17 Aandbloem Street interview transcripts

 
I - JEAN MEERAN, current tenant

I'm Jean Meeran and I live in this house, 17 Aandbloem Street in Vredehoek, a semi-detached house and I think it's a charming place. I used to live in Green Point, on the other side of the city. Then that place was to be sold and they didn't want to sell it to us for some reason, so we moved out. We looked for a place in papers and in agencies ­ this house we found in the paper. The trick is that you have to look on Saturdays, early in the morning when the paper first comes out while everybody else is sleeping and then you find the nice places. That's how we got this one. We phoned the the real estate woman and she was showing the house that Saturday morning, so we came here and we were the second people, I think. The people before us were not too sure if they wanted it then we came in and we saw this old white woman, the agent, and we thought "there are slim chances we're gonna get this place", because when it's us against white customers and a white agent, there's no way we're gonna win. So we said "we like it but how are we ever are gonna get this place ?". But for some reason, she was all friendly and nice about it; she said that the other people weren't sure, so we got it. She just wanted a deposit right away, that was her security I guess, and we happened to have the money.

We don't even know the neighbours, we don't see them ever... The people in the other part of this semi-detached house are very nice, they don't mind what we do, even when we're having parties and make a big noise.

The woman who live across the street, she complains all the time when we have parties. But at the same time, she seems to be intrigued with us; she comes and speaks and is very interested in how I'm doing and what's going on.

The homeless people, we get along with them. There's an old guy who sits on a wheelchair there. I think that he used to be an old prison gangster kind of style the other homeless people seem to congregate around him, he's like a don over there ... I like him, he doesn't bug me all the time. Even if he's crossing the road by himself, dragging the wheelchair along, and you come and ask him if he needs help, he goes "no", he wants to do it himself; I like his spirit.

And there's another guy who's totally addicted to methylated spirits, his whole face is burnt and finished off, his fingers are swollen and his skin is breaking open. He always comes to ask for money, but I don't want to give him money that he's going to spend on methylated spirits. But he somehow got under my skin and now I'm always giving him stuff. Some days I say "no, nothing today" and just close the door and some other days I talk to him and ask him how he landed in Cape Town, on the street and so on. So we have a strange relationship, a kind of schizophrenic relationship ­ from his point of view, because some days I'm nice and some days I'm bad.

And then, there're the flower sellers out there, I know them also... One day, I went off to my car but dropped my keys on the road and when I came back the flower seller, the young boy who's looking after the flowers, had picked them up. His boss had told him: "Give the keys to the Charra", which means to the Indian, but in a derogatory way. So I told him: "Thanks for the keys, but tell your boss to go fuck himself, because why is he calling me a Charra ? And what is a Charra ?". The boy said he didn't know. I told him: "It's the same as calling me a Kaffir ­ or Nigger, but the Indian form of it". And: "What's with your boss, is he White or what ?". He said: "No, he's Muslim". I said: "Well, I'm Muslim too, so why is he making these distinctions, I don't understand". So now, whenever I meet the flower seller, we don't even look at each other in the eyes, it's very uncomfortable.

And the flower seller before this, he went to join the Talibans, I think. Because his father was from Afghanistan and just before the war started, he said he had to go and protect his country. I never saw him again.

There's a homeless guy, I call him Marasta, which means Rastafarian, because that's how he calls me, because of my hair ... I think, even though I'm not a rasta at all ... Anyway, Marasta rocked up one day and said that he needed 20 Rands, that was one of the days when I was angry, because he was fucked out of his head, you could see he just had some methylated spirits. But he said that he had just been robbed of the 20 Rands that he needed to get back home. While he's talking to me, upcomes a younger guy walking up the stairs and holding a big metal pipe and creeping as if he was about to do something bad. And he starts beating Marasta up ... So I say: "What the hell are you guys doing, how can you do this on my balcony ?". But they were oblivious to me. Then they fell onto the sofa outside there, and next thing comes a scissors and Marasta stabbed the other guy in the thumb, blood was oozing everywhere ... But I didn't realize what was going on, I suddenly had blood all over my hands. When Riana, my girlfriend, called the police, these guys suddenly calmed down and said: "Sorry, sorry for the blood and whatever". And then came another homeless man, seventy years old and the young said, that this old guy was his father. So I asked him: "Is he your son ?" and he said that he didn't know him at all. Then Marasta said: "This guy is a crook", the guy said "Marasta is a crook"... so in the end I don't know ... I took the scissors and the metal pipe away and kept them here. But a few hours later, Marasta and the old guy came back and said that they wanted their weapons back, because they're going to be robbed otherwise. So I gave them back but I don't know if I did the right thing. It's not up to me, I suppose to take their things away ...

