Xaba is a lifeguard for Ethikwini Municipality. From Lamontville, about 15km out of Durban, he’s also the inspiration for the story behind the film. It was curiosity about why the township had produced so many of Durban’s lifeguards that led director Sara Blecher to the script.
Otelo Burning is a compelling piece of storytelling; a small story set against a dramatic historical backdrop. It is also a beautiful film to look at, and one that cannot but elicit powerful emotions with its portrayal of four boys whose lives are caught up in circumstances way beyond anyone’s control.
Among Apartheid’s many tragic consequences was that it broke families. The boys are largely unparented save for the occasional smack across the head – which, in the absence of loving gestures, is almost a mark of fondness. All the while Lamontville’s children run the gauntlet between groups of armed Inkatha supporters and their UDF enemies. The township was the stuff of nightmares. And when they dream, they dream of surfing. The water is a place of freedom, their only means of escape.

Surfing a warzone

Otelo Burning is shot in Zulu – even the one whitey speaks it – with a plot so engrossing I almost had to be reminded I had seen a film in a language I don’t speak.
Xaba arrives, a little flustered, apologetic, and without a hint of his star status. He looks very different off-screen, slighter. His jaw is softer; he appears relaxed. He attribute it to his new hobby – spearfishing. He had a 5am start to the day. He says he was inspired to change his looks for the film after reading about 50 Cent playing a college football star fighting cancer.
“On screen I look a bit buff from fighting waves. I just had to chomp, chomp, chomp and not exercise,” he laughs. His athleticism is undisputed though. Asked to bring a surfboard to the beach for a portrait shot he comes sliding down the fireman’s pole at the lifeguard station with it held casually under his arm.

Sihle Xaba gets shot at the beach. Sunday Times photographer Jackie Clausen is in the foreground

We sit on the beach talking about what led to his career as a lifeguard. “We had access to a swimming pool in Lamontville … the only one that survived the political violence. Today, still, kids are learning to swim there.”
“You know people say ‘Never do anything or say anything in front of the little ones’ – but all these events I witnessed… I was 9 years old … I saw people being necklaced – Inkatha guys cornered, someone being burnt alive. When you’re a kid you go to school and talk about it.”
He draws the geography of the township in the sand. The Inkatha versus UDF war wasn’t the only one. There were gangsters to watch out for, and the inevitable standoffs against the police. What he describes is miles away from a childhood.
“Growing up, I would wake up in the township in the morning and then I’m gone. My uncle (who he lived with then) would say: ‘that’s how you grow stronger’. There are so many things… My son will never have that.”
“I don’t remember anyone asking even once ‘where have you been’. In fact one time I remember running home, scared. I ran up the stairs – and the door slammed and I heard the lock. ‘Go back where you came from,’ they shouted. And I had to find shelter.” He laughs incredulously.
His mother lived next to the crossing where Inkatha fighters would access the township. “To go visit my mother, my hair would stand on end – You would be killed for a red T-shirt (code for Inkatha).”
The swimming pool wasn’t untouched. Gangsters fought to control it. But he says there was one man who held onto it. “His name was Sthembiso Madiya. We used to call him ‘sgora’ meaning tough guy. He would fight for the pool. His love and passion was to help kids learn how to swim. You would get corporal punishment for not following his rules. You weren’t allowed to just walk on the grass and jump in. You got a spanking and sent home if you didn’t pass his inspection.” He tells it with humor.

Lamontville's public swimming pool - a scene from Otelo Burning

Xaba was seven when he started swimming lessons. “It’s where my lifeguarding career came from.” He is also a champion body-boarder. He mentions how some family members “didn’t like the idea”. It’s an aspect portrayed powerfully in the film. Parents teach children to fear water because of the mythical snakes that reside in it. When one of the boys says he wants to learn “esefa” – the others laugh and ask if he “like Jesus, you want to walk on water”.
Ironically, the water is the last place to fear. The real snakes lying in wait are human ones.
It’s difficult to talk about Xaba’s role in the film without being a spoiler so I’ll only share that at the heart of the story is an act so malevolent it left me reeling. In some ways, one should have expected it, the grand gesture amid so many other betrayals, of children by their parents, young girls by predatory men, of a country at work selling out itself. Those unusual times laid fertile ground for the most horrific acts to flower, with malignant agendas given licence by the raging chaos.

Otelo Burning Official Trailer

“Shooting the film my worst fear was that it’s going to open up old wounds. Thinking about it was sad – how those people died because they believed they did the right thing. I wish young people could appreciate how South Africa has transformed,” he says. Across from us a group of black kids is playing soccer in the hazy noon light. There are kids wading into the waves.
“We never had this before – it used to be a white beach all the way to Addington – and then a coloured beach. You don’t have to walk around with a dompas in your pocket. We are really privileged.”

The lineup on Otelo Burning's incredible soundtrack

He attributes this to Blecher, “Sara is the most amazing director and as we went along, we played it as close as we could to reality. She wanted to use people who were in the township back in the day.”
Xaba got into acting when he auditioned for a TV series “Bay of Plenty”, set on a Durban beach. “I have grown into it. It’s not about wanting to be a celebrity. When I first auditioned I thought I’d be cast as a stunt double – instead I got to be lead actor.”
Truth is he was delayed this morning sorting out a passport renewal for a Nigerian trip, where he’d been nominated for an African Movie Academy Award. (He didn’t win on the night but the film picked up awards for cinematography, and for Mohlomi as best child actor). It’s been notching up awards from Brazil to Cape Town.
We get up to leave the beach. Tattooed across his back are the words “African built”. I walk away thinking how this place still has so many remarkable stories to tell. And I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing more of Sihle Xaba.

