We Won’t Move: Moving On

On the 8th of November 2021, I met with my colleagues, friends, and family from the Sophiatown Arts Festival to find out that we will be occupying 23 Milner Avenue house in Sophiatown, for the whole month. A house we had named 39 Steps after a 1950’s shebeen in Sophiatown owned by Sis Fatty’s* which had 39 steps to its second floor. For over 10 years we have been working on projects surrounding the historical suburb, and initiating multiple social activation projects involving community organizations, members, and youth programs. 

I became the residency (writer) artist, and project manager after our last annual festival at the local park, pre the pandemic, in 2019. I was soon joined by Malcolm Jiyane, a multi-instrumentalist jazz musician and painter who had started a ___ art canvas at the residency depicting the forced removals of Sophiatown in the 50s. 

We had spent months of virtual zoom meetings and planning for this recent project titled Kofifi: Digital Archive. Our team consists of a web developer in Cape Town (Mr. Windsor Harper), an art curator/teacher and book publisher in Germany (Dir. Katharina Fink), a local tour guide in Sophiatown (Miss Mbali Zwane), and a dental practitioner and data curator (Dir. Yavini Naidoo). We had met for the first time at the 39 Steps where we started digging through the project archives looking back from the last 10 years as well as recent ones. We went through back and forth on our work in an analog format of printed transcripts, and media collages as well as academic research scholar’s materials.

Within a short space of time, we had attracted some attention to our space and a couple of children started looming around the house. That’s when we started an afterschool art recreational activity of drawings and pottering to keep them busy but only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We supplied them with stationery and used the outside wall to display the artworks that they’ve created.

We also started an introductory tagging workshop the following weekend with community members, and youth on the analog idea. We had a number of people in attendance where we curated the archives on themes of Community, Street, Home, and Dis-possession. People were given the chance to view and contribute tagging ideas on the selected materials we exhibited at 39 Steps, and share also their views of the project.

The following week we started on another phase of the project where we restaged iconic Sophiatown photos of the 1950s. One of them was of former Drum magazine’s photojournalist Jürgen Shuderberg’s* whereby 3 men sit playing a board game on a pavement, behind a graphitized wall with the words “We Won’t Move”

A saying that hymns in the songs about Sophiatown in Tsotsitaal “Ons Dak Nie, Ons Phola Hie”. A language that disrupted the Apartheid racial system of government’s stern grip on segregation policies. The language united the very people it wanted to divide, and it was not any written document or records of study but the areas deemed as Black Spots. Hence then areas had to be demolished, the people relocated, and the land renamed to wipe out any reminder of what was once was.

Tsotsitaal broke the rules of linguistics by mixing multiple African ethnic languages, English and Afrikaans from the diverse community of Johannesburg.

Hence the community had to be brought down and disseminated by relocating people according to ethnic and racial relations to the areas of Soweto, Westbury, and Lenasia. And to add insult to wound, the area was renamed Triomf, as in triumph over an enemy. An enemy that they could not understand, touch, or remove from people’s consciousness was worth mortifying in that sense. 

It is the people’s collective consciousness, experiences, and reflections that the Kofifi: Digital Archive is creating from the materials. Because we started off by meeting in the community to share experiences about our homes, within our dislocated identities, through the streets, past and present to imagine a future of Sophiatown.

It happened that after our beautiful restaging session, where we dressed up in styles of Kofifi, a neighbor started cussing in the streets. I was in the yard but could hear the noise out there had either something to do with us or the children that we had just sent home. I became sure when I heard some of them shouting back the same obscenities, with as much venom.

By the time I went out to investigate, I found a crowd of people looking at our Afrikaner neighbor in his golf T-shirt, rugby shorts, and flip flops standing with his wife outside their gate. It was my first time seeing him standing on his feet and not inside his classic sky blue ** car. The kids were pointing fingers at him and tension was increasing so my friends and I went over to hear what the neighbor had to say. I am sure our appearance had everything to do with it because before I knew it, the neighbor turned on me exactly raising his fists and asking if I wanted to take him on.

I sidestepped him between him and his short-built wife who helplessly held him back. I have no idea who’s the enemy, or the cause of the fight in the first place and my friends are now surrounding him, in the middle of the street. Half the block is standing in the parking lot and the children screaming at us to beat him up. He was still fuming and swearing a lot of racist and homophobic remarks that slowly I gathered what the hullabaloo was all about.

His wife explained that some of the kids were playing under the car which belonged to one of our friends visiting us in the house. I stood listening to the neighbor as he had calmed down realizing he’s outnumbered on just how he also has grandchildren. He was still sizing them up with the tip of fingers to his knee when one of our youth volunteers (William) little sister was now also involved in throwing back insults that I could not repeat. She appeared from the flats driveway walking towards us wearing a hoody followed by a gang of kids backing her up. When the neighbor reacted again and called out homophobic sneers at her, William went over to block her while I took the kids back.

Then the neighbor starts making reference to our wall imprint of “We Won’t Move” and calling us foreigners. We share the house with people from Malawi, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe when he said that, I knew this guy is too dumb. I won’t bleed in the streets for this, but my ink. My world went still for a moment as I thought back on how our earlier session of the restaging had impacted in a matter of hours of the installation. We always aimed to disrupt and invoke interest from people but not in the sense that they make it a scene like that, but rather talk about it over snacks and food. 

It was then that I thanked him for his observation regarding the kids and at some point thought of inviting him into 39 Steps to view our exhibition but thought otherwise. There were too many fires to take out. His face contorted a little and seemed lost for words for a moment that he began telling me again about his grandchildren. On my shoulder, my colleague Katharina was walking toward us, and the neighbor melted now when he saw this beautiful white woman walking straight over to the commotion.

I took the opportunity to put out another fire that was breaking out from the kids who were screaming “We will Moer you” at the neighbor. Another chance to listen to their side of the story also.

Apparently, they were retrieving a ball that had rolled under a car. Something I could instantly relate to when playing in the streets. I told the boys to go home because we don’t want to fight anyone and if none of them did, they won’t be allowed back to the art workshops. I came to an agreement with the kids but the neighbor restarted again when William’s sister had to walk back from the cul-de-sac on Tucker Street to the police flats.

We were now larger in numbers with people from the flats and neighbors surrounding the commotion that the two walked past the neighbor like he was not there. All of the team now was out in full colors and 50’s swag. Sophiatown was moved. The community was moving on and we left the neighbor him standing there alone making noise to himself by himself. When went back into 39 Steps, we realized that we had just experienced modern-day racism for us to simply let it slide like that. We relived the scene a number of times and debated on how to address this with people who were also not present and the answer always points us to one point. We won’t Move, but moving on.