Sing a song
Ruth Goodwin Cookson, opera singer
Now 91 – and still as glamorous as ever – former opera singer Ruth Goodwin Cookson grew up singing in the pews at church. ‘Ma and I would go to church, and she had such a beautiful singing voice; I always used to listen to her and copy.’ After attending Trafalgar High School in District Six, Ruth decided to study music, and approached the University of Stellenbosch. ‘They said, “We’re very sorry, but this university is for whites only.” I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘At school, most people talked only about politics, so there wasn’t much music. But as for me? I had to sing,’ she says. Ruth studied at the Conservatoire of Music and the University of Cape Town, and performed in public as often as she could. ‘I sang all over – at schools and weddings and burials – anywhere people could hear me.’ After a performance at Wynberg Town Hall, she was approached by the musical director of the EOAN Group. ‘One night, someone tapped me on the shoulder as I was walking out, and it was Dr Joseph Manca! He said, “You’re Ruth Goodwin! You sang beautifully! I’m from the EOAN Group. I want you to come and do Handel’s Messiah with us.”’ From that moment, Ruth was catapulted into stardom, making news headlines every time she performed.
‘We were a great success. I’m telling you, people went mad!’, Ruth says with a laugh. ‘The whole of the EOAN group was coloured and we all sang Italian operas. When we toured, people from all over South Africa came to listen to us. They never thought coloured people could sing operas – and in Italian!’ From the 1950s to the 1970s, Ruth performed in operas such as La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and, her favourite, Rigoletto.
Despite the joys of living her dream, Ruth was not exempt from the rules and prejudices of apartheid SA. ‘At the time, living here was terrible. We weren’t allowed to sing in the Nico Malan Theatre (now Artscape) because we weren’t white,’ Ruth explains. ‘That kind of stuff happened all the time… but the singing went on! We just didn’t want to stop.’
‘When we toured, people came from all over South Africa to listen to us. They never thought coloured people could sing operas - and in Italian!’
34
FAIRLADY / JULY 2020
‘When the news came, I was seven,’ says author Farieda Abrahams. ‘Because so many people couldn’t read and write in those days, they would bring the letters for my mom to read. She would read it aloud for them, saying, “District Six declared White” and they would cry. I thought, “Why is everyone crying? The government only wants to paint our houses white.”’
Originally, Farieda’s book My Lover, My Country was just an account of District Six: the culture, the lifestyle, and all the people she knew. But when a friend read through her first draft, she told Farieda, ‘You’re speaking about everyone else except yourself. What are you afraid of? There’s a part of you – the child – that is still hiding in District Six.’
‘This book taught me a lot,’ she says. By putting pen to paper, Farieda had to face her demons head-on: work through the trauma of being molested as a child, and heal the wounds of displacement. Farieda’s novel explores how her character, ‘Sarah’, went from a happy childhood in District Six, to traumatically discovering her womanhood and the rude awakening of restarting life in Hanover Park.
When Farieda and her family finally moved, she was 12. Still relatively young, she never fully understood what was happening around her. ‘The adults never spoke about what was really going on in front of the kids. I still believed we were going back once they’d finished painting the houses.’ After all, how could they stay? When they arrived, Hanover Park was ‘just sand, and sand, and sand’.
In her foreword, Farieda writes, ‘This story [is] for every heart still beating for District Six.’ But mainly, she didn’t want this history to be lost. ‘I wrote this because I don’t want the people of District Six to be forgotten. I want the youth to know what we went through. I never want them to take democracy for granted.’ My Lover, My Country is available on Amazon.
‘This story [is] for every heart still beating for District Six.’
‘Entertainment is in our blood. It was meant to be that we’re all in the arts.’
‘About a month before he died, there was a moment where we got a subtle nod of acknowledgement from our dad,’ says Jawaahier, the eldest. ‘We were in the car driving to PE and somewhere along the way, we lost radio signal. We were tired of listening to the same CDs, so Ashur had a guitar and we started singing. Dad was driving and praying, but we were all in the zone, feeling the music and coming up with harmonies. All of a sudden, Dad went very quiet. At the end of the song he looked at us and a single tear rolled down his cheek. He said, “I never thought the world was ready to hear my kids sing, until now.” ‘A month later, he was gone. He’d always tell us, “Onthou wie se kind jy is!” We honour who he was and what he’s given us. It’s helped us have a thick skin in an industry where we’ve heard more no’s than yeses,’ says Jawaahier. ‘My dad always emphasised knowing where you come from,’ says Fatiema. ‘It keeps us grounded. We come from such a strong heritage of not only happiness, but sadness and loss as well.’
Taliep grew up in District Six. ‘He always described it as a place of bliss, a place of community, where they didn’t see colour,’ says Jawaahier. ‘He never spoke about getting “kicked out” – he always masked it as “when we got moved”. I think my father never really explored the resentment, the anger, the grief and the great sense of loss with us. He always spoke about District Six with joy and happiness, especially when it came to his musicals.
‘District Six was not just about the area, it’s everything the community embodied. We come from a slave heritage, from shackles and chains. District Six was what it was because of the disenfranchised people who turned the area into a home and cared for everyone in it. We want to celebrate that.’