So yes, that's our community I guess ...

I wish I could buy the house. It was up for sale a few months ago but I just didn't have the money. The new owners bought it but asked us to stay on. Actually, it's a lesbian couple and I think that one woman is buying the house for her partner. They're living together at the moment but I think that they still want separate houses.


 
II ­ LINDSAY CLOWES, current co-owner

I bought a house, in Observatory, with a friend, about six years ago, and we co-own that house ... it's not somebody I have a relationship with, we're just friends... so we just bought the house and put students into it. Then, three years ago, some other friends who had heard about the first house told me that it was a good idea, wanted to do the same thing and asked me if I would be interested in buying half a house with them. I said yes. Then I had two half-houses, with students living in them.


Then, this year, the marriage of a very close friend fell apart, they divorced and she got some payment that she wanted to invest. She said "Why don't we buy a house ?". So she looked around for a house that she liked and that was Aandbloem Street. She and I half own the house each.
I like the house, its feel, its solidity. The walls are very very thick. I thought that it was very noisy when you're on the stoep but once you go inside, it is very quiet. I like the house, but she found it. She said: "Look, this is a really nice house, why don't we get this one ?"


 
III ­ LIN S., neighbour 1 Clive Street

I'm a 4th generation South African. My great-great-great grandfather came with Napoleon to St-Helena; they then came here and settled. But I was born in Ceylan. My mother met my father, she was English and when I was 14 I came to South Africa, that's just a very brief history. I was educated in England, I went to Oxford, I worked in London for years ... I bought this house in 1978, but I didn't live in it untill quite a lot later. It was a very poor neighbourhood ­ the house actually has cost me 15 000 Rands, which is nothing by today's standards. There were a lot of prostitutes living in this street, they sort of applied their trade with sailors from the docks. It was a poor area, it's still a mixture area, which I quite like about it, it has council houses around the corner. It was predominantly a Jewish area, all the sort of kantoors and the guys who played the violin in the city orchestra all used to live in Vredehoek. There was a joke that if there were Jews who hadn't made it, they'd live in Vredehoek.

I arrived here probably 1984-85 and then I went away again. You see, I was an African correspondent, so then I went to live in the Sudan for two years. It's been a place that I always come back to. And then the street got quite gentrified, all the little houses have been done up now, even mine, the last one ...

Well, I'm always anxious about the house across the street. It used to be a girl who lived there, a friend of mine, a very famous New York model called Alexa Singer. When I was in the Sudan, I had meningitis and I have a condition of my ears that I hear everything kind of double. So I'm terrified by noise, I'm actually phobic about noise. The first terrible awakening to Jean and his brother - Zenade, I think his name is - was when they had a party, I didn't even know that they were there. They got in ... how do you call it ? ... professional equipment ... a sound-system and they made that noise [boom boom boom] and I started crying, it hurt my ears so much. Then I called the police, they turned it down when the police came, but up again when the police left. Then I thought, I've got to meet them and talk to them about this. So my relationship with the house is slightly edgy, I would say.

Jean and Zenade have been very quiet to begin with, but every now and then they have a party. So I'm always thinking: "will they have a party tonight ?". And I look at them anxiously and I think they think that I'm too dreadful ... Because I also complain about the vagrants. You see, when you're very young, you have a different look on life in a way. The probably think that I'm a very nasty right-wing old ... actually I'm going to tell you a story: when I was a student, I lived next to an old woman, Miss Jiles, and I remember her so vividly. We got her the most terrible time. When we got there, she was hovering ­ just like me ­ she said: "You're not gonna make a noise, are you?". We said: "MAKE A NOISE ?!?". We partied night and day, I think. We did the most terrible things, people drove cars to the front door and, poor Miss Jiles, we never took notice of her, so I think it's karma return, actually ...

