Control

The big day arrived with an annoying alarm clock bleep, way too early for any sane person to wake up on a Saturday. We rushed off to KwaThema, and got straight into finishing the last few outstanding projects before the start of the launch. Gareth and I hung the mattresses, we all placed the rubbish bins, the grass was glued, and the basins were filled with bottle tops. The African Incense was placed and paint spills were removed. Catherine’s husband Harry arrived to start pinning up photographs and hoards of children looked on with eager, gruelling anticipation in their eyes.

Dennis arrived with his learners from Sakhelwe Primary School, and some of our respective family members arrived. Linda was still painting our paired project sign, much to Ahaka and my dismay, and we made the final arrangements with the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers and their performance for our paired launch.

In no time, the incense was lit and smoke streamed from the building as it once did in 1976. This smoke was cleansing, halting the decay of the building, symbolising its renewal. Catherine was spontaneously drafted into the cleansing ceremony. The choir sang while the smoke burned. A far cry from the violent scenes of rampaging students and screaming residents described by those who witnessed it’s burning. The building has been spiritually healed, its dark, rubbish collecting bowls are now alive with the laughter of children, no person holds the key to this door, it is held open by the spirit of community. In this project we rejected the idea of initially investigating what select individuals wanted to do with the structure, moulding our brief around a person. Instead we made a decision that seeing as though no individual owns the building, no individual should. I think we have saved it; we have saved its history and preserved its message. A building always represents its owner, their strength, choices and history. We have denied the beer hall this burden, and allowed it to represent itself.

We left the beer hall and visited the Recycling Container project. Ahaka and I said a few words, and the Kwasa-Kwasa dancers turned our brief about a dance which involves the recycling of rubbish into a sexy recycling saunter. They oozed and folded their way around the refuse area, flicking and twisting glass and cans into the right bins. They were fantastic, and the crowd seemed to love it. I am very happy with the outcome of our paired project. We supplied a brief to the artists and they returned a sign, full of their own interpretations. I am amazed at how Ahaka studied waste and I studied containers and our result was a piece of mural art, whereas Tom studied mural art, and Robyn studied open spaces and they produced a pavement element. We are happy that Stan will be able to make more money off recycling glass, that the park will now be a cleaner place, and that we’ve been able to organise refuse bins for the area.

We then moved onto the Robyn and Tom’s fantastic concrete plinth, Gareth and Sifiso’s brilliant, bright blue poles and Catherine and Kasia’s beautifully paved, almost mosaic intervention. We had lunch and speeches at a really slick looking Chess Park. The board was really iconic, full of activity, well made and very good looking, with the sign, equally as sexy, bold and striking. A taxi took us back to the Beer Hall which was full to the brim with children. I was very excited to watch them use the building exactly how we envisioned. They sat on the slab to watch basketball, with their arms resting on the middle bar of the balustrade, exactly why we designed it that way. They were having a fantastic time. We handed out eats and Coke to the masses of children, in huge queues and general chaos. Gareth ran a very successful basketball tournament. We cut the music at 6pm, cleaned up, and sat down at Stan’s for a completely hysterical drink with the volunteers. Then it was goodbye.

What an incredible day, such an unbelievable project, such a successful result. Today the building belonged to the children of KwaThema, in the evening it was the youth’s. One volunteer never saw the end of the revelries. He was arrested for stealing beer crates and pulling out flowers. Here ownership was enforced over the building; we all felt it shiver as the police approached. Today resembled its demise, police arresting a youth for being a nuisance, as in 1976. They were asked to come out by those who seem to have assumed an authority over the building. Control is a dangerous drug. What honestly gives them the right? Their involvement in the project.