* Otelo Burning opened at cinemas on May 11. Do not, I repeat, do not miss this exceptional film. To listen to the soundtrack download it for free here. This story first appeared in the Sunday Times.
Surfing to salvation Sunday Times Lifestyle May 15 2012

And outside Uncle Merv’s shake shack our little crew is getting bigger. It could be the start of a joke… One editor, one photographer, one blogger and two tour guides meet over a smoothie to wait for Rasty…

Rasty with his work. Photo by Wesley Poon for Sunday Times

Rasty is a legend on Joburg’s city streets. I had heard his name long before I met him.
For the past year I have been interested in finding out more about our street art scene and Rasty’s name follows any inquiry.
Two days earlier I had met him at the Grayscale gallery, of which he is a partner, in Braamfontein, Joburg’s other district of cool. Rasty is legit. He could wear a sash proclaiming him Joburg’s ambassador of street art. He is also the man behind the week-long City of Gold Urban Art festival (April 2012) started “to inspire youth and expose them to a higher quality of graffiti”, he says. In its second year the event aims to “establish Johannesburg as a destination for artists and assist the development of the local street art community.”

Uncle Merve's smoothie and shake shack in Maboneng

Turns out the Grayscale Gallery’s also home to 1933, a tattoo parlour, and it supplies specialised spray paint for tagging city walls imported from Germany. Rasty is tall, skinny, and covered in them, a Super Mario on his calf, 1933 on his neck. His incredible head of dreadlocked hair is elegantly wound up into a Sikh-like turban. it makes him look majestic. His expression is serene. I forget to ask him his “real” name. Rasty is real enough.

He tells me good graffiti artists make good tattoo artists – both being “outsider art”. I can see the appeal for making a permanent mark. “As a graffiti artist you go somewhere and put in all that time and effort and then you leave it. You can get your photo (and they do and mostly post them online at Flickr to be shared with the world) and that’s it. You have no control over it once it is completed.”

The sloot next to Arts on Main

On Sunday morning he is the pied piper leading our troop through the maze of Troyeville’s graffittied streets. The works we stop at are startling in the sharp autumn light. They are full of colour, and playful characters. They are cheeky and subversive, enlivening the otherwise quiet streets east of the city centre. We get an appreciative response from a churchman clad in his green robes. “This is beautiful” he says, gesturing at one of the walls.
Only some of the work is Rasty’s (and his PCP crew members, Angel and Curio). The area is a gallery for Joburg’s graffiti talent. There are also some prominent Cape Town names emblazoned across the walls.

Graffiti by Falko

Rasty explains, “Cape Town used to be the mecca of graffiti in South Africa. It started on the Cape Flats and was influenced by Hip-hop culture. Exposure to American styles was filtered through magazines in the mid-1980s. The pioneers were Gogga, Ice, Mak1one (I’m told it’s a silent one) and Falko”.
It then moved its way to Joburg. “There’s momentum at the moment but we are nowhere near cities in Europe and the US that have a long history,” he says. “We still have a way to go. There kids are starting at 13, here in SA it’s much later.” I shake my head in sympathy, and then remember I have an 11-year-old son…

Work by Rasty and Angel, PCP Crew

Cape Town artists also look to Joburg since the Democratic Alliance’s bylaw crackdown against graffiti. I have heard it decried by artists, curators and those involved with public art. “Basically you can’t paint an exterior wall without council permission. Not even an extravagant wall number. They think by stopping people from painting legally, they stop it illegally. It’s just forcing people onto the streets at night.”

Troyeville's Happiness Tuckshop

I ask: “Would it be worth doing if it was legal?” and he replies “It’s about getting your name up, it has an illegal aspect but that’s a small part of it. The primary focus is to put your name up all over the city”. Thinking about it – big commercial brands get to do that all the time with billboards and brand names claiming the cities most prominent landmarks.

“If it wasn’t illegal, you would have more people doing it,” he says. “It’s human nature – think of being a kid and writing your name on a desk. You can’t combat that by talking about the legal aspects.”

Signs and wonders

We pass an elaborate signature. I can’t make it out but Rasty rates it highly. “People don’t get tagging, why we do it. It’s almost like calligraphy, an art form. It’s about letter style and there are levels of what makes it good or bad quality”.
Name-writing is a crucial part of graffiti. “It all started somewhere with a kid with a Koki in a subway tunnel in New York. It will never disappear,” he says. “And then we discovered the spray can.”

Joburg graffiti

The New Yorker was Taki 183, according to Taki’s official website: “A kid from 183rd street in Washington Heights, Manhattan.” His wrote his signature all over the city and it captured the attention of a New York Times reporter. In the summer of 1971 Taki made graffiti famous in the pages of the paper of record.
“There are different styles – graffiti is more about signing your name, primarily about this whereas street art leans more towards iconic images, logos that can be repeated, or the use of stencils. A lot of street artists start in graffiti and work towards imagery. Graffiti, because it’s about writing your name, is about style, and being an individual. Street art is socially aware, more a comment on society.” We talk about Banksy and his impact, and his incredible film Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie”.