Their house is a kind of a non-house, but it is facing mine, even though its address is Aandbloem Street, and we should know each other more. I would like to know what they think of me. Maybe you tell them that and bring and show me.

You know, the real horror of Apartheid was that it lamped Indians ... My grand-mother was Indian, I've got Indian blood in me. Indians ­ who really are aristocrats ­ could have suffered quite badly ­ well, everybody suffered quite badly in these years. But Apartheid used to sometimes break the rules. People like Jean and his brother could have found places anywhere, they look like quite cool manoeuverists ... they might have eased themselves in, even in those days ...

I've often lived in council estates, where poor and rich live together, and this end of Vredehoek has that sort of feeling. But having said that, I'm very irritated with an old man in a wheelchair, I want to kill him ... I've found him a place to live, I've even paid for it but he would not go, he loves to live in the street. The law is now on his side, any vagrant is allowed to live in the street, it's in the Constitution. What we're dealing with in South Africa right now is a complete opposite of Apartheid. They've just changed it around and it's irritating to me sometimes. I don't know if you follow the local papers, there are all those stories about racism now, and it never stops because it's a way of getting at people constantly. It's really like Russia just after the Revolution. There's a kind of mass brain-washing that is going on, and it's quite an extraordinary thing. You can imagine, from Apartheid, where Blacks were not allowed in your sight, they now changed it to a system where Blacks are rulers and they can say what they want. So it's quite a fragile situation and I personally don't believe that they have changed their thinking at all. It's exactly the same as it always was. You feel these fractures every now and then ... like in this rugby thing, that's just one of many things. You can get at anyone by saying: "she made a racist remark" and immediately you are witch-hunted. Afrikaans boys at Stellenbosch University, who used to be the crown princes of Apartheid, now suddenly are the bottom of the pile and they also start doing peculiar things, like shooting at each other ... There are all those little bubbles of fractures around ...


 
IV ­ IAIN LOUW, architect and academic

The first room would quite often be the parlor. There weren't services, so the toilet must have been in the backyard; there probably would have been a courtyard at the back, with the services behind. The latrine would originally just be a bucket. And there would probably be a lane behind where people would clear the buckets. The sewage came much later.

There's also a gender issue, so women are in the back where the kitchen is and men are in the front. And there's a whole gradation about how far you could penetrate a house and have access to those practices and also to women ­ but it's less rigorous these days. That separation, you know, the veil ... the house starts to operate in that way.

So you can trace this parcel of land back to the Castle and to Holland, not literally but figurously. You can trace routes to this original Dutch settlement. I would be interesting to find a lineage, in the way that we have relations, and trace the building to a source.

This view that we look at now ­ if there had been a fabric opposite, it would be part of a neibourhood, but now it's on the edge, it's part of a much larger fabric of the city, it participates in a totally different order.

It would be interesting if this house could tell some stories ... Look at this terrazza here, somebody one day decided to make a terrazza; that's for me one of the strongest things that I've seen here. That's a very deliberate act and that's also where people meet, where public and private meet. That's quite a serious piece of work that's been made here ... This low wall has been introduced later. You can see that these would have been free-standing columns and then, of course, the latest addition was the noise !

If you've got business rights, it's brilliant ! It's located at the very entrance of the city, it's like going into Piazza del Popolo, there's this small piazza, people are selling flowers, it's easy to park and there's the freeway to get out. This has great business potential. I can imagine, if you came back in ten years, that this whole strip would have gone double-story or consolidated.

