A draft from the past in Durban’s beerhall revival
Ghosts of rampaging shebeen queens haunt the city’s fun new precinct, writes Shelley Seid
AFTER a dry spell of 54 years, the city of Durban’s only remaining municipal beerhall is serving drinks again. In its present incarnation, though, they are more likely to be craft beers and cappuccinos, and the clientele a mix of academics, international architects and local trendies rather than labourers.
Municipal beerhalls hold an unhappy place in our history.
The beerhall riots that were led by women and which began in the shack settlement of Cato Manor and spread into the city and throughout the then Natal, were a culmination of decades of iniquitous control.
It started with the 1908 Native Beer Act that prevented anyone except the province’s municipalities from brewing beer. Home-brewed beer — traditionally made and sold by women and a source of essential income for scores of families — was illegal.
Men ( women were barred) spent much of their already paltry income at the growing network of beerhalls, a rich source of revenue for the local municipality. In fact, income from the beerhalls and the municipal hostels where African day labourers had to rent accommodation was enough to fund the provincial African Admin- istration and pay all costs relating to the African labourers who had permission to live in urban areas.
The situation came to a head in July 1959. Police raids in Cato Manor were on the increase — financially desperate women had continued to brew beer illicitly — and the threat of forced removals added to the anger.
A group of women that included the Cato Manor “shebeen queens” attacked the Cato Manor beerhall. The Federation of South African Women called for a boycott of municipal beerhalls. More than 1 000 angry women descended on the beerhalls in the city, beating men with sticks, overturning tables and spilling beer. Tales of women urinating or dipping their underwear in the beer still abound.
The demonstrations continued for weeks. Most of the beerhalls were temporarily closed and profits that year took a considerable knock. The following year, forced removals from Cato Manor began in earnest. The year after that, 1962, the Liquor Law Amendment Bill was introduced and Africans were allowed to buy alcohol wherever they wished.
The first of Durban’s beer- halls, in Victoria Street, no longer exists and nor does the one in Cato Manor. What remains is the beerhall in Prince Alfred Street, a colonial-style redbrick structure built in 1914.
It remained operational until 1968. Thereafter it was rented out to a variety of tenants, the last of whom, a panel beater, ended his lease in 1993. The city council was about to demolish the building when the Durban Art Gallery came to the rescue and claimed the site for storing and restoring its art works.
The idea of the Rivertown precinct was born. The eThek- wini municipality, local architects and property developers decided that Durban needed its own Maboneng, its own revival, a neighbourhood in which people could work, live and play.
The area, filled with rundown sheds and warehouses and once bereft of pedestrians, runs between the Durban International Convention Centre and the beachfront.
Every idea needs a catalyst. In the case of Rivertown, it was the 25th world congress of the International Union of Architects — an industry body representing 1.3 million architects in 124 countries — that was held in Durban this week. More than 4 500 delegates from 103 countries registered for it.
“They said: ‘We want a heritage street to work on,’ ” said Nina Saunders, programme manager for strategic architectural projects in Durban’s city architecture department. “They brought the enthusiasm and drive. They wanted a project for the purpose of the congress and we decided to open up the beerhall as a public space.”
It was renamed Rivertown Beerhall and has been used as a meeting space, an exhibition venue and a study centre during the conference.
Saunders said there were concerns that the significance of the venue would be lost — that people would be mindlessly “drinking beer at the beerhall”.
“We had to spell out that our intention was to subvert the past. We needed to be explicit. We want to open the beerhall as a public place of cohesion.”
Rodney Choromanski, the architect appointed by the city to work on the project, began with an analysis of the precinct.
“The beerhall was the most historical site in Rivertown,” he said, “but it has always been blocked off from the public. We have now made it a venue that is accessible to everyone.”
It is a welcoming space, quirky, interesting and intimate. The back wall displays enlarged photographs, ornately framed, of the early days of the beerhalls — the stark interiors, the crowds at lunchtime, the riots, the municipal police.
The four distinctive redbrick chimneys — this was once the kitchen — tower above what is now a courtyard.
“It used to be a walled environment,” said Choromanski. “Men came in and drank. The idea is to reverse that — to break open the walls and make the building transparent, link it to the street.”
It was always blocked off from the public. We have made it accessible to everyone
Leonard Rosenberg, co-ordinator of Durban University of Technology’s “Research of Curries and Surrounds” project, is holding an exhibition at the congress showcasing the shameful past of the former Durban City Council.
“I think it’s great that we don’t demolish, that we reuse, that we tell the story. It’s great that the beerhall now has more of a shebeen feel, but it is important that the story remains and that the space doesn’t just become fashionable,” Rosenberg said.