Jimmy Matyu About Town

Re-visiting the Korsten street of memories

THE other day I returned to Zosa Street in Korsten and nostalgic memories of some of my childhood days I spent there momentarily flashed back. I usually drive past this street on my way to and from Greenacres and never thought of stopping.

This other day, I visited the street to check the continued complaints about unhygienic conditions and dilapidated houses. I spotted one of the rundown houses which looked much the same as the one I stayed in and where my parents used a pressure stove to cook.

The house was one of those that were called “pitches” because they had a passage running alongside small rooms housing different families. There was not much privacy.

We would sit around the stove while listening to my late grandmother, Titi, telling stories. Storytelling was an art form my grandmother and my mother, Lizzie, both excelled at. I think I inherited the art of story telling from them.

Some of our favourite stories were about the wolf and the hyena or Jack and the beanstalk. Some were frightening, while others were either captivating or inspirational.

We eagerly looked forward to these storytelling sessions at sunset. Some times we would fall asleep while they were still telling us stories.

As urchins we played in Zosa Street and around a street lamp in the evening, wearing only shirts and no pants – and no shoes. We never thought this funny.

It was also during this time a relative, Rotsi, who came from Kirkwood or Addo, used to teach me to play inkinge, which is an indigenous or traditional mouth-bow type string instrument, made out of a reed and a string. This instrument also comes under various names in accordance with the tribes, some call it uhadi or umrhubhe.

He also taught me traditional dancing. As an urbanite I enjoyed these, but could never master them.

I was allergic to a police uniform and I would run home whenever a policeman appeared. There was one policeman, Sergeant Mkhutshulwa, I was so scared of that every time I got up to mischief, my parents threatened to call him to take me away.

We used to shop at a Chinese corner grocer and there were strange stories about Chinese people making the rounds at the time. We were warned there was a trap door at the entrance to the shop and those they did not like were swallowed up.

But I never heard of anyone disappearing. But to be on the safe side, as children we made sure we never went to the shop on our own.

The “China man’’ on the corner also operated fah-fee, the numbers game, and had his own runners. Punters either won or lost.

Korsten was a grey area and one of the first non-racial places where blacks and whites lived cheek-by-jowl without any inter-racial friction. Whites and coloureds were seen at traditional ceremonies, and it was common for neighbours to share a bowl of sugar or a cup of milk.

Mind you, just not far away there was Dassie Kraal, which was another multi-racial area with residents living in harmony.

During that period the wicked Immorality Act was unheard of, and people loved and lived together and children were born and thus families grew. I presume that was one of the reasons the powers of the day decided separation of races would end this friendship across the colour barrier and prevent any cross-pollination of the different races.

They also justified their evil way of thinking by insisting hygienic standards had to be maintained.

At times there were inter-tribal feuds between the upper and lower sections of Korsten. These would start at some customary African beer drinking ceremonies, after the men had more than enough to drink. They fought with sticks and the police would intervene.

That was a time blacks and whites used the same buses and I enjoyed the rides on the trams running in Main Street.

I presume that was one of the reasons the illegitimate powers of the day decided to separate races and end these close friendships.

We stayed in Zosa Street until we were among those families affected by the Grand Plan of the Smuts regime to resettle Africans in New Brighton on the pretext of an outbreak of a bubonic plague.

Our families, under the watchful eye of the police and army, were loaded with their belongings on army trucks and taken to New Brighton where there were two entrances into the township to enable police to mount roadblocks to check movements of the residents.

Walking in Zosa Street again was sort of a homecoming journey or taking a trip down memory lane, but in a small way. The inhabitants of the house I recognised must not nurse any fears of thinking I might apply for land restitution. Why disrupt a family for racial sins committed by General Jan Smuts and his henchmen.

I hope the present powers will help to revamp the area and improve the living conditions to make life for those living there better.

Sies, the bucket system stinks – the metro should do something about this ancient system.

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