Beam me up

“Graffiti is about the fame,” says Rasty, who comes across as someone with little attraction to the spotlight.
His interest was sparked at a hip-hop party when he was finishing high school. “I also saw some interviews on TV, and wanted to try it”. That was in 1999. Rasty grew up near Westdene and Melville, and a big empty wall on Barry Herzog Avenue. It’s one of the “free zones’ in Joburg. Newtown, under the M1 Bridge, is another. His work started drawing attention, and he started getting commissions.

In Joburg the authorities have been supportive. No draconian laws impede this kind of work. Although, he says, even with permission Metro cops might stop you. In places like Maboneng, Newtown and Braamfontein the writing’s all over the walls.

Troyeville's David Webster Park

Of course there is etiquette involved. Rasty says from the start he would never spray someone’s house or a place of worship. You also don’t just paint over someone’s fresh work – “If you are going bigger, generally its fine and if you know the person you check with them. There are ways of showing respect and disrespect. To cross out someone’s work is the ultimate insult.”

Before the spraypainters moved in ...Troyeville's equivalent of rock art

As we walk through the city it is striking that the eastern suburbs seem more orderly than other parts. The streets are mostly clean, and even though it’s down-at-heel the neighbourhood has a neatness to it, and feels safe.

Ironically it appears that graffiti, so often tied to urban degeneration, is actually playing its part in uplifting the city.

* Grayscale Gallery is at 33 De Korte Street, Braamfontein. This piece originally appeared in Sunday Times Lifestyle For tours of Joburg’s graffiti neighbourhoods contact Past Experiences, the Joburg walking tour company.

And more photos …

Commercial graffiti - Shapiro's was once here

Mars Attacks

Troyeville wall

David Webster Park

Troyeville

I like this guy

King of the concrete jungle

Rubicon. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Boys with clutch bags, lots of fiery red chic bobs and dresses cut to way up to there with heels to match signalled the opening of SA Fashion Week – and that’s just the scene in the lobby of The Rosebank Crowne Plaza, the site of Joburg’s real fashion week. And phones, darling, lots and lots of smartphones, snapping photos, texting, tweeting, waving in the air, videoing the shows, easing social awkwardness, amusing people during the long wait for it all to start and shining out in the darkness. I tried to remember what we all did before we had them – and recalled smoking Camel filters. Still haven’t decided which would be the healthier habit.

Guillotine. Photo © www.planetivan.com

The night started with a great little performance piece at an off-site show – Lisa Jaffe’s Guillotine label showed a few doors away from her store at 44 Stanley Ave. Jaffe is as much artist as she is a clothing designer. The audience was ushered into the show in sittings. I loved the backdrop – wallpaper made from brown paper and electric blue masking tape that created the effect of a chic modern home. The clothes were trademark Guillotine, beautifully cut, with fine detail (gathers, pleats), and all body-hugging. There was also plenty of pink champagne.

Guillotine. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Next up was the The Sheer Glamour Collections with Motions and TRESemme in Rosebank, lots of incredibly ambititous hairstyles matched up with a who’s who of SA design. The Crowne Plaza made a great venue for it with its circular lobby that allows you to see who’s making an entrance at any time. The crowd was super chic, packed with fashion media, film crews and lots of air-kissing personalities. Perfect people-watching territory.

Clive Rundle. Photo © www.planetivan.com

The snacks were good but a little undersized (what else would they be at fashion week) and by the time the show actually started (40 minutes late) I could have taken a bite out of the person sitting next to me. The show was in a large marquee leading off from the hotel – atop each seat a lavish goodie bag filled with enough hair products to start a spaza shop. The staging was great – an amazing revolving box that delivered the models to the start of the catwalk.

Vesselina Pentcheva. Photo © www.planetivan.com

The fashion was pretty good too, although more elegant and wearable than cutting edge concept. On these occasions I prefer the cutting edge concept – some of which was to be found in dress number one – worn by actress Minnie Dlamini, who is brand ambassador for the Motions hair care brand. She strode the catwalk wearing an evening dress created by floral magician Franz Grabe made from 1800 fresh roses and miniature carnation petals. What followed was super pretty stuff by Gavin Rajah, Black Coffee, Vesselina Pentcheva and others.

Colleen Eitzen. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Blue was definitely the colour of the night, with lace and metallics everywhere, and designer hairstyles resembling oversized, softened birds nests. In all, a fun night out with Joburg’s most fashionable set.

Gavin Rajah. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Gavin Rajah. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Gavin Rajah. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Black Coffee. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Black Coffee. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Black Coffee. Photo © www.planetivan.com

Black Coffee. Photo © www.planetivan.com

I have stood atop buildings across the city, from Braamfontein, to Anstey’s Building on Jeppe Street, Lister Building to Main Street Life in Maboneng, and each time it’s with a sense of incredible privilege to be raised above the city, able to survey the landscape, to own the view. But in this city the view is fraught, because as your eye adjusts from grand vision to detail, you are thrown by the lives scurrying beneath it, the burnt-out corners, the bricked in entrances, and the broken bits. There is a menacing side to it. This city can turn on you.