And that's what we're gonna get. There were the Dutch with the fort, then the farms for the free-burghers, then the British with the subdivisions ­ I'm really compressing history ... Now power has changed, there's another set of forces that has been released, therefore the fabric will change. You know, architecture or the space is just the physical manifestation of a set of power relations. Power has changed, so we need to see space change. But we don't see it happening where it should, in terms of what has been constructed by the Apartheid regime: poverty of the townships and separation, spaces between. We see it happening in the market. So if it changes, it will be for market terms, not for post-Apartheid terms ... even though they're intimately linked, of course ...



V ­ ALEX SMUTS & LORRAINE GRIESSEL, neighbours 15 Aandbloem Street

AS: We moved in on the 1st of October 1997. We bought the house in August and did a month or two of renovations before we moved in.

That house is always there, we know that it's on the other side of the wall but it doesn't affect us. We don't hear them, we see them outside ... We have very little contact with our neighbours I'm afraid. There have been some other people living here before them, but it was pretty much the same: we would see them and greet them but we were not friends with them at all.

The people who live here now like having parties ... It doesn't affect us, it's nice to see that they enjoy life. There are other neighbours who tried us to prevent them from having the parties but we don't mind. At 2 or 3 in the morning, you might hear a little bit of music, but that's as much as it gets.

LG : They've always had parties and things, they've always come to the door and said: "Listen, we're having a party, would you like to join us ?" or something like that. And that's it. Noise ? Not really. Their parties have been straight-forward parties ... I don't find that they're making a new sense of themselves. They're not over-friendly. You see, I have a problem: In the six years that we've been here, we don't actually know the neighbours. We'd see somebody and think "OK, that's the person who lives next door", and the next thing is that you see somebody else, totally different. What's happened here is a constant coming and going and identities were lost in the process. I don't know who was here and who wasn't here. There was a lady here as well, a young woman, now I don't see her anymore. So it's been a lot of changes, but nothing that I can recognize. The two brothers, one is a filmmaker ? Right ... that I heard from Lin S., across the road. And somebody else said that he was ­ really ­ a very nice man. And it's really a shame that we don't know our neighbours, because we need to know them, because it'd be good for all concerned. Especially with crime as it is in South Africa ...

AS : She was, at one stage, a top-model top international model, Alexa Singer ... In the 80's, the was on the cover of Vogue ... She was quite up, but she's changed a lot. I did recognize her but she doesn't look as glamorous as she did then.

LG : Alex actually recognized her. She was very-well known and very highly thought of. He recognized her but he thought that she had aged ...

AS : There's a whole activity in the front, here, people sitting on the street and so on. It can get annoying, they can make a racket, but generally, we're easy-going, we're not fazed by that.

LG : The man in the wheelchair, I spoke to him the other day and I've built up quite a hatred for this man. For the simple reason that he urinates, they drink spirits, they smoke dope ­ which is fine with me ­ and everything was just so dirty. I feel that I have compassion for him. Even though I dislike the man tremendously, for what he's doing, not for what the person is because I don't know him. Anyway, the other day, he was pushing his wheelchair and sort of sliding next to it. I was about to get in my car and got out and said: "Where would you like to go ?" And I pushed his wheelchair. So as I say, it's not the person, it's what's happening out here. I don't like it. There's always people surrounding him. And there's one white man you can see he's horrific. You see he's no good. I don't think that they do anything good for the old man. Anyway, the other morning I stopped and chatted to him and I said: "Can't I help you to get into a sheltered home ?". He said that the social workers had been there, that he was still waiting for his pension ­ he's 65-66 years of age. So I don't know where it starts and where it ends ... This is not the same guy called Ross, this is a Ross from Zimbabwe, he came and spoke to him. It was raining ! He spoke to this man and said: "Come, let me take you". It was raining !! He said "no", he preferred to be where he was.

The flower sellers ... it's lovely to see the flowers but ... again, I think there's quite a bit of a drugs ... I don't know ... I was standing on the stoep, a car comes by, the little seller, the little boy runs and there's an exchange ... So I think it's also a drug sort of thing. As for the old man, I feel sorry for him, but ...


