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- 17 Aandbloem Street interview
transcripts
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- 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.
- ___