When Niebuhr speaks about it, he does so with affection, laced with realism.
He says: “You drive around in the day and it’s all bustling, trading and noise. But this city is premised on gold, it has a subterranean story. At night that subterranean story makes itself at home above aground… When the sun goes down, Joburg is a transgressive zone”.

This is Niehbuhr’s fourth exhibition of Johannesburg. And each has added another layer to his catalogue of the place. “Night Ride Home” was his first in 2005, the story of the city seen as you drive past it, in a blur of light and colour. “When I moved back in 2001 it was the ‘forbidden city’”. Joburg then was in the midst of its urban decay.

Lillian Road Studios, Fordsburg

His second was “Night Shift” in 2008. For that he photographed the foyers of buildings in Hillbrow, capturing the signs of the buildings’ former lives, painting them in oils as if to fix a part of them in memory, and in history. The style was Edward Hopper-esque; the colours vivid and yet the mood one of melancholy. His third exhibition took you to the outskirts of the city. “Mine” dealt with the mine dumps that are Johannesburg’s disappearing landmarks.

Each is an examination of a space shaped by its history as a city of gold, one built on the pursuit of shiny objects, to some extent blinded by them. It’s a greedy place, socially engineered by the ground beneath our feet. Gold brought as much poverty as it did riches and searching for a shiny future is what makes Joburg’s pulse race. “City Chromatic” is what happens when Niebuhr’s lens zooms even further out, taking in the city’s architectural edifices.

The paintings are suggestive of the life that’s not shown in them. They depict a momentary suspension of the noise, the people, and the drama. In them the moods of the city are on display, the gold-tinted sunsets, the broody rain-filled afternoons, the quietness of dusk and the stirring of night.
Niebuhr says they are about what “what you see and what you don’t see. You start to train your eyes. There are clues”. There are hints of the stories and lives that swirl about the place. As the viewer you are compelled to know what is going on, “to unearth it, discover, and get closer to a truer story”. But there are lots of stories and each has a place in this mythical city.

From a distance the paintings have the precision of photographs – an exactness of the grid – while up close they have the richness of oil paintings. Niebuhr paints from photos that he takes. He mentions that a photographer friend offered him some images to paint from that he had really liked, but when it came down to it, he couldn’t make his way using them. It wasn’t his city. It wasn’t his view.
The exhibition has been a year in the making – It began with leaden skies, a series of darkened paintings. “I thought it would be all Hitchcock, dark film noir and then it morphed into drawing the city with red. I started introducing colour, applying stains and washes. The grid gets put down and then I pour over the layers”. Using turpentine over oils, the colours run and are muted in parts, creating their own patterns, their own activity, swirling down, dissolving parts of the buildings, erasing others, leaving faint traces. Parts are washed away. So for all that built solidity there is a sense of the ephemeral, solid edifices diluted.

“I use photographs but I am quite familiar with it. I know each building and that allows me take certain liberties as its believable as the city. Having painted it a couple of hundred times its’ familiar subtext is established. I can explore painterly techniques, thinking ‘what will it look like if I paint it like that …”
Niebuhr’s familiarity with the city has come from him walking the place. But on any day and on every day his studio in Fordsburg offers a view of the city that beckons to be captured. Below it Main Street throbs with life, on an afternoon the cacophony of traffic sounds, taxi’s hooting, cars speeding to the city centre, traders and their customers makes its way along the balcony reaching into the first floor of the Lillian Road Artist Studios.

“There’s something about the positioning, and the confluence of forces on the doorstep of downtown Johannesburg. If you sit here of an evening, there’s the rush hour and madness as the sun goes down. Then you hear the hawkers pulling their trolleys across Main Street. It’s pageantry. I have stayed here until 3am and the time zones are determinate. Each brings something different.”
“It’s romanticisation to call this city edgy. We are on edge most of the time. This is an arena of hopes, fucked dreams of wealth. In Joburg the gangsters watch other gangsters to see how to be one. And if you see someone in a fancy car who looks like a gangster they probably are.”
But out all that scariness Niebuhr make things of beauty. And it’s satisfying, he says, precisely because the subject is so problematic. And ironically his paintings will probably end up hanging in homes across the Northern Suburbs, appreciated by owners who would never dare venture into the real city.

Hermann Niebuhr by Wesley Poon

* City Chromatic opens March 8 at Everard Read Gallery, Rosebank and runs until April. this work first appeared in Sunday Times Lifestyle.

City view from Main Street - West

The Awards are in their fifth year and they recognise the people and projects that are making the sometimes neglected, and often maligned inner city the place to be. Sharon Lewis, Executive Manager for Planning and Strategy, spoke about investment being a key driver in the realization of the vision of Joburg as a world-class city. She mentioned an impact study conducted that found “for every R1-million invested in the city by the city, the public sector responded with R19-million”. These are critical partnerships.

The Awards recognise the efforts “that inject momentum” into the city’s redevelopment. Since they were launched the JDA has received more than 300 nominations, each a story about the people who are working on the city’s future, and transforming it into a liveable, workable and playable space. The themes are set, these are stories of vision, hope, wings, prayers and a healthy appetite for risk.

Vampire at factory prices

Walking the city I am reminded that the JDA and city officials have a tricky task to perform – balancing the interests of all those who live in it. For every building hijacked by gentrification, solutions need to be found for housing the urban poor, and ensuring the city attracts people from diverse economic backgrounds. But each time there is progress, more to see, more reasons to linger.