 
VI ­ MICHAEL, "the man in the wheelchair"

You see, before the church, the City Church, it used to be the AGS, that was a shopping center there ... 1961, it was a shopping center here ...
That was a small gentu place [a brothel] there ... a dgikidgik place ... Number 17 ? You talk about number 17 ? ... Those times, it was a dgikidgik place ... There, number 17, I know it ...

Jean Meeran : And sailors used to come here ? [Michael can't hear] Matrosas ? Did they come from the docks ? [in Afrikaans]

Michael : Sailors ? Sailors ? Yes, they used to come up from the docks, from the docks and from District Six [in Afrikaans]

JM : So before I was living here, who was living here ?

M : Before you was not here, man.

JM : But before I came to stay, who lived in that house ?

M : But it was a fucking gentu place !

JM : Yes, but that was in the Sixties. I mean just before me, two years ago ...

M : I didn't know the names ...

Michael Blum : Do you know the woman who lives in the corner house ?

M : With her yellow car ?

MB : Yes.

M : I bet like a woman that!

MB : Because she told me ...

M : Hey, if I had a gun, I would kill her, assassinate her ... Every time, she wants to call police, police. She hates me. Why ? Because I'm Black. She told me one day "I hate the Black man". So I said "go" ... You see, I'm Black but my soul are white, and you are White, but your soul are black ... There, number 1, Clive Street. Her registration number is 922 972, her motor ... Don't tell me about her ... The police is tired now ...

MB : Does she really call the police ?

M : Yes, but when they come, they go "no, no" ... Because the pastor of the church gave me permission to sleep here, so now she can do nothing. Now she only greets me, and I also greet her. I don't greet her with my right hand, I greet her with my bad hand ... go and pass ... because my soul are white...


 
VII ­ ALEXA SINGER, former tenant

I arrived about five years ago, and I was there for about two years. I lived in the front room, my son lived in the room next door and the third room, I let out, occasionally, not all the time, to a couple of friends of mine. It was infested with cockroaches, I don't know if they're still there.

I also did the house quite a bit. I painted it, I made it look as good as it could look. It's quite a dark house, so it's quite limited. I also grew tired of living there, you know, it wasn't a house like living forever ...

It's not a bad space, I don't know what you think about it, but it's not the most positive space I've been in either, you know ... I think that either you like it or you don't. I liked it when I first got there, and now I live in a place that is much lighter and bigger, and I prefer it, you know...


 
VIII ­ HERMANUS DION, flower seller

I don't know the house ...


 
IX­ DICHARA PILLAY, former roommate & cousin of jean Meeran

We arrived here, we all moved in together, it was April 2001. There were four of us and it was exciting because we had just come from a two-bedroom flat, for four people, it was hectic; and now we each had our own little space. Then I moved out of here basically last year in March, March 2002
I love the house. You know, it was obviously advertised and we made an appointment to come and see it. There was this couple, just before us. It was hot that day, you know, February-March in Cape Town is so hot And here we are, three people of colour, and in front of us were two white people. The estate agent opens the door and says: "You two, come in first, the three of you wait outside". So we're staying on the balcony and the sun is beating down on us and we swear "Not a damn are we taking this house, even if we love it, we are not taking it" And then those two left and we got in and the three of us were 'Wow, we have to have this". Then we were desperate that we wouldn't get it, we were afraid, for days ... The day Jean said : "Listen, we got it, we're moving in", it was amazing because I love, love, love this house. The only thing that I didn't like was the cockroaches, there was a cockroach infestation that summer, that December 2001 summer and that to me was awful ...

