Expo pics

Stoep Miesies

Yes its been a while.

I left teaching after almost twenty years, ten of which I spent at the same school where I worked my butt off, only to realize that I was stagnating, and the strain of pretending to be marginally interested in yet another meeting where I simply zoned out and the talking heads would disappear, while I dawdled around in my cluttered mind ,( trying to find some escape) was beginning to take its toll. After all, as an actress I only perform if you pay me.  It was easier than I thought.... I resigned and moved...and here it started... The year of the Big Test.

I applied for as many jobs as I could, found some, and then it would all disappear again.

And then the Land Expo happened and things were looking up, finally!

I played the Miesies on the stoep of her house in Triomf, a white suburb that was created on the ruins of Sophia town.

This Miesies spent her days crocheting on her stoep  and interacting with large groups of people that came to see and experience this amazing exhibition of our troubled past. My biggest regret is that I couldn't play the Shebeen Queen, jiving away with the talented dancers. ( The white thing becomes tedious at times*)

Many wonderful moments, many excruciatingly sad moments.... The old lady who looked at me in horror, with tears streaming down her face...she lived in Sophia Town and was evicted from the house that her husband built. She was confused and believed that she was back there and that  I took her house.

The Old Age Homes that visited... many old people that immediately went into subservient mode when they saw me sitting there. To them it was what they were brought up to believe and they would never make the shift in their psyches, it was to late.

The young people that glared and hated, the guy that spat on me...

The blankets I created while sitting there caused a stir and people wanted to buy it. Some people asked if they could crochet a bit as they were missing their grandmothers who used to do this. A few men wanted to show me how they could crochet as well.

One Gogo walked past and said: ' Ooo the Miesies must crochet for the stressa!'

The Miesies engaged with many people who wanted to play the 'Miesies and the Maid/Gardener Game' They were remembering the  bad old days....give job Miesies, food Miesies, old clothes Miesies, a place to stay Miesies.... My pass is in order Miesies.

The audience carried Pass Books as of old. This Draconian Law was a shock to the many young people that visited the Expo. Some of the older audience members either laughed and played along or reacted strongly against it. Nightmares re-visited.

I admit that I also flirted with some really hot job seekers and promised a piece job or posed with various  customers who wanted to defy the Immorality Act.

The 'Whites Only' bench from the Archives created a huge amount of discourse...

Girls with booties and weaves draping themselves over the Bedford with the dispossessed looking on. 

I was attacked by journalists and interrogated about my heartlessness in the face of the evictions of the time. As I pointed out to a rather virulent journo from America, I was simply an actress sitting there and represented a white lady in her new house in Triomf, and how very blessed he must feel that he came from a country like America, where discrimination and slavery didn't exist...(sorry Mr Martin Luther King) AGH!!

The exhibition was enormous and powerful, and yet some of it left me angry and saddened.

During the Apartheid Years, many people of all colours and cultures, were united against this evil enemy, yet the whites were not represented in the Exhibition. 

My friend, whose daughter used to hide under the bed when there was a knock at the door because her Dad was black and Mommy was white?

Smuggling in my friend for a visit, him pretending to make a delivery, complete with a box in his hand, before the neighbours called the police. As it is my Father was informed of his wayward daughter and warned that he might lose his job if I continue to see this undesirable person. It was very difficult to reconcile a life at a multi-cultural  University with the stark reality of the Apartheid Laws out there.

One lady was utterly distraught about the fact that there were no record of any white people during the Struggle.. She had a white lover during those times, and they were caught under the Immorality Act. He was arrested and she never saw him again. She never married and she was still crying about him. What happened to him? He was the love of her life and he was presumably tortured and killed. She has lived with this for 40 years.

 The fact that I met and spoke with Don Materra was one of the highlights of my life. He is just simply awesome and inspiring.

Watching the video footage of people being displaced , packed up like their furniture in the Bedfords. Lines of Bedfords transporting their grim cargo in the dismal, sad rain of Cape Town.  District Six residents clinging to family and friends with Police guarding  and escorting them to God knows where.

Children taking sweets from a young white guy sitting on top of a Kasper. The confusion on his face and the trust in theirs.... White boys had to go to the army. It was the Law. If they defied it they went to jail. Remember the End Conscription Campaign?

 An old man and his wife holding on to each other, preparing to leave. He's holding her handbag and she is clutching an umbrella that she is to numb to open, the utter devastation on her lined face still haunts me.

Women digging pit latrines in KZN with dust swirling around them on a God forsaken piece of barren land.
 A little boy holding his puppy and staring at the camera.


People setting fire to their homes before they leave.

A thin woman rummaging through the rubble that was her home before the bulldozers destroyed her life, while some official moegoe smirks and points at her.

A beautiful man with long fingers smoking his pipe, clutching his panga..

People running  around throwing stones at the Army, destroying schools, protesting against 'Bantu Education'

On the set of  my stoep , I was flanked by a huge picture of a woman in 1978, watering her garden in Triomf.  Everybody thought it was me on the picture. She was also blond.... 'Do all white people look the same?' Apparently we do, as one woman pointed out to me. 'You all look and are the same'

I had many hours to observe and ponder and I still wonder about the lady in the picture. Is she still alive? Does she know that her smiling face was being used as an example? Was she aware of Sophiatown and the anguish Triomf caused to many? Did she care?

A father and his children passed by and he pointed at me and said: 'See that woman?  That is what they are like, look at her nice house.' The kids stared at me and he shook his head and made them stand next to me with their arms around me...... May I point out that the nice house consisted of a minuscule patch of grass, an old tricycle, a hose pipe, two lawn chairs and an umbrella. Hardly the lap of luxury and yet...

The most virulent attacks came from white English people that honestly believe that only Afrikaans people were racist.  I didn't feel like rehashing the Anglo Boer War, but let it be noted that thousands of black mothers and children died in the Concentration camps.....while the war raged on, people fighting over what was not theirs to begin with.

The sound of the Expo was at times explosive, traditional music, poets, bus loads of people arriving generating immense energy, and I sat in the middle of it all, listening and watching the Shabeen dancers jiving away. It was wonderful to see the older people's faces light up at the sound of Mathlatini and the Mohatella Queens and the African Jazz Pioneers.  One old lady visited with me on my stoep the entire day and insisted that we go dancing at the Shabeen. Yes, the Miesies can gooi!

Stoep Miesies is evolving into a One Woman Show as the Expo was cancelled due to budget constraints.

We are not done yet.

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