Our walk started from the JDA’s offices at the Bus Factory in Newtown (it’s also home to the Unity Gallery where one of Newtown’s best-loved characters, The Prince, sells his astonishing collection of jewellery fashioned from cutlery – his exhibition opens at 2pm on Saturday).

JDA uniform for inner city sorties

Not all inner-city walks have such an interesting dress code but the JDA weren’t taking any chances so we were suitably outfitted in fluorescent waistcoats for the occasion. (I was almost tempted to try and hold onto mine – thinking it would come in handy at a non-functioning traffic light on the way home.)

First stop was the Westgate station precinct, an area I have walked through a few times before. It’s in Joburg’s most historic district, what was once Ferreirasdorp, the place where – 125 years ago – Colonel Ignatius Ferreira first pulled up in his wagon and pitched a tent at the start of the gold rush. It’s where Joburg was born. Soon his wagon will be displayed there, next to the Rea Vaya bus station and taxi rank. Other work has included creating great pavement space for pedestrians and the renovation and mostly recreation of Chancellor House, once the law offices of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, opposite the Magistrate’s Court.

Magistrate's Court

I have to say I love walking past a magistrate’s court – a throwback to my short time as a court reporter. You get to see people wearing a suit for the first time, and only because they have done some very bad things. It’s always way too shiny, and ill-fitting.

The precinct had until recently been left behind by development, “hampered by perceived geological constraints”, a reference to the ground beneath it having been mined, giving developers and planners expensive headaches. But these constraints have proved to be not so insurmountable said Lewis, with technological advances. The JDA makes “catalytic” interventions into the city and the Westgate Station precinct is now set for further development with Stimela Square, a retail, residential and business development by Standard Bank set for construction.

Main Street trees

From there we headed down the pedestrian-friendly Main Street, home to the city’s mining houses, and one of the most successful urban developments in recent years (a previous Halala award-winner). The walk takes you past tree-lined stretches, the majestic headquarters of Anglo American with its leaping springbok fountain and pretty manicured gardens, past cafes and opportunities to enjoy lunch in a courtyard in the city, past the mining artifacts that bring to life the city’s early history. There’s even a Woolworths Food store, a testament to urban regeneration that any Joburg resident can understand.

Cafe on Main Street

We walked past Gandhi Square (another previous award-winner) and on to Fox Street Mall, another pedestrian area that adds a other link to the spine from Newtown to the Carlton Centre. There we met up with developer Gerald Olitzki, the man responsible for the Gandhi Square and Fox Street developments. Olitzki is legend. He spoke about the transformation of public space that has changed the human traffic flow of the city.

Foxy number - I fell in love with this crazy 60's printed building visible from Fox Street Mall

One of the challenges has been to attract viable and healthy street life back to that part of the city, to get people to not only commute in and out to their workplaces, but to walk the streets, shop, eat out, mix. “That’s what a city is all about”, he said. It’s still a work in progress, as he pointed out the last hijacked building in that part of the city, but Olitzki is undaunted and judging by what he has accomplished so far there is good reason to believe his vision will prevail.

Skyscraper

While I am a believer, I have long been skeptical of the city’s many efforts that seemed to try revive one patch of town while neglecting to create linkages with other patches that would create a safe channel through the city. Newtown, long touted as the cultural heart of Joburg city, had money poured into it over successive phases of development but remained, for a long time, marooned. So to be able to walk from one side to another in a space created with the walker in mind, was bliss.

Ticket to ride

Well, for a short while anyway. We hopped on a Rea Vaya bus on Commissioner Street and made our way back to the start. I can recommend it. My plan, at some point, is to test the bus system by hopping on and off across the city. Each week brings new reasons to make the trip. Last week I went to see the Candice Breitz exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery uptown and had a great sushi lunch at one of my favourite spots, Mikayu, on Simmonds Street. (Both are highly recommended). The newly refurbished Johannesburg Library is also on my itinerary.

Inside the Rea Vaya Station, Commissioner Street

And if you do travel across town over the next month make a note of the regeneration efforts that impress you, and take the time to nominate a candidate for one of the seven categories of the Halala Awards. Think about what you can do for your city, and what a livable, playable, workable city can do for you.

I couldn't resist taking a photo of the Gymniks - each wearing a statement T-shirt for their workout, 'I love NY' and 'Vote for Jacob Zuma'

Along Bezuidenhout street, where it meets Viljoen in the park below Troyeville ridge is a bed. Its plush studded headboard is the stuff that Joburg migrant dreams are made of, Beares catalogues and lay-byes. Its pillows have the texture of velvet and on it lays a duvet, creased as if the bed’s occupants had just arisen from their slumber.
The bed is inviting.

On the morning I visit two birds are using the folds of the duvet as a birdbath. The park is green, the bed resting in peaceful shade.

Artists like beds because they hold meaning. Tracey Emin’s messy bed once rocked the global art world, while the most recent Absa L’Atelier Art Awards winner Ian Grose painted unmade beds. “As a painter, the idea of loss and the traces left behind, became, for me, inextricable with a more personal kind of loss. Thus the work features a bed – the arena of love, death and loneliness,” writes Grose. “I liked that the creases in the linen and imprint of the human figure in the beds reflected the function of painting and photography as a trace of the departed.”