My first memory ... I'm from Port Elizabeth, and I had to get all my furniture from PE, so my first memory was putting everything together and making it my own. But there's also been very wild times in this room ... This one time, we had a party ... My cousin and his then girlfriend had just been on a trip to Natal, and they cam back with two other cousins. The four of us were very close so, to celebrate, we throw this huge party ... At the time, I had a boyfriend; we had been together in PE and then, he came here, and then I came here ... destructive relationship, awful relationship ... A few months, or maybe about a month before we moved in here, I started seeing someone else, behind his back, almost ... So that night, we have this party here and this guy, that I was seeing, came and, somehow, we ended on this bed, in this room. Then my boyfriend and I had split up ­ temporarily; well, for me it was permanent ... So I wasn't expecting him to come to this party. So the party's rocking, and all of a sudden, I hear my cousin's very loud voice screaming "Kiroo! It's so good to meet you!" ­ obviously for my benefit, so that I would hear. I think "Oh! My god! Did you hear that ?" and he says "No". "Kiroo's here! He's now my boyfriend!" and he jumps up. He knows that Kiroo has a gun, so he freezes. You know how this house is. If someone walks out of this room, whoever's in the lounge will see. So we were stuck here. There were are. "God, today, we are dead, today, we die, goodbye to life" and all of a sudden, the door flies open and the light goes on ­ and I had my eyes closed cause I thought I was about to be shot - and there're five of our friends, these five gals ... They say to the guy ­ his name is David ­ "David, get out, now!". He says "No, I can't get out, he's gonna see me". He was frozen. So they had to grab him, on his top, and threw him out. I was thinking "What's going on ? Don't they know that he's going to see him ?" And the girls just told me "Just pull yourself together now, pull yourself together". So here I am. David ran out, I'm putting my shoes on and my boyfriend walks into the room and says "How come are you getting dressed now only ?". I realized that he didn't know and said "Oh, no, I just got really drunk and I fell asleep here and now I'm OK, so I'm getting dressed again". What happened was that when he came in, my cousin's loud voice raised everybody's attention to the fact that he was now here, some of the guys took him, arms around the shoulders, into the kitchen and said "right, my friend, what would you like to drink ?", distracting him, while those five gals came here and threw David out. It was amazing ... So David ran out, came back an hour or two later and there's actually footage of us in the kitchen. The camera focuses on one guy, the other guy and me biting my nails to the knuckles ... That same night, my boyfriend and I had another huge fight, because he couldn't stand the fact that I was having a good time; and he left, and I was back with David. It used to often happen. I would often be here with my boyfriend, like sitting in the lounge, David would be here as well because he and Jean are very good friends, then we wait for Kiroo to leave and I'd be on his lap ... But then we'd hear the car driving up and down the street because I knew the sound of his car, we had been together in PE for a long time ... and then my phone would ring. He'd say "What are you doing ?" and I'd say "I'm sleeping, in my bed, all alone " Those were the most amazing memories that I have. I was also very naughty There were many men that passed this room. But that's over now, I'm good now"...


 
X­ ZARIA DAGNALL, real estate agent

MB : Can you tell me how it happened when you gave this house to Jean and his brother ?

ZD : Ow ... because they answered one of my adverts and I thought that they seemed so super ! He and his girlfriend, who I think was a ballerina, I just thought that they were special people who'd really appreciate the house, for all its beauty, all its charm and its Victorian myth, shall we say ... With the bougainvilleas, and the thick walls ... I think that house has a lovely feel ... It's got lovely proportions, lovely high ceilings, and these wooden door frames ... Generally, you can sort of feel the history, there ...

I would say, real estate wise, it's two ways. It will one day probably be run as a business, because of its high-profile position on the highway, which would be nice because it would ensure that that it wouldn't be flattened or anything. Because it is so old, so that they could preserve it and enjoy it as a business and then it would have a new lease of life. Or, alternatively, someone might decide that they just want to live in that position, to be close to everything, because it's very quiet once you shut the front door ... So it's one of two ways ... But my personal instinct tells me, it might well, one day, be run as a business.

There were a couple of other people who also wanted it, but a lot of them had dogs or cats and I thought that Jean suited it the best.

MB : And the fact that they were Indians wasn't a problem in the neighbourhood, that's white in majority ?

ZG : I honestly can't see that apply, certainly not with any of the rentals I do. You know, I think the only criterion I would ever have in regard to neighbours or letting, is if they're good tenants or owners, if you know what I mean, if they're nice people to live next door to, that they don't dump their rubbish into my garden or something like that. I don't care what colour, what race, what creed, what they believe, don't believe, as long as they are thoughtful and pleasant people to live with or near.
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