World shift

After not much sleep we left Wits at about 7.15am. At site, Robyn and her volunteers were unpacking her street sign from its shuttering. We had a list of things that still needed to be done. Gareth put up the no-dumping signs and started on erecting the mattress springs, though Guy took over from him so that he could do the beercrate panels. Guy, Robyn and I intermittently cut up and stuck the fake grass under the swings. A little bit of last-minute painting was done. At about 10am people started arriving. We were delighted to see Lone and Melinda drive up and then our families started to appear. I fetched Thuli, our traditional healer, from the market along with her sister and daughter and installed them upstairs. The choir kids who had been knocking about under the beady eye of their choir mistress got into position and we began just before 11am. The burning of the imphepo required my reluctant participation. We were pleased, though, with the idea of cleansing and new beginnings that this ephemeral ritual symbolised and the gentle, poetic echoing of the smoke that must have risen from this structure 31 years ago. Our three brief welcomes from Kwelemthini, Abedniago and Mr Cindi worked well to give the proceedings a slightly formal edge (the idea had been to have more relaxed festivities in the afternoon but a more solemn feel in the morning). We had also hoped that representatives of each of the main stakeholder groups would take some kind of public ownership over the beerhall by speaking. I was glad we’d decided that none of us should speak as it might have come off as being self-indulgent and self-congratulatory and in many ways the success of the project is really out of our hands by this point. Tseleng, our MC, forgot to announce the good news that it was 99% certain that the council would put lighting in the beerhall. (A barrage of phonecalls to Warren Mathers over the course of the week had resulted in an answer that his department would definitely reconnect the power and that they were sure they could also cover the cost of the lighting, the price of which they were waiting to hear from the civils department.) Then began the procession past the paired projects to the chess park. At ours, we asked KIbas and his friends to say a few words as just before the crowd had arrived they’d been saying that this project should be replicated elsewhere in KwaThema and in other townships, but when it came their turn to speak, embarrassingly Kibas just thanked us for what we’d done. Kasia and I had done our best to improve a space, acknowledging and appreciating fragile local economies and methods – but I still felt that all of out attempts to think about alternative ways of making and improving spaces should be seen as interim ones only that must one day soon be addressed properly by the authorities and thus superceded. I believe there is a risk in idealising the largely non-material, spontaneous infrastructures of townships because this amounts to sanctioning lack and inadequate provision, notwithstanding the fact that these are often accompanied by richly creative survival strategies.
The chess park looked spectacular – and the contest was in full swing. It was at this point that I realised that Khula hadn’t been at our site at all in the morning (and he wasn’t to come back to it in the afternoon). The formal proceedings seemed to be weighted towards the site on which they happened, which was quite sad and the chess park’s builders got a mention for their superb work but our subcontractors didn’t. Back at the beerhall, the planned programme of performances was wrecked by Lunga’s faulty sound equipment – we had some music but none of the nine singers and dancers could perform. It was a perfect, windless day, the first we’d experienced in KwaThema, and so kite flying was eliminated, though a few boys did bravely try. The basketball was at least a success with the prizes going to the professionals, friends of the guys whom Lawrence and I had found on Thursday. The music and activity, and perhaps mainly the swings, attracted a huge number of children from the surrounding areas. I had envisaged that the launch would involve adults as well as children but very few attended, despite lots of promises – perhaps they were as intimidated by the children as we felt! We were inundated with delirious small beings running up and down the stairs, queuing for the swings, and generally having a marvelous time. They were quite scary when it came to the handing out of snacks and coke, but a couple of teenagers appeared from nowhere and fiercely kept them in line.
In the late afternoon light, the red coke crates glowed. It struck me that we might have succeeded at setting out a stepping stone towards a redefinition of this area. We had certainly captured people’s imaginations – by the end of the seven weeks, we were being stopped regularly by passers by to find out what was going on and to discuss possibilities for the beerhall’s future. Its value seems to have suddenly been recognised by residents. It felt as though the beerhall, once invisible, had taken on a symbolic charge (although the strikingly iconic building always had a great power) and I hoped, perhaps naively, that the boy’s power salute might speak to people of action and agency. The visual language we used in the end might be seen as a combination of local methods and materials with an urban, modern twist to illuminate a giant piece urban furniture. There was probably very little about our scheme that spoke to logic or functional need, despite what the Germans had said about the finiteness of our design and its relationship to high modernism – it combined a single practical element (the balustrade) with memory, whimsy, porosity. It allowed for contingency and change; it did not fix meaning.
The whole area was littered with cups and peanut packets by about 5pm and not many of the kids were interested in helping to clear up. Once Lunga switched off the music, though, and Thabang announced hometime for the children, there was a little more peace and the ANCYL guys started up the party again. After re-erecting the danger tape to protect the grass and generally tidying up, we retired to Stan’s for a much-needed drink and some left-over vet koek with the chess park guys. A congratulatory sms from Lone came as a nice surprise. After persuading the poets, Lawrence, Mpumi and Tseleng, to do their thing since they hadn’t had a chance earlier, we had a raucous time making up bad poetry together.As I write this, I feel as though my world has shifted, that things won’t be quite the same again. I have learned so much about so many things. New possibilities for practice have been opened up. I have become more enchanted than ever with the dynamics of group work. It will be strange not to spend every free second thinking about KwaThema.