls out: “Bucksie boy!” there is affection and admiration in his voice.  “His father is a bulldog,” he says with pride. I am different from my neighbour. We don't really share the same understanding of what is most important in life, but we are concerned for one another's welfare. There is compassion and respect between us.
 
Two fox terriers, Ninja and Cheeky are greeted with territorial aggression from Bucks, Ansel and Miss Daisy when they take a daily walk past the gate at dusk.

There is a growing trend of young men with well developed biceps and tattoos, swaggering with ostentatious bravado down the streets of the 'hood' holding leads (or tenuous looking rope) attached to straining, salivating, pit-bull terriers with names like Zeus.  Their impact is significant; shrieking men, women and children disappear in seconds.

The SPCA gets 15-20 reports of cruelty to animals every day. The worst cases are from Chinatown.  "Animals are not treated in a decent way by Chinese people,” the woman from the SPCA told me. “We try and educate them before removing the dogs but mostly they pretend not to understand what you are telling them.  They pretend not to understand English.  We use sign language to show dogs must have a bigger space, a kennel, showing them what to do…but they don’t understand.”

A dog called Police

The family that bought the house from Mr. and Mrs. Jeenah moved in almost secretly. There was no furniture delivery truck, no van loaded with household goods. The first signs that the house was occupied by my new neighbours were curtains drawn closed at the windows and a howling, mangy dog running up and down the concrete yard from early morning until nightfall.  I tried ringing the bell at the gate and calling out from the pavement but nobody ever responded, though once or twice I would see the curtain pulled slightly to one side by a woman wearing the brightly coloured patterned fabric that West African women wear.

At night men would arrive in three shiny, new cars and two or three women, one carrying a child on her hip, would appear briefly from inside the house to welcome them. Their heads were covered and their bodies shrouded in the ankle length garments that Muslim women wear.

The metal, roll up gate on the side of the house would be lifted, the cars would drive in, and the gate would close behind them. 

Within weeks of moving in, truckloads of building supplies were delivered and construction work began in the back yard of the house. Then a huge satellite dish was installed on the roof. From my glimpses into life beyond the metal gate, I surmised that quite a number of people were living on the property, but the house was always cloaked in silence, like a ghost town.

At night when the men returned, the dog was locked out to roam the streets. At sunrise he would wait loyally at the gate to begin another miserable day of running up and down on the other side of the fence.  

I noticed the dog had an infection around his eyes, which were inflamed and bleeding. Increasingly distressed, I finally confronted one of the men. His name was Moosa.  He agreed to take the dog to the vet. When there was no sign of this, I reported my neighbours to the SPCA.

These days the SPCA’s strategy is to rehabilitate the owners of pets rather than remove the animals. In this case, my neighbours were instructed to take the animal to the vet for inoculation and treatment. When I complained that the dog was still running up and down a small stretch of concrete, still howling, and still being locked out at night, the man I spoke to from the SPCA said he could not intervene because the owner of the dog had complied.

Again I confronted my neighbour. I asked him if he would like to find another home for the dog, whose name, I established, was ‘Police’.  He said, “You can take the dog but first you must give me another dog. And I want a big dog, not small dogs like yours…”

I befriended the dog. I bought a box of biscuits for large dogs and fed him through the fence. After a while, he allowed me to stroke his mangy head, then he began to wag his tail when I came out my front door, and to lick my hand when I approached him.  A couple of times in the days and weeks of my relationship with Police, I saw the curtain stir at the window and realised I was being watched. Once, one of the men came out of the metal gate when I was feeding the dog, and demanded to know what I was doing.

I spoke to the local vet about the situation. “It’s tricky”, he said. 

Early one morning, I saw Police waiting outside the gate on the pavement as usual, then I heard the men drive off.

Later in the day I noticed that the dog was not there.  He was not there the next day either.  Finally on the third day, I confronted Moosa.  “Where’s Police?” I asked.  “He ran away,” he responded with a  sullen expression, turning away. We have not spoken since.

There is a new dog, also an alsation, a puppy, kept behind the metal gate. I catch a glimpse when the men leave or arrive.

Survival and the city

Just over the Bez Valley border, in a street lined with gum and oak trees, rich with birdlife, women congregate in pairs or small groups on the pavement outside large Observatory properties.  They are aged between 18 and 40 and come from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, the DRC, Malawi and Zambia. They live in Observatory, Yeoville, Bellevue East, Bez Valley, Bertrams, Kensington, Orange Grove and Vorna Valley.   

There is a loose affiliation between the women, and a pecking order. South African women get first preference for rooms in a guest house on Louis Botha Avenue, which are rented out at R50 an hour or R30 for half an hour. Clients are “Whites, Indians, Nigerians, all kinds…We don’t know them, we don’t ask questions unless they say they want to spend some life with you or if they propose you. That’s when they will tell you about their history.  Then they will tell you, I come from India, or from London, or from Australia.  Others lie to us.”

The younger women insist on condoms; the older women are more willing to compromise if they are paid enough. Fees range from R100 to R600.  

Younger sex workers are expected to pay compensation - often at knifepoint - if an older woman loses a regular client because of them. Sometimes they are forced to give up all their earnings.