Bed of roses, Troyeville

But this bed has its own story. This bed is many things. It’s an invitation, and a manifesto; a place for dreams to be enacted. “Most importantly, says it’s co-creator Lesley Perkes, “It’s concrete but it’s alive” and it’s also a “glorious place to park off”.

Perkes spends her days making public art – handling commissions across our cities. She says: “For months on the school run to Observatory (a nearby suburb) I kept seeing this hideous dustbin, overflowing. A sign on it read ‘Abortion is murder’ and six months later someone had put the words ‘pro-choice’ across it, and done it really badly. The contents resembled foetal overflow…

“I thought why do you drive past this dustbin every day while you preach improvement through public art. It started an obsession with what can we do with very little… The city was supposed to clean that dustbin.”
“Then there was this ugly brick pile of face brick rubble next to my house – that had been there for a year. I called a photographer Johannes Dreyer who lives on the ridge. He’s a great artist with a luminous heart” More importantly to the story Dreyer shared a view of the park where the rubble lay.

A dreaming Basani Baloyi

Writing about it, Perkes said: “The offending facebrick eyesore has been in this pathetic state for at least 1 million and two drive-by’s, and, despite the beautiful work done by City Parks once a month in the area, the detritus remains neglected. Further inspired by the bravery of millions of people around the world who are sick and tired of asking for permission to lead a better life, we will no longer let the situation remain habitually dire.

“The truth is, even when it wasn’t rubble, the irredeemable yellow facebrick (my worst) object made no sense: It was just an inexplicable platform with an equally inexplicable thing on top of it; of no apparent use and never good to look at it.”

And so began a project to transform the rubble pile into something that would ignite the imagination. A brave, and daring act, as much as a knight slaying a dragon to rescue a suburb in distress.

Chili Kier and Pepper Perkes

With love from the yarn bombers

To find a headboard to model the bed on the two went off to Primrose “where we were spoiled for choice” and for R450 secured a pink padded one that is part of the “national visual vocabulary”, as Perkes puts it, “the aspirational R8999 mahogany bedstead”. A duvet from China City followed.

The headboard from Primrose

Dreyer brought in designer and artist Damien Grivas, from Bez Valley nearby, to technically master the concrete formwork. And the bed started to come to life, helped by neighbours who gave space, water and power for its construction. “In the end we rolled the concrete pieces like Egyptians to where it needed to be”.

Perkes says it was a neighbourhood project. It had to be cast nearby because of its scale. “We couldn’t do it on our own. People were always curious, always helping.”

Well not always – the first (and until now, only) act of vandalism took place once the base of the bed had been plastered. Some neighbourhood toughs more keen on mandrax than on public acts of love scrawled “Fukkin poes” in the wet plaster.

Jhb Culture Club and photowalkers' Mark Straw

Hanging in Perkes’ office perched on the Troyeville ridge, with a view that stretches for miles, is a framed Andy Warhol quote “Art is what you can get away with”.

“The bed wouldn’t have existed if we had to ask for permission for it,” says Perkes.
Writing about her encounter with the bed poet Phillipa Yaa De Villiers records: “People trooped in to ?celebrate the courage to make art in the face of corporate doo-doo and ?government don’t don’t and the tik sniffers in the park sat up and ?wondered just for a second before they whirled back into the vortex of ?their suffering pleasure and innocence walked free unmolested.”

Love can do that to you.
* This piece was first published in Sunday Times Lifestyle. All photos by Johannes Dreyer. To read more about the bed and public art projects created by Lesley Perkes go to http://lesfolies.posterous.com/

I hope so.

Material stars some of my favourite local comedians – Riaad Moosa, Nik Rabinowitz and Joey Rasdien (and my favourite hairstyle) – in a warm, funny and gentle family drama, with comedy. It’s the story of a Muslim boy from Fordsburg who is torn between duty to his family/culture/religion and the drive to make people laugh – in Melville. A familiar story inspired by Doctor/comedian Riaad Moosa – “you want to be a what?” (and I suspect by producer Ronnie Apteker who went from computer scientist and internet millionaire to filmmaker who eats, prays, and loves movies and believes what doesn’t kill him makes him stronger. He’s right.)

It’s beautifully shot on Fordsburg’s city streets that you will hopefully recognise. And it’s one of those movies, like Jerusalema, and Hijack Stories, that tell a Joburg story, narrowing the lens to a few city blocks that contain a universe (well Forsdburg during the week and Fordsburg on Sunday, aka Zoo Lake, that is). Fordsburg is a big, and well-played, character in the film. (I read that writer and director Craig Freimond moved there for a few months to authentically capture it in the scripting). But the story is also a universal one – of coming of age, and the tussle between old and new values and generations, between what is tradition and what is “modern”, about obedience and loyalty and its conflict with individuality. It’s sad in parts, and uplifting in others, genuinely warm and funny and really worth watching  - in the movie house – and not on a pirated DVD.  

Riaad Moosa and Vincent Ebrahim as father and son in Material

There are some great performances – on screen Riaad Moosa shines. He is sincere without being earnest, and the film’s poignant moments belong to him and Vincent Ebrahim (of Kumars fame), who plays his father. Joey Rasdien is the friend everyone needs as a wingman aptly described on Spling.co.za as being “like the love-child of Seinfeld’s Kramer and George” and Denise Newton is great as Fatima, mother and wife. There are some small weaker bits – I wasn’t crazy for the granny who looked two generations younger than everyone else and did a “Kumars at No.42″ interpretation – it strained believability – and the ending resolves a little too schmaltz-ily. But still it’s utterly watchable, and completely enjoyable.

