"Whatever I have done is with my own ten fingers.”

I squinted through the metal grid and dark windows of Broadway Milliner for any sign of life but could only make out a few very dusty hats on a small hat stand to one side of the shop window. Inside, Dolly Sepel was working on a new hat. She has been doing this for 48 years.





Women in their sixties or seventies who lived in Bez Valley as children, told me they remembered their mothers having hats made by Dolly. “She was famous,” one said. “She made all the mayoral hats.” When I went back to tell them that Dolly is still alive and still working, they were flabbergasted. “She must be nearly 90!”

Most people in surrounding shops that I spoke to don’t know Dolly. Only the tailor around the corner, Mr Moti, still chats to her from time to time. “She was a beautiful woman in her day,” he told me.

Dolly grew up in a house in Braamfontein and was educated at the Cottesloe school. Her father worked for the municipality. The family was very poor. “I came from a poor house,” she says. She and her two brothers and sister left school and started working at the age of 16.

“I didn’t have a training, I worked in hat factories. My first job was for a men’s hat factory in Fordsburg. The directors were two married couples from England. Then I went to a factory in Eloff Street Extension and then another factory, and then another hat factory in President Street…”

1952 protests against the banning of Solly Sachs

When she was in her twenties she had an offer from a draper’s shop in Bez Valley. “There was a draper next door and there was a girl working there called Frances and she said to me, 'Why don’t you come and work from our shop? We will give you a little corner and you can sell your hats there'.”

It was a large shop that included the shop that is Bez Valley Tailor’s today. “I started with that counter there, Dolly says, pointing to a white wooden counter with drawers, “and where the tailor is today, that is where I worked. That was my place. That was part of the draper’s shop.” 

Before she joined the Garment Workers Union, Dolly earned 3 pounds 10 a week. Her wages went up to 7 pounds 10 when she became a union member. She speaks in glowing terms about Solly Sachs, who formed the union in 1928. "He was a wonderful man. He helped us a lot." http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/garment-workers-union-gwu

The owner of the building lived with his family in a flat above the shop. As Dolly’s business grew, he built a separate shop for her and two more flats on top of the shops. Dolly dipped into her savings to pay the deposit on a flat and start her own shop. “I had 50 pounds in the bank,” Dolly says. “I was always a saver. I used to save 50 pence a week.”

There was a carpenter next door before the printing shop moved in and a Chinese shop that sold groceries. The Valley Butchery owned by Lilly Green was a block away and there was a big tea-room over the road on the corner. Directly across the road from Broadway Milliners there was a hairdressing salon. “It was a white hairdresser. Now it is a black hairdresser.”

“There have been big changes since those days,” Dolly says. “There were Italians and Greeks and Portuguese that lived here. They have all left now. It is all black people living here now. I had a very big business but my customers were all white and now many people don’t want to come here. But now I have very rich black customers. I have judges, lawyers, businessmen coming here. I am always busy. I do work for a shop in Sandton. She sells my hats for R 1,500. Fashion changes all the time. Smart women still don’t go without a hat. If you are smart you don’t go without a hat.”

Rentals for shops in the vicinity are approximately R5,000 per month. “I could have bought this building for 55 pounds more than 30 years ago but I didn’t have the money then.”

Dolly has not had an easy life. Her husband was a bookie who contributed little to day to day expenses and left her for another woman, and one of her two sons died in the SADF at the age of 22.

She has been making hats for so long that she can’t imagine doing anything else.

“You have done it all of your life. You have never done anything else. Most of my life has been in this shop…

Lime green, turquoise, gold, black and white… You just make things… People bring their outfits for me to match. I dye their shoes, their bags, everything…

I used to work seven days a week. Only the last year I don’t work on a Sunday…

Whatever I have done is with my own ten fingers.”

"...a dead end..."

Enoch Yemohson is from Ghana. He and his family live in the flat that Dolly the milliner once lived in, above Bez Valley Tailors and Broadway Milliner.

Enoch's shop is 'Current Audio and Electricals' at 82 Broadway, a few shops away from 8^th Street. 


He came to South Africa in 1989 because of the political instability in his own country at that time, and has been in business for five years.

“Things are not working but we are just trying,” he says.

Enoch has a diploma in electronics. He fixes TVs, microwaves, DVDs and “anything that is electronic and a domestic appliance.”

He pays R 5,000 per month for rent. Electricity and other costs are continually rising in the shop and at the flat. He used to pay R 320 per month for electricity at home. Now he gets bills for R 1,600 per month.

Enoch sold his car because he could no longer afford to run it. This has been bad for business because he can't collect and deliver repairs. 

“Business is very, very poor,” he says. “People on this side don’t have money. This area is a dead end.  Maybe I will have to move out the way things are.”   

Enoch rents out part of his shop to other businesses: A hairdresser, a barber and a tailor.

The hairdressers, Solange and Angie, are from Kinshasa, DRC; the barber, Dalton Nkhoma, is a Malawian; and the tailor, Chester Misiska, is also from Malawi. They all live in Bez Valley.

Chester is friendly with Mr. Moti from Bez Valley Tailors.  The two tailors refer customers to one another.

Chester and his 23 year old son live in a backroom in 8th Avenue.  He calls it a "boy's room". The room is on the same property as Katy Mazibuko's room (see earlier blog). They have lived there for eight years

Current Audio and Electrics: 082-3900-433; Chester  Misiska, Tailor: 078-8313-833 

Anything from a brassiere to a tent...

Mr. Mito as a young man

Mr. Subhas Moti has owned Bez Valley Tailors on the corner of Seventh Street and Broadway for 30 years.  He took over the business from his father-in-law, Mr. Chitta Lalloo Parbhoo, when he retired in 1981.  The shop started out at 15 Broadway, where Midas is today, and moved to the current location in 1962, almost 50 years ago.

