Apartheid’s grim hostels still home
Change is slow in coming to the single-sex hostels plagued by social and infrastructural problems
As you approach the back of the hostel building from Richard Baloyi Street (formerly Hofmeyer Street) in Alexandra, Johannesburg, you are ambushed by hundreds of corrugated shacks clinging on to each other.
Among them is a narrow “double up”, a short cut that goes all the way to Fourth Avenue. If you take this, you are met by the mammoth structure.
The left side of the building has a huge arched gate that resembles the entrance of an old medieval castle, the bottom of which is immersed in stagnant sewage that has soaked into the garbage.
The stench is nauseating but, if you look up, the windows above this mess are wide open and you can hear Rihanna’s sultry voice wafting out of one: “We’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky/ Shine bright like a diamond.”
A short ramp leads to the gate at the front of the building. Welcome to the Helen Joseph Women’s Hostel.
If you’re a woman entering the hostel, the two security guards — in their white shirts, maroon trousers with black trim and scuffed black school-style shoes — don’t give you a second glance but, if you’re a man, you’re asked a million questions — why you’re there, who are you there to see …
The hostel is a brick monolith built in the shape of a diamond, with eight blocks (A to G) that each have five floors. It was built by the apartheid government in 1972 as a way to control the movements of the black migrant labour force. Its architecture reminds you of a fortress.
The government decided to build 25 single-sex hostels in Alexandra, which would house 2500 workers each. In the end, only three were built: Helen Joseph Women’s Hostel, Madala Hostel (in 1971) and Nobuhle Hostel (in 1972).
Although the Helen Joseph Women’s Hostel is a very real legacy of apartheid, the past few years have introduced a change in the age of the women living there, with many younger women, born after the advent of democracy in 1994, making it their home.
When you enter the huge courtyard, you are met by the laughter of the many young women sitting on Black Label beer crates and plastic chairs, braiding each other’s hair. On dozens of washing lines hang skinny jeans, miniskirts, crop tops, summer dresses and torn jeans. Running between the clothes are little children playing a game of black mampatile (hide and seek).
Nokwanda Ndebele (19) has been living in the hostel with her sister since March 2017. She was born in KwaCeza village in KwaZulu-Natal, where she lived with her grandmother until she moved to Alex when she was two years old.
During apartheid, Alex was on the outskirts of several “white” areas and women (mostly domestic workers) were allowed to live in the hostel, from where they would commute to work and raise other people’s children while their own were back home being raised by grandmothers and other relatives.
This pattern is still familiar but more women are living with their children in the hostels, creating something of a family atmosphere.
“My mom lived in this hostel with three other women when I was young. When I moved to Jo’burg, I lived with her here in the hostel until I was six but then I moved to Germiston to go live with my dad. I did my matric last year [2016] and then came back to live here,” said Nokwanda.
When her mother lived in the hostel, she shared the room with three other women whom she didn’t know.
“You see those numbers painted on the wall? They were used to identify whose bed is where and each bed had a locker next to it for clothes and other stuff,” Nokwanda says as she points to a fading number painted on the wall above her bed.
“Each room also had a locker in the kitchen for storage of pots and other dishes. We still use that locker now.”
Two of the women Nokwanda’s mother lived with have moved out of the hostel and the third has died. Nokwanda’s mother also moved out to live in another part of Alex with her partner, and her daughters took over her room.
The hostel is home to more than 3000 women and children, and the hope is that it will be turned into family units instead of single-sex housing, as at Nobuhle Hostel.
Nokwanda claps and sits up on the couch. “Living with other young women is nice but there is also so much drama, let me tell you! There is competition among the girls here about what you wear, who you’re dating, what car the person you’re dating drives, what phone you have, your hairstyle. People even steal your clothes when they are on the washing line. Yho, there’s drama here.”
Nokwanda shares the room with her sister Wendy Ndebele (22), who also lived with their father in Germiston until she moved to the hostel in November 2016.
“I moved from Leondale to come live here with my mom when I fell pregnant. I was scared of my dad after falling pregnant so that’s why I came to stay here.”
Wendy is the more reserved of the two sisters but she gradually joins in the conversation and explains how the hostel works and describes the relationship between the older generation of women who have been in the hostel for a long time and the new generation of young women moving in.
She picks up her eight-month-old baby, Melokuhle, from the bed and adjusts some of her tiny ponytails that have come undone.
“We have what we call block ladies for each block of the hostel. This person’s responsibility is to discipline the people living on their block when they misbehave and, when you have any issues, then you go to her. The problem, though, is our block lady is old and mean, so she doesn’t care.
“She hardly attends meetings and doesn’t greet you when she sees you in the passage. She also doesn’t want children to play in the passages and kitchen. She kicks them out and tells them that they’re making a noise.”
Nokwanda, who has been playing with the piercing under her lip, adds: “Our block lady can’t even go to the floors upstairs because she’s old and can’t climb the stairs.
“There is tension between the older