The writing is on the walls in
Take a deep dive into Johannesburg’s graffiti scene, which, love it or hate it, is flourishing
The Johannesburg inner city is an untamed beast; tough and unforgiving. Beginning as a boom town, it’s never quite grown out of its wild ways. For those who know and understand it — as much as you ever can — this elusive space is also energising and pulsating. Its beat hammers in your chest as you immerse yourself in the smell of exhaust fumes and mielies cooking on a brazier as taxis hoot and speed through the streets.
And on the walls of the city, graffiti. Layer upon busy layer of text fight for space. Letters chase each other over the abandoned warehouses of Newtown and the spaza shops of Jeppe.
This isn’t legal murals or public art, located in gentrified parts of the city and funded by urban art programmes. It’s also not street art, an art form that has grown exponentially in popularity over the past decade or so, due in part to global art megastars such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey. And, although street art can be illegal, its mainstream appeal and beauty means it’s often sanctioned or commissioned by property developers, to “improve” an area and encourage investment.
No, graffiti is stuff you either love or you hate, often the latter, and mostly illegal. It’s vandalism, whichever way you look at it. Despite many a suburban rumour, though, it doesn’t mean your house has been marked for robbery, and it’s probably not gang related — at least not in most of Joburg.
Graffiti isn’t new; humans have always had an innate need to leave their mark. Whether on a cave wall thousands of years ago or in Pompeii before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, where one (hopefully) satisfied resident wrote on a wall, “I screwed the barmaid.”
But today, graffiti on the streets of cities around the world, including Joburg, is a subculture with its own history, rubrics and beliefs.
Born in New York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s, the economically tough and socially turbulent 1970s saw the graffiti culture explode. Early graffiti writers began leaving their tags (or signature) with a marker or spray can. Hesitant to scrawl their own name for fear of getting caught, they would use an alias to create citywide infamy.
In 1971, The New York Times published an article headlined “Taki 183 spawns pen pals”. It focused on Taki 183, a writer who would tag his name around the city, and on the subway, while working as a messenger.
After the article, New Yorkers began to take notice of this trend, as did many new graffiti writers who were inspired to get their name up all over the city.
From a speedily scrawled tag, the “throw-up” evolved. This was quickly executed bubble letters, also usually the writer’s name. And, finally, the masterpiece or piece, the large, labour-intensive, colourful works that feature words and/or characters, shifting from mere graffiti writing to artistry.
As anarchistic as it might seem to those on the outside, the graffiti world has hierarchy and its own language. There is order within the disorder. Skill and respect can garner you the title “king”, while a novice or incompetent writer is a “toy”.
Spend any time in the graffiti realm and you will hear jargon like “bombing”, “wildstyle” and “crew” thrown around.
Crucially, as this movement was finding its feet and growing, so were other youth and street cultures such as hip-hop and skateboarding. Side by side on the tough streets of the Big Apple, they gave inner-city youth an identity, a family — and notoriety.
Getting up in Egoli
Graffiti came to Johannesburg relatively late, due in part to apartheid and South Africa’s isolation from the rest of the world. But when it did, the internet was on the very near horizon and hip-hop and skateboarding were developing. Apartheid was ending and, crucially, the Johannesburg inner city had started to degenerate. The flux of inhabitants, a lack of urban management and general lawlessness left a gap for graffiti to arrive and bloom.
Joburg is the perfect canvas for graffiti. Names like Fuse, Bias and Metafour litter pillars and bridges, vying for place against Chowmein’s iconic noodle box.
Who hasn’t seen the king of tagging, Tapz’s work? Having sent many a property owner into a rage, Tapz has even inspired radio shows with listeners phoning in to guess who the person behind the moniker is. “I know him well, he’s a DJ in Alex,” or “It has to be a group, there is no way one person could be everywhere,” they argue.
This is a world within a world, and it has its own stars.
One of these luminaries is graffiti writer Toad. Formally known as “Empty”, he started painting in 2004. Growing up around skateboarding culture, he was always interested in graffiti but he says: “What really got me into it was commuting in high school, especially on trains and see
This isn’t legal murals or public art, located in gentrified parts of the city and funded by urban art programmes. It’s also not street art
ing all the amazing graffiti that was on them, and I knew right away I wanted to do that.”
Internationally, and in South Africa, you are likely to find graffiti on trains, because if it’s all about getting your name up, painting something that moves around the city and is visible to people makes sense.
Toad is unapologetic about the graffiti movement: “I do the illegal stuff, like the tags and throw-ups, because it’s the essence. It’s what we call graffiti; it’s not street art.
“I don’t have a problem with street art”, he adds. “For me it’s just the honesty of it, we wouldn’t have the big colourful pieces, or the big commissions artists are getting today, if there weren’t the crawling steps, the foundation stones.
“A tag is your identity, it’s your logo,” he goes on to say.
“I’m sorry to speak about products but a tag is like a stripe on Adidas or the swish on the Nike. It’s very important, this is what you are going to be remembered for, for the rest of your life. Tags can last decades.”
As he says with a laugh, “I still come across tags that I did and I can’t even remember being there. I think, ‘When did I walk here?’”
Toad is resolute about graffiti’s importance in his life.
“I don’t think I would be the person I am today without it. It’s part
of my identity, it’s part of who I am. Wherever I’m at, it’s because of graffiti. It pointed me in the direction of
my career path, which is design and advertising.”
He also says the people he calls
friends, or even family, are graffiti artists or within the culture in one way or another.
Toad’s perspective on where he tags is also illuminating.
“I choose not to paint in the suburbs, unless I am doing something really nice,” he says. “It just doesn’t go hand in hand. Maybe that’s when street art comes in. Bombing (painting as many surfaces as possible in an area with tags or throwups) in the suburbs is strange for me. It makes better sense painting the CBD, the township and the outskirts. The suburbs look ridiculous to me.”
He realises he might not always feel this way about the subculture.
“I may be 50 years old one day and hate it. But I’m never going to stop kids doing it. It’s a natural instinct.”
It’s difficult to justify graffiti, because while some might enjoy a beautiful, colourful piece of street art, they are less likely to enjoy a wall of tags and throw-ups. But, as Toad says, “If you’re a person who knows the city or works in it, you will know there is a lot of hopelessness. It looks grey and grim and there is crime and litter everywhere.
“But graffiti is like flowers that flourish in this harsh place.”
Plus, it must have something to it — after all, 50 years on, a movement started by kids with a pen is still inked across the world.
And, as Toad puts it, “graffiti in Johannesburg is thriving”.