With Eyes Wide Open

With your eyes wide open you will see !

 

Close to the Sisa Dukashe stadium in NU 1 is a grey concrete wall, fenced and spiked on top, serving as the ideal location for all sorts of advertisements. You can see this wall to your right when you drive down Shai road in direction to the high way.

The wall does not only display advertisements but also the handpainted pastel murals that you can see in the pictures. The colors are faded which makes them even more attractive giving them a small ressemblance with old fresco drawings in churches in Italy that have endured thousands of years. 

These African murals are very beautiful. Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder. But to me they are beautiful.

They seem to portray typical village scenes. Adolescent boys playing a board game while sharing a coke. The glass coke bottle is drawn in a naive but accurately charming way. You know immediately it's a glass coke bottle.

Other scenes show older men sitting in front of their houses, chatting, ( chatting like in the old days, namely face to face) and smoking a pipe. And I guess the scene on the right with the dog and the men in traditional clothing shows an initiation school.

Then there are women in front of houses attending to a garden and a farmer leaving with his donkey cart. It is probably not Mdantsane that is shown here. 

Who made them? Who is the artist? I don't know. Many advertisements in the township are signed by their creator but here I could not find a name or a phone number. The paint is washed off in many places but these murals are large and very impressive. You can just walk along them and move from one scene to the next.

I was busy studying them when these two ladies spotted me and developed a keen interest in my photographic ambitions. 

It has to be mentioned that they had already downed a considerbale amount of happy making spirit. So, it became nearly impossible to look for a name and instead I became the object of their undivided attention and had to take photos of them. Nope, not shown here ! They wouldn't like it ! Only the back.

But hey, it was Mandela Day and that is a true reason to celebrate.

Mdantsane Ghost Town

Mdantsane Resembles a Ghost Town and Still Lacks Amenities

For many Mdanstane residents, March 4 1990, remains one of the most memorable days in the history of this township, when the homeland of Ciskei under the leadership of Dr Lennox Sebe, fell into the hands of one of his senior soldiers, Brigadier Joshua Oupa Gqozo in a military coup. 

Mayhem erupted after the announcement of the coup, when residents destroyed everything that represented Sebe's regime, and thus leaving the township in ruins.

When you drive around Mdantsane you can not help but notice many dilapidated buildings, which are a strong reminder of this ugly past, when the township went up in smoke as offices and businesses alike were destroyed. 

Nofikle complex in NU 1 used to be a bottle store and a butchery with living quarters above

What was supposed to be a celebration of the end to an era - the apartheid homeland system under which Mdantsane fell, turned into chaos.

These were exciting times for South African politics, as Nelson Mandela had also just been released from prison less than a month to that day.

These eye-saw buildings are almost everywhere, bearing the scars of that fateful day as many of these buildings are still in the same state of that aftermath, derelict and casting a folorn picture of this once vibrant township with great potential. 

The Xoilisani butchery in the far left corner in NU 14 used to be a butchery but is now a Spaza shop run by Somalian Nationals 

  

Having mentioned that, however, there is a glimmer of hope as some of the buildings have since been renovated. The downside is the fact that the township still lacks basic amenities like cinemas, small business centres, old age homes, youth centres, swimming pools etc. 

Mushrooming around the township are instead church denominations, which seems to be invading almost every avaliable building as a result of breakaway fractions, branching out to different premises. 

The building used to be the Embo butchery but is now used by a church

 

Also spaza shops, mostly run by foreigners nationals like the Somalians are found everywhere.

Some however have seen the need to promote a healthy lifestyle in the township by turning some of these buildings into gymnasiums, which is also a positive way to develop the youth and keep them away from the streets.

This is a building in N U 11 which has been turned into a boxing academy and gym

Story and Pictures by Siyanda Nkonyeni

Ancient and Modern

We want to show you the little corners in Mdantsane as well, the small things that get overlooked either because one is so used to them or because they are simply to subtle to be noticed often.

The post office No 5219 in Mdantsane Hi-way NU 1 displays a very impressive full wall mosaic on the front. It is beautifully done and shows a potpourri of South African scenes. In the left corner in the front stands a Xhosa woman in her traditional attire with a baby on her back and she is busy smoking a pipe.
In the back you can see modern houses on a mountain slope. In the right hand front corner a girl in school uniform is looking through a miscroscope. A well groomed gentleman in his Sunday suit and a hat looks over her shoulder smiling, and in the center part of the mural you can see a couple, the woman carrying a parcel on her head while the man is walking behind her.

The mosaic represents so well what South-Africa stands for today. It is the old and the new, the young and the old, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor - and all standing so close to each other that they can feel each other's breath. Each one of these scenes you can and will encounter in your daily life.

And a couple of seconds later, while I was still studying the mural, one of the motifs of the mosaic repeats itself on the street, when a young woman with a child on her arm passes by.

It is the first time that I have looked intensely at this work of art because I was waiting for someone in front of the post-office. I have seen it several times but I have never looked at it this way. For the first time the artist has achieved with me what I suppose he wanted to achieve. I have studied it and started reflecting about it.

It is a really beautiful and deep piece of art and I promised myself that I would go back to find out who the artist is.

Motherhood

The best place in life that you can get for a couple of years is on your mother's back.

Time For Laughter

Portrait Of Strength And Humor

These portraits are symbolic for two of the inherent characteristics of African women

                 

strength and humor