Best-dressed-man and choral singing competitions bring a glimpse of glamour into the lives of Jeppe’s migrant workers, writes JUSTIN PEARCE
THE eastern end of Johannesburg’s central business district — the part between the escort agencies and the car-spares dealers — is not famous for its night life. Yet in the small hours of every Sunday morning, this area sees an event which is virtually unknown beyond the city’s migrant worker hostels — and which for the hostel dwellers is the only live entertainment they ever see.
The best-dressed-man competition and the choral singing competition move between a grimy Market Street warehouse, a venue in Goud Street, and Jeppe Hostel itself. The participants are Zulu-speaking migrant labourers from KwaZulu-Natal, for whom Saturday night is the one chance for glamour and competitiveness in a week of hard labour.
“I like the feeling of being clean and neat and showing off,” says factory worker Bertwell Mazibuko, who, at 25, is one of the youngest entrants in the best- dressed-man competition.
Tonight, the competition is in a dim, low-ceilinged room at the hostel. Residents and woman visitors pack the benches, chatting while the compere tries to call them to order by blowing shrilly on a Coke bottle.
One by one, the contestants take the stage, affecting a modelling-ramp strut or a Pink Pantherish stalk, removing their jackets with the panache of striptease artists. This kind of show needs music to flow it along; here there is no music, and the parade seems tentative as a result.
But showing off the clothes is what’s important. The basis of each man’s ensemble is a suit and tie, usually with a hat and waistcoat. To this are added cufflinks, rings, novelty brooches, two-tone shoes, baroque socks and the all-important labels, be they from Carducci or Germiston Tailors.
Such details count. Each contestant comes close enough for the judge to read the labels, to examine a brooch in the form of a zebra’s head and to observe that it matches the cufflinks.
Contestant number one takes pains to point out that everything matches: his hatband, his tie, his belt, his socks, the handkerchief in his top pocket are all in co-ordinating black and white stripes.
Contestant number two is more concerned with the lustre of the individual details: his round reflective blue sunglasses, the Carducci label sewn on to the outside of his sleeve, the large gold ring with a miniature watch set inside it — in addition to the large gold wristwatch worn by virtually all the contestants.
Number four wears a black velvet jacket, with a shiny gold shirt visible underneath and three enamel penguins walking across the lapel. His hatband and hanky are in matching gold, as is the pattern on his socks. He removes his jacket and finally his waistcoat to reveal the full gold radiance of his shirt displayed across his paunch.
The competitions have their origins in the singing and dancing contests which date to the early days of migrant labour on the Witwatersrand.
Hostel dwellers are a famously conservative bunch, maintaining their spiritual detachment from the city even though they may have lived there for 30 years. Insulated from the mainstream of urban society, the hostel dwellers have refined their forms of entertainment into something which bears little relation to any other form of contemporary popular culture, urban or rural.
The strutting and the exaggerated sense of style displayed by the best-dressed men recall nothing so much as a drag contest. The event also shares the self- conscious artifice of drag — the competitors are all people who are no more likely to wear suits every day of their lives than a drag queen is to become a flesh- and-blood woman.
This week’s winner is number four in the gold shirt, Edward Makhathini, who has been entering the competition for 18 years. A fitter by day, he boasts of having 70 suits stashed away in the dank rooms of the hostel. His idiosyncratic use of English describes the purpose of the competition as being “to keep a joy — only just to play”.