Sibongile is Zimbabwean. Her mother lives in Zimbabwe and her father lives in Johannesburg. Since he married a South African woman, her father has failed to support her. She lives with her stepsisters who don’t know what she does. “They think I am chilling and working at Bruma for those Chinese shops.” She works on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and generally has about four clients a day.  

Evidence, also a Zimbabwean, is 18.  She came to South Africa two years ago on her own. Both her parents are dead and she has no family.  “This thing is a risk. I am doing it because of my situation.  Otherwise I must sleep in the streets.”

*Not their real names.

Mrs Jeenah

It was comforting though not always comfortable when Mr. and Mrs. Jeenah lived opposite.  They were elderly and always there.  Mrs. Jeenah, a tiny woman with a scrunched up face and beak like nose, would sit on a wicker chair on the verandah and keep tabs. She was a busybody who knew everything about everyone. Although this could be unnerving at times, it was also consoling to know that somebody was keeping an eye on the comings and goings in Eighth Avenue. 

Before dementia made her frighteningly paranoid and she would summon me into her house to inspect an imaginery hole in the ceiling where imaginery burglars had forced entry and stolen her imaginery possessions, she would go through phases of being pleasant and unpleasant. It was as though she would make a conscious effort to be a good neighbour and after a few weeks of this, another persona would take over and she would become spiteful and mean.

At Christmas one year when she was in a good neighbour phase, she sent Phumzile across the road with a large box of chocolates and a card.  The card was not a Christmas card but a wedding card, and a very kitsch one at that, of an exaggeratedly perfect bride and groom standing arm in arm outside a church, with multi-coloured glittery confetti being showered upon them.

I never worked out what that card was really saying. I thought about it for quite a while.  Was it that Mrs. Jeenah had absolutely no idea what Christmas was about, or was a handsome groom at a perfect wedding her Christmas wish for me, or was her sinister persona emerging and was she insinuating that I was somehow lacking because there was no man in the house?  Because she was not a straightforward person, even now it is impossible to say.

When the Jeenahs sold their house and the West African community moved in, I missed Mrs. Jeenah. I think of her often still.

*Real names have not been used.  

Jo'burg's 'Bridge of San Luis Rey'

The winding road that connects the valley with the top of the ridge is Johannesburg’s ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey’.  


The road was named after Joseph Stewart, a socially concerned and active man who devoted himself to the community for 25 years. The beautiful arched walls, built of stone from the koppie, still exist.  Once there was a plaque marking the outcrop of the ‘Brixton Qaurtzite’ which forms the Observatory Ridge, but it was apparently shot to smithereens by vandals in a passing car during the apartheid era at about the time when David Webster was assassinated.

One story of the origins of Stewart Drive is that it was built by Italian prisoners of war (the 1939-1945 War); another is that it was part of the city engineer’s work programme for the unemployed during the Depression and was completed in 1935.

The road winds its serpentine way through dense gum-tree forests, though the protecting fence has long been dismantled and sold - ‘shipped to China’ as they say at the all-accepting, turn-a-blind-eye scrap dealers in the valley. This is the final destination of almost all the man-hole covers and fence-posts in the district.  Another fence, only partially stolen is the more recent initiative of a local politician. It separates the park at the top of the road from the ‘jungle’ below.

Benches for weary travellers, thoughtfully constructed by the road’s builders at key points on the steep path, have also been stolen. Only one or two concrete legs remain.

Once there was a pedestrian route up the ridge, coming out at the corner of Beatty and Hill streets, but the story goes that long ago, an ‘Italian megalomaniac developer’ filled it in with rubble from the demolished white elephant ,’Von Brandis Garage’ in Jo’burg City, thereby blocking the watercourse and precipitating his bankruptcy (so it is said). Such paths in the city (like the path up Houghton ridge) have, in any event long become too dangerous for walking.

‘Robber-barons’  come down a well-trod path at a lonely dark bend in the forest, from wherever they dwell with impunity (from all accounts), when they see travellers wending their way fearfully upwards. Sometimes, it is said, they place rocks in the road, late at night, to puncture the tyres of cars of unsuspecting travellers.

It’s a quarter of a kilometre of utter lawlessness, a real fairy tale world of bandit kings, a piece of Johannesburg that exists apart. Anyone who takes the time to offer a lift to people waiting fearfully at the top or at the bottom of Stewart Drive will meet all the characters of a modern fairy-tale: Beautiful young maidens; goodly parents shepherding small children to and from the crèche at the bottom of the hill; wise old folk; children like ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ on an errand; two angels from the Celestial Church of Jesus Christ, and a band of pilgrims almost robbed by two leather-jacketed men with guns.

I have met a Franco-African maths teacher on his way to and from a part-time post at the High School  below the imposing stone abandoned Sir Herbert Baker built Observatory , and a tutoring job in the valley; a Congolese former diplomat, Japanese and Spanish-speaking, hoping to go to London; a French teacher; a schoolboy who left his  ragged school blazer in my car (still hanging hopefully in my cupboard); an artisan who lives in a house of safety for people with mental instability; and a young business and family man, on his way to a Hillbrow pharmacy to buy 'family planning items'.

'Don’t stop to give people a lift any more, and keep your doors locked. You may be hijacked!' a local politician, cautioned. 'You can’t trust anybody these days'