ROCKEY STREET RAMBLES
Firdose Moonda takes a stereotype-busting tour of Yeoville with some very proud locals
L EGEND has it refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and entire dining room suites have been hurled from heights at Ponte City, so it hardly seems worth mentioning the piece of pap that shared the same fate. It was plasticky yellow and stale, probably the reason it was discarded in the first place, and bounced off the paving in front of a makeshift nursery.
With concrete as the backdrop, baby spinach was sprouting from a baby bath, chives were growing out of an oil drum and lemon trees from two smaller ones. The plants were protected from flying food by a small overhanging roof and we were encouraged to either take refuge under it or move away from the base of the tower altogether. We chose the latter, mostly so we could stare up at the 54 floors that loomed over us.
The Taste of Yeoville began here, in the suburb’s heart, at the building we’ve all seen on the horizon but have been too wary to get close enough to touch. Our guides were two white men who lived inside.
Nickolaus Bauer and Michal Luptak, a journalist and chartered-accountantturned-full-time-NGO-worker, are neighbours on the 51st floor. They have been residents at Ponte City for just over a year and spend their weekends breaking stereotypes by showing people their ’hood.
The vegetable garden is a small example. It’s part of their community centre, Dlala Nje (“just play”), set up to give the almost 1 000 children living in Ponte City a space to call their own. The youngsters are not ready to roam the streets just yet but when they are, they will enter a world of colour, chaos and community that Bauer and Luptak believe deserves to be shown off.
From Ponte, they walk their guests across Joe Slovo Drive to the Yeoville heath, one of the highest points in Jo’burg, to soak in the sunset. From that vantage point, some of the city’s best known landmarks can be spotted. In the distance, the 1906 Fairview Fire Tower is visible. Closer to the hilltop is the Yeoville Water Tower, a steel structure built in 1913.
It is no longer in use but you would be forgiven for thinking the tower is an object of reverence. Multiple prayer groups point in its direction as they observe their daily rituals. But they’re only facing east. Clothed all in white and swathed in the sun’s last rays, they make an angelic picture until you cast your eyes down.
Pieces of broken glass litter the floor. Believers place a piece of paper scribbled with their heart’s desires into bottles and when they are ready to reveal their wishes to the gods, break the bottle on a rock.
When Bauer and Luptak first started doing Yeoville tours, they used to kick off with sundowners on the heath but soon felt alcohol showed disrespect to the devout people. Now, water is sipped instead and the history of the suburb is told in hushed tones so as not to intrude.
Just before the natural light disappears, the group is ushered along Percy Street to
admire Winchester Mansions. The Victorian apartment building is the grand old dame of a once-wealthy suburb and remains in pristine condition. Next to it is an abandoned construction site, a home to the desperate. The juxtaposition is a chilling reminder of how things changed in Johannesburg’s inner city.
Bauer and Luptak leave that thought hanging as they begin the trek to Rockey and Raleigh streets, winding through avenues dotted with Art-Deco buildings, large houses with big bay windows and 1980s blocks of flats. Many of them have fallen into disrepair but there are attempts being made to resurrect them.
What the area does not lack is life on the streets. People walk freely, as they do in major cities the world over, French and Portuguese mingle with Sotho and Zulu and as you approach the restaurant district, the energy is palpable.
Raleigh Street used to be a hipster hangout for an upper-class and the signs are still there. Cafe Joie has kept the chalkboard sign declaring it a “patisserie and coffee shoppe” but the only dark liquid they serve these days is Guinness. Across the road is the Kin Malebo village, a Congolese establishment and the first stop on the culinary journey.
Kin Malebo has an internet café, a concrete slab that serves as a slaughter house and a large, green room that serves as a restaurant and bar. The walls are adorned with pictures of Usher and R Kelly but the music is authentic. A catchy drum beat booms from the speakers, music made for the hip-shaking kwasakwasa dance, but there’s not much time to groove before the starters are served — grilled chicken gizzards and a vegetable curry in peanut sauce. Both are unusual but they have nothing on the starch. Matchboxed-sized balls of maize meal are packed into a sausage casing and boiled. The result is a rich, dense carbohydrate, ideal for dipping.
If you eat too much, you will walk it off on your way to the Yeoville Market. The city of Jo’burg oversees it, so taking photographs is not allowed even though it is a feast for the eyes. Alongside made-in-China clothes and shoes, fresh vegetables and small snacks are on sale. Some of them, like the dried blackfish and cassava, have come by road from Congo; a journey of three-and-a-half weeks. Bauer and Luptak do their grocery shopping there and see it as an important way to support local trade.
The market closes around 7.30pm, by which time dinner is being prepared at the Cameroonaise seafood restaurant, further down Rockey Street. From the outside, it looks dark, dingy, even slightly seedy but inside it buzzes. The patrons are mostly from the West African community who have made Yeoville home and they go there for the grilled tilapia.
Whole fish are prepared over hot coals and everyone gets their own, head and all, served with chips and a tangy side sauce. The meat is tender and tasty, despite the absence of any obvious seasoning apart from the generous onion topping. For dessert, there is plantain, fried and drowned in syrup.
Just after 9pm, Bauer and Luptak procure a taxi to ride the group back to Ponte City. The journey ends in the bowels of the building, which were once piled with so much rubbish it was declared a vertical urban slum. Now it is fully occupied and there is a waiting list of people who want to move in. That says a lot to those of us who go back to our suburban lives about the place Bauer and Luptak call home.