In the 1960s, throughout the city, there was a funereal pall, coupled with a pervasive atmosphere of shame and sadness. There was anger and disappointment at being unfairly treated, humiliated, disrespected, betrayed. All wrapped in a mantle of anxiety, insecurity and tension.
The winds of change blowing through the African continent, that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan warned the South African government about in February 1960, were gathering momentum. But instead of bringing freedom to South Africans, the wind created disruption and chaos on an unprecedented scale. It would soon reach hurricane status. It lasted for decades, and to this day, the toll is still being counted on the violence-torn Cape Flats.
This is the story of what happened to my family and to me and to everyone we knew during those dark and tumultuous years when whole communities and entire ways of living were lost.
Jose and Minnie Antonio in 1903 with three-year-old Florie beside her mother and cousin Anne.
A young Joey on Chapman’s Peak.
Florentina Antonio in 1913 on her Confirmation day.
Grandma Florie gardening in Goedverwacht, 1962.
A pensive Grandpa Jack, 1950s.
Grandpa Jack, 1963.
A young William outside the wine farm, Vergelegen in Somerset West. Some of Sophie Visser McBain’s family worked and lived here.
Placing
IN THE BEGINNING, there was fertile land. Soon there was a house. A garden grew. And a family lived there whose certainties over time were buffeted by changes that nobody could have foreseen.
This family’s story began one morning in August 1920 when Joseph McBain from Albion Road, Rondebosch saw a property-for-sale advert in the Cape Times.
At 50-something Joe, as everyone called him, looked at his new-born grandson Joey and read him the advert. There were raised eyebrows, smirks and averted eyes from his wife Sophie – an Afrikaans-speaking coloured woman from the Visser family in Somerset West – his only son Jack and his nervous wreck of a niece Dolly. His twenty-year-old daughter-in-law Florie had eyes only for her Joey, resting in her arms.
‘What do you think, my boy?’ Joe asked baby Joey. ‘Must I take the savings and buy us some land, where you can run and play? And we can grow our own fruit and veg and have chickens and Muskovies and a dog. Just think of it, eh?’
Green-eyed Joey yawned. He was a baby on a mission to have some peace and quiet, but he took the time to give the tall talking shape a blessing of dribble.
With his grandson in mind, Joe walked into the Cape-to-Cairo Building in central Cape Town a few days later. Around him were a Chinese man, an Englishman, an Indian and several born-and-bred Capetonians, all wanting to have a look at the map of plots for sale in Lansdowne.
With his brutally forthright wife Sophie’s words still ringing in his ears, Joe eagerly scanned the map. ‘Is jy mal in jou kop, ou man?’ Sophie scolded, tapping her temple with a finger to show just how mad she thought her old man was. ‘We’re happy here in Rondebosch. Hoekom moet jy alles bederf?’
Joe chuckled. Sophie’s rages always spurred him on to strive harder to improve their living conditions – to do better and to be a worthier person.
Joe’s grandfather had been one of three brothers from Edinburgh, Scotland, who got off the boat in Table Bay Harbour some time in the 1820s. They settled down in Cape Town, started small businesses and eventually married local women. A fourth brother settled in Port Elizabeth.
At the estate agency in the Cape-to-Cairo Building, the English-man bought plots 11 and 13 Heatherley Road. An Indian man bought the plot on the corner of Lansdowne and Wurzberg Avenue. A Chinese started at Lansdowne Road and bought plots as far as number 8 Heatherley Road. On the Dale Street side of the block, his purchase stopped at number 3.
Joe chose numbers 10 and 12 Heatherley Road and numbers 5, 7 and 9 Dale Street. Altogether about 2 000 square metres. For a brief moment, he thought of buying the land as far as Searle Street, which ran alongside a small vlei. But the farmer whose land was being parcelled off for the newly rezoned residential area of Heatherley Estate still lived at his house at number 14. Joe wanted his plots to be all together.
Besides that, hastily made sums in his head revealed that bond payments would be far greater than the £1.10 he was able to afford a month. Better to be safe than sorry, he thought. In the building trade, where he was a bricklayer with a side-line cartage business, things could change in an instant. This made him reminisce about some of the buildings he’d worked on. Like the rugby stadium at Newlands – a grand project, something to be proud of, even if his favourite games had always been soccer and cricket.
His son Jack had his trade as a coachworks upholsterer, but who knew what the future held? Joe was optimistic but also cautious. There had been some harsh years.
There was the Great War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, which led directly to the deaths of nine million combatants and seven million civilians. Indirectly, World War I led to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 spread by soldiers returning after the war. An estimated 500 million people were infected globally. Joe McBain’s sister Laurie was one of 50 million people who died of the flu.
The loss of his dear youngest sister cut like a knife. He and Sophie undertook to look after her orphaned daughter Dolly, a rather frail girl who had just finished school and worked at a dressmaker’s boutique in Claremont.
Although Sophie was a hard nut to crack, she was praised by many for her generosity and willingness to take care of people, either providing food parcels or taking in waifs and strays. Joe’s brother gave Sophie a wide berth after he ended up on the wrong side of her for something quite small. At least his sister Maggie, who lived in a cottage beside the railway line in Wilderness Road, Claremont, still visited and so did his sister Annie.
When Joe’s son Jack married Florie in 1919, Joe could see his family expanding. Florie was a nice young woman with a family background that fascinated him: her father, José Antonio, hailed from Lisbon, Portugal.
In the 1890s, after a few rough months at sea, José and some of his shipmates jumped ship in Table Bay Harbour. The houses that were piled up on the lower slopes of the mountain reminded them a bit of home, and he decided to stay. José Antonio lived in the Loader Street area in Green Point, finding board with a local family, while his friends made their way to the fishermen’s community of Kalk Bay.
José befriended his neighbours, who were descended from Madagascan creoles who had somehow found their way on to a ship to Cape Town. He knew some French and they knew some Portuguese and they added in English bit by bit as their proficiency in the language grew. English, of course, was a necessity for life in Cape Town.
After several odd jobs, José eventually found work as a gardener at Sans Souci Estate in Newlands. He was then able to marry Minnie Du Plooy, the Madagascan neighbour’s sister, at St Mary’s Cathedral in Roeland Street, Cape Town1.
José attended mass at St Mary’s and belonged to the Knights of Da Gama Society, a Portuguese men’s church group. For church feast days he would dress up in his Sunday best and wear the Society’s sash and