"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."