There are also some perfect lines – the opening scene is a classic, not to be revealed here. I would hate to be thought a spoiler but Nik Rabinowitz’s translation of two Yiddish words is a shining moment and must be shared.
“Naches (pride) is when your son is chosen as the Springbok hooker, rachmonis (shame) is when your daughter is”. And after watching the State of the Nation address this week and President Jacob Zuma with the “first wife” of many, I was reminded of Rabinowitz’s line that our president misunderstood the priest when he said “fo(u)r richer or fo(u)r poorer…”

Do yourself a favor and see it.

* Material opens on February 17. See more about the movie on Material’s Facebook page. There’s also a great review and interview piece by Khadija Patel, written for Daily Maverick “Riaad Moosa and his bright Material“.

Boloba Fashion Store, corner Jeppe and Von Brandis, JHB CBD by Kutlwano Moagi

Besides for being their to support a friend I share the photographer’s compulsion to bear witness to the moods of the city of Joburg. Moagi’s photographs are evocative, capturing the city’s streets, and the pull between its past, present and future as a “world-class African city”. Speaking at the opening, Mogotsi mentioned “African urbanism” and suggested that there is a question whether gentrification can be applied to these spaces.

Palisade fence surrounding the Joburg Art Gallery, Noord Street by Kutlwano Moagi

I agree with Mogotsi that “a lot gets lost in the formal reconstruction of the city. A lot of stories fall away”. But for me it’s a question not so much of gentrification but of the need for the city to make interventions that create a liveable city for all who call it home. This has been much on mind, seeing as how cities don’t by nature cater to the economically disadvantaged despite being a magnet for their aspirations. It was also on my mind as I drove across Queen Elizabeth bridge that evening en route to Arts on Main and watched as rats the size of rabbits crawled over a burnt out rubbish heap (and my skin) near Bree Street.

The Fifth Floor, JHB CBD by Kutlwano Moagi

The exhibition is all black and white photos of Joburg’s centre from interesting perspectives, behind unexpected fences and walls, with juxtapositions of buildings and people, and images and words all jostling for centre spot. Some upholstered taxi seating offers a view from inside a taxi as you watch a video of the city streets flashing by (filmed inside a taxi) and listen to the running  commentary of a Joburg minibus taxi driver. A “personal, and often aggressive engagement for those living and traveling informally in the city,” said Mogotsi.

The exhibition is on until the 26th of February. Take a seat. Enjoy the ride.

This year will be no different (talking pace here). I have been hearing some interesting plans for the city, talk of a Museum of African Design, whispers about another of African Art (housing an extensive private collection) and the one I am more familiar with, the Wits Art Museum. WAM is a 10-year work in progress that once completed will not only add another notch to Braamfontein’s visitor belt it will transform the art landscape of the city.

The view from inside Wits Art Museum

Sometime in November I had a chance to take a tour of the building on the corner of Jan Smuts Avenue and Jorrisen Street – an extraordinary piece of work.
It’s a block that I have a long acquaintance with – having spent three years traveling the unstable elevators to the Drama and Film Department back when television came with a test pattern. Then we would joke about it needing to be condemned or having been condemned. The reason for the jerky lifts was the grand pianos that were relocated by the music department or at least thats the way I remember it.

I also once went to a meeting at the then already-closed revolving restaurant that sits atop University Corner. There were other revolutions afoot and amid the furtive gatherings I recall one one in that spaceship which still had some groovy dust-covered 70s furniture, shaggy carpeting and other paraphernalia. We swore that we could feel the sway of the building from that height (but it may have been youthful enthusiasm or other influences).

Glimpses of Braamfontein's architectural history

Back to WAM. What was once the dark underbelly of the building filled with community dentists is now an utterly transformed cavernous space, it’s glass-fronted ground floor filled with natural light and giving no hint of the enormous climate-controlled display spaces that make up the largest part of the gallery. It’s lines are clean, and modern and thoroughly attractive and the transformed space will open onto the street, welcoming and encouraging visitors from the city. I took the tour with senior curator Julia Charlton who called it “a great place to view what’s going on in the city”.

Architecturally it expresses the best of the city’s new sensibility, a move away from bunker styles and guarded doorways. For the more factually inclined it has the biggest available standard lift in SA – we established it can fit a horse – plus I read that William Kentridge will be a patron (of “I am not me, the horse is not mine” fame) so it’s all starting to add up. The cost of building was around R40-million. (It started at R64-million but the project budget was trimmed to meet the size of donations). Julia said: “We had to make difficult decisions about what not to put in but the end result is better for it”.

It is an extraordinary space, made more so because it’s exterior gives only a little hint of what is inside.

The Museum will be a permanent home for a collection of African art (put together over 70 years) and consisting of more than 9000 works that have been languishing in storage at the university. There are hints of this in the studded navy tiles that ribbon the building (see the second photo) referencing Zulu beadwork. You can read more about the collections and to stay updated on progress you can join the WAM Facebook Group

And even in it’s barest form, it is inviting and made me feel huge city pride that we finally will have a modern space for art to rival the best. It is set to open in May.

