#TheHerald180 | Carefree days growing up in South End

As a young teen, Ernest Moodley, who grew up in the old South End, remembers delivering The Herald on his route — that included up and down the steep Military Road.

“You had to have strong arms back then to throw The Herald into the properties,” he said with a chuckle.

Lifelong friends Valentine Brink, 81, and Moodley, 80 — among the founder members and trustees of the South End Museum — both grew up in Gardiner Street and got to know each other as children.

“We lived in the building that housed Hollywood Outfitters, which was where I was born — and which you can see in the mural in the South End Museum — in a flat above the store, said Brink, who is chair of the trust. 

For the children of old South End, it was a carefree time.

And there were more important things to worry about than laws about segregation.

“What brought us together was the football club, Blackpool AFC, which we both belonged to,” Moodley said.

“What kept us together in South End was the sport — everyone was involved in sport — and the churches.

“I was baptised in St Peter’s,” he said, referring to the Anglican church — vandalised over many years — which has now been restored as a landmark project of the Mandela Bay Development Agency.

It was, in every sense, a melting pot of cultures and faiths — be it coloured, black, white, Indian and Malay, from the Christian to Muslim, Hindu and Jewish faiths, and then also the large contingent of Italian, Greek and Chinese shopkeepers.

“There was so much harmony,” Brink said.

“Everyone knew each other.

“These days, people often don’t even know their own neighbours.

Moodley added: “I think the big word here is ‘respect’.

“And I so wish that in SA , we had much more of that. 

“The time we grew up was a time of apartheid, and yet we could all communicate with each other and we respected each other.

“It proved that in spite of government policy, people of all backgrounds and cultures can get on with each other.”

Arab countries had taken a stand when it came to the preservation of the Muslim mosques — the two which still stand at the site today — even going as far as taking the issue to the UN, Brink and Moodley said.

“In spite of apartheid, these were happy days for us,” Moodley said.

“People didn’t need any government policy [controlling them], we proved in South End that people can get along.”

Brink said there had been “gangs” — such as the “Black Shirts” — but these had been worlds apart from the sort of violence and bloodshed which permeates some of the gang-ridden sections of the northern areas today.

These groupings had been more along the lines of school gangs which gave young people a sense of belonging.

And sporting talent thrived in this community.

“There was football, cricket, rugby and softball — and there was fantastic talent coming out of that.”

Both Brink and Moodley recall the forced removals as being traumatic for the families involved. 

“Today some people don’t understand the hurt and suffering we experienced.”

South End was known for its home industry operations and what Moodley and Brink remember most vividly were the delicious samosas and koeksisters which they enjoyed as children.

One of the saddest things for these South End veterans is the loss of a visible childhood landscape.

“We don’t have an area where we can go to and say: ‘This is where I grew up’,” Moodley said.

“And that is so sad.

They recalled reading The Herald every day and Moodley clearly remembers his paper route.

“In the late 1950s there was a Mr Matthews, who was an agent for The Herald.

“We, as schoolboys, would go up to him at four o’clock in the morning.

“He stayed in Walmer and there were three or four of us who he would drive down Walmer Road [to Newspaper House].

“To save money on petrol he would switch off the engine and then he would freewheel down the road to The Herald office.

“And of course there were no brakes!” Moodley said, with a chuckle.

“In those years, The Herald was thick and you needed a strong arm to throw The Herald on to the balconies,” he said with a big grin.

“The Herald became part of us.

“And the Evening Post and the Weekend Post.

“We read them all the time.

“At high school, we were even instructed to read the leader page.

“We struggled, though, to get coverage of the affairs of South End,” Moodley said.

But then with the forced removals came full news coverage as homes were demolished by bulldozers.

In fact, the full-wall mural in the South End Museum depicting carefree children playing in the street was based on a newspaper photograph taken in the mid-1960s at the time the forced removals were announced and South End was declared a white area.

“And at that time there was lots of coverage in The Herald — especially letters, a stream of letters — that were both for and against what was happening.

“Many [white] Afrikaners wanted the area to be white, while the churches and the South End community wanted it to remain as it was,” Moodley said.

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