The son of a tailor, Mr. Moti was born in Durban in 1947.  His father’s business was on Grey Street, which was a ‘hub of Indian businesses’ in the 1950s.

  

Mr. Moti with his wife and in-laws

From an early age Mr. Moti would go to his father’s shop after school. At the age of nine he shortened his first pair of trousers, made his first buttonhole, and tacked his first button.  When he was 11 his father died suddenly. He and his five siblings were  catapulted into adulthood the three boys into careers as tailors.

Life was tough but Mr. Moti is inclined to focus on the positive. “Between then and the time I came to this business, I frequented workshops and sweatshops and tailor shops. It was an excellent learning ground’.

Mr. and Mrs. Lalloo Parbhoo

He met his wife on a visit to Johannesburg. ‘I had family in Johannesburg so I came here from time to time.  In those days when you crossed provincial borders, you had to go to Home Affairs and get a permit.  On the one trip I met my wife and we got married’. The couple lived in Durban for a while before moving to Johannesburg.  Taking over his father-in-law’s business in July 1981 allowed the tailor to generate more income, though not without hard work and sacrifice.  ‘Those were long days. I was working 12 or 14 hours a day…’

Within 18 months Mr. Moti suffered a heart attack and was forced to rethink how to run the business. He took on one assistant and then others.  They have been with him for 24 years, 18 years, and six years respectively.

Describing the changes that have taken place over the years, Mr. Moti speaks of the horrendous journey back and forth from Lenasia in peak hour traffic, and the gradual disappearance of most other tailors in the area.

Mr. Moti takes pride in his work and believes it is valuable. ‘I believe anybody who works with his hands has to make a living.  He is taking the trouble so he must also get a slice of the cake. I don’t want the whole cake...I will never be rich but I can make a decent living’.

Relationships with customers are central. ‘In my line of work I have people who have things to talk about, anything from the money market to weddings and social events and tragedies. So you hear of Johannesburg, you hear of the people of Johannesburg. And it is a vibrant city.  I’m a people person…Eventually the customer becomes your friend,’ Mr. Moti says.

Customers are from all walks of life. ‘You can’t put a finger on who the customers are…very poor, very rich. The poor one will say, ‘Please boss, I don’t have another trouser, give me a trouser so that I can wash the one I am wearing’... And then I get the guy who comes here in a Maserati and I do a fitting for him and he gives me his card and says, ‘When it is ready, please call the office, somebody will come and fetch it’. 

A local magician has been a customer for many years. The relationship led to a massive undertaking to produce items of clothing for 10-12 Reach for a Dream ‘happiness givers’. Outfits consisted of trousers, waistcoats and T-shirts with lots of pockets. ‘A pocket is a tailor’s nightmare’, Mr. Moti says. 

Although business is uncertain from one day to the next, the atmosphere in the shop is vibrant and collaborative. ‘Ours is a team effort but I am in the middle of every single job,’ Mr. Moti says.  ‘Nobody does marking and cutting except me and I give the customer the fitting so I know what I have to do. You get a person who is slender on the waist but big on the seat; and you may get a man who has a paunch and a very small behind.  It is all about measurements and you have to be on top of your trade otherwise they bring it back and you have to redo the job at no cost’.

Asked about some of his more challenging assignments, Mr. Moti says, ‘Our work can be  anything from a brassiere to a tent! Now the brassiere that would come to us is not an ordinary brassiere. It comes from the specialists and it is an awkward size. For instance, one that came to us was a 32 triple H! We provide the necessary workmanship’.

An ‘operation’ with a tent involved sewing zips onto the windows of the tent so they wouldn’t flap in the rain.  A machine was moved onto the pavement to complete the job because the tent was too big for the shop.

Mr. Moti with his wife, three daughters and extended family

Bez Valley Tailors has countered criminal attacks like many other businesses in Jo’burg. On one occasion three armed men relieved Mr. Moti of the R500 float, his personal possessions, and the leather waistcoat he was wearing that day. 

I asked how long he intends to carry on with the business. ‘I will be here for at least another ten years…at least,’ he says.

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.

"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."

Buying and selling

A car guard from the Democratic Republic of the Congo waves me into a parking place.  ‘Madame!’ he says with a French accent, bowing graciously.

Entering the shopping centre from the underground parking area I  notice that the shops where ‘African Foods’ and ‘Saucy Chips’ used to be are now empty. 

I walk past the bottle store, up the escalator, florist on the right, biscuit shop on the left,  pass the second hand cell phone shop and the dry cleaners, and into Pick ‘n Pay.  Looking across the to the opposite side of the escalators and down to ground level, I see one, two, three, four, more empty shops with ‘To Let’ signs on the windows. According to The caretaker there are 17 empty shops at Darras Centre.  “People haven't got money to pay rent... management is bad, and there is too much corruption”, he tells me.

Meanwhile, informal traders and small general stores and hairdressing salons are mushrooming in Bez Valley.  Traders are generally not South Africans though some are from other provinces - Limpopo and Mpumalanga. They tell me they are from Rwanda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, DRC, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

A short distance away at Oriental City in Bruma and Chinatown in Cyrildene, there are no empty shops and new shops and restaurants open almost every day. 

Mice and Rats

I am waiting to pay, standing in the queue at Pick ‘n Pay in the Park Meadows Shopping Centre. Suddenly the cashier - a substantial woman with huge, booted feet - lunges from her seat behind the till to stomp on a mouse running across the shop floor. She kills it! 

Shoppers in front and behind giggle at my shocked reaction, apparently unmoved.