We are on a shopping tour of the inner city with tour company Past Experiences. Our fearless leaders are Jo Buitendach and Tania Olsson and they can spot a bargain at 100 metres. “The best part of shopping in the city, “ says Tania “is that you are not in a mall”. Simple as that. “Plus you get all these smells and sounds in the city,” she says as we walk past a woman selling roasted mielies from the pavement.

This part of town is blanket city. Large fluffy ones from China, mostly with extravagant florals; shades of maroon the style de jour. There are also authentic Basotho blankets but we aren’t buying. Joburg is having a hot flush – a few days of temperatures speeding past 30 degrees – so we are mostly oblivious to the charms of the blanket shops and the sellers who beckon us. Outside the heat has not dampened the hustle and bustle of the city, although to be fair Joburg city can be more about bustle and lots hustlers. A shopkeeper warns us to hold on tightly to our cellphones.

Nanabhay’s store was started by her father. That was in 1974. It used to sell LPs, then CDs and today all that’s left of the music are a few tattered Elias Baloyi and The Mamba Queens record covers – Tsonga hits you can now download as ringtones.

Inside the African Music Store

The African Music Store isn’t the only game in town for these. They are popular items displayed in a number of windows. Customers come from as far away as Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique for them. Ironically we are a block away from what used to be the home of the bulls – the Johannesburg Stock Exchange – long fled from the city to the more rarefied streets of Sandton. Perhaps this answers why.

This part of the city has a distinct pulse, and lots and lots of goods. Looking for a dessicated baboon, some beads or birdseed, a pair of floral espadrilles or high-tops, leopard print vest (it has an equivalent in Zara except this version’s R35) or a six-tier wedding cake complete with a rondawel and elephant? Come right inside.

Anything you want, we got it!

Or maybe it’s a Chinese tea set or some Shangaan cloths or a flywhisk you’re after? (Who, after watching that BBC footage of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi being interviewed, flywhisk whishing and swishing across his shoulders during question time wouldn’t want one of those. I think it makes the perfect corporate Christmas gift).

Next door, Marak Wholesalers, open since 1964 (it’s gouged into the concrete floor) sells blankets and fabrics, bolts of cheerful Venda cloth with its trademark multi-colour stripes created at least a year before London stripy designer Paul Smith was born.

The fabrics used to be printed in Manchester – now they are mostly from India. Inside the store Martha Maluleke, resplendent in traditional dress, is browsing the Shangaan section. The shy shopkeeper tells me he remembers when there used to be a tram shed across the road, that’s before the Reserve Bank was built.

The fabric prices are low (some R20 or R30 a metre, others less). I often think the city has the last laugh on the suburbs, with its parallel economy. Cross Empire Road and head north to mall city where as one tourist recently told me “There’s nothing worth buying under R1000.” In town, tour guide Buitendach says, paying R15 for a pair of Polaroids (sunglasses) is robbery (“They are worth only R10”). The parallels don’t end there

At Mini Mark Wholesalers huge loudspeakers drown out the city sounds with a reading of the Koran.The clothes are cheap, cheerful and come in “china sizes” Little and littler. I fall for a R45 dress in bold African print. We are beckoned downstairs and find that below the ground floor is a department store and haberdashery that stretches almost a city block. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, we wander the aisles dazzled. It’s the same at Johannesburg Wholesalers near Commissioner Street – a dizzying selection of toys, fireworks, kitchen goods and party favours. We head for the Sui Hing Hong supermarket on Commissioner Street where owner Walter Pon welcomes us with aloe juice in every conceivable fruity flavour and takes us on a short tour of the street. He tells us his grandfather came to South Africa before the Boer War, and the store has been on the street since 1943. It’s stocked to the ceiling with wares – I fall for a beautiful and elegant tea caddy and make a note to return for some wonton wrappers and green tea-flavoured pumpkin seeds.

On Diagonal Street one block away we enter a parallel universe, the famous Museum of Man and Science, a muti emporium that has fascinated visitors since 1948. Inside an elderly Indian lady, who speaks fluent Zulu, declines to be interviewed. She is busy dispensing herbs to a man dressed in motorcycle leathers who tells me he has just lost his wife. The herbs are for cleansing, part of the death ritual. The last time I was in the store must have been sometime in the late 1980’s. I remember buying an amulet filled with herbs with protective powers – I also remembered the desiccated baboon hanging on the wall. If it’s the same one he’s still in pretty good shape. There’s a strong steamy-earth smell that seeps into your clothing from the hundreds of animal bones hanging from the ceiling. “it must be hell to do stock-taking here,” the photographer mutters.

Museum of Man and Science, Diagonal Street

We walk out, blinking, into the light. A few shops down a battered sign above a clothing shop reads “Non-White Shop: This notice is displayed in accordance with provisions of the shop hours ordinance, 1959”. It’s a startling little piece of history. Another parallel world. Along our route shops sell cloths emblazoned with leader’s faces. There’s the Swazi king next to the Mandela and Zuma cloths.

I ask whether the Mandela cloth is worth more but the shopkeeper says they are all R35 a piece. There is no Julius Malema cloth to be seen. My amulet must still be working.

*Past Experiences offers a variety of inner-city walking tours. past.experiences@hotmail.com. All photos are by Wesley Poon.