Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS
That Simone! She is a daredevil on wheels as she hurtles down the pavement along Clarendon Place on roller skates.
When her cousin Illone points out a gentle slope on the premises of the Hillbrow police station as being ideal for a slide, Simone launches herself with all the force of a bungee jump, totally unburdened by trepidation. It is Illone who gasps as Simone crash-lands against the stairs.
Never mind the big bad wolf, this child is going to do herself harm.
If there is a high wall, trust Simone to be the one to jump off it, says her father. It is this reckless nature which makes Simone’s parents, Russel and Rozanne Benjamin watch her even more closely than their other two children.
“This child is fearless,” says Russel, who has prohibited seven-year-old Simone from leaving the building the Benjamins live in, unless she is accompanied by her brother Renaldo, who is 10.
They are very aware that beyond the safety the Benjamins try to create in their home is that den of iniquity, Hillbrow.
Drugs, decadence, crime and violence are all associated with this part of the CBD. However, the Benjamin flat is at the quieter end of Pretoria Street, right on the border with Braamfontein and Parktown.
Even during the days when “decent people” made up the throngs that congregated in the streets of Hillbrow for its nightlife, the west side was removed from the revelling.
There are signs that the management of the building is trying everything to keep the tide at bay. To guard against overcrowding in the flats, visitors are not allowed in the building after 10pm, and during the day they have to produce identity documents.
These measures seem to be holding for the moment. There is none of the menace that hangs about the air in most buildings in Hillbrow.
Okay, only one of the two lifts works, but it’s relatively clean, and the children who live in the building have a big courtyard to play in. They are coloured and African, the only kinds of young families that live in Hillbrow these days.
Renaldo Benjamin is at the centre of things here. He appears to be a shy boy, yet he thrives in the company of his friends. When they play “follow the leader”, he is the natural choice for the role of leader. Even older children gravitate towards him.
He is a perfect foil for his best friend and next-door neighbour, Caldwin Jacobs, who gets into trouble with everyone. When Caldwin gets into a fight with Simone about who swore at whom and who called whose mother names, it’s “Nally” who breaks up the fight.
When playing in the courtyard no longer enthralls, the children move to the Benjamin home where they play games on the computer. But Ashwin le Kay, Illone’s three-year- old brother who is visiting from Kimberley, is inclined to monopolise the machine.
“Kyk auntie!” He shouts gleefully as he manages to bounce the ball on the screen successfully.
So what to do to pass the hours on this long vacation day? Next stop is the Pieter Roos Park. It is on the way there that Simone hurtles along, much more recklessly than her neighbour, 13-year-old Siphokazi Mosoeu, who is on rollerblades.
There are very busy streets between the flat and the park bordered by Empire Road, Queens Road, Victoria Avenue and St Andrews Road. Renaldo walks sedately, with two-year-old Paige’s hand held tightly in his.
Down Clarendon Place, past the recreation centre and the police station. Left on Sam Hancock Street, and hanging around the magistrate’s court entrance are three women who look like night street workers.
Caldwin dashes across the courtyard and swings open “his” garage door. “His” car is not parked there right this moment, but a whole lot of bureaucratic garbage is stored there.
Right on Queens and across Empire Road, and the motley crew arrives at the park. It is a relatively big park and the group disperses to the swings, the merry-go-round and the jungle gym.
The latter provides one set of make- shift goals for a group of young boys who are playing soccer. It’s a multilingual world here though English dominates.
The Benjamins came to Johannesburg from Kimberley in 1996, in search of greener pastures. Both parents found employment in Braamfontein, Russel as a scan operator for a production company, and Rozanna as a fieldworker for a project that builds low cost housing. Their jobs are within walking distance of their Hillbrow flat.
Renaldo and Simone are in grade five and grade two respectively at Parktown Public School just down the road on Empire. Paige is looked after by the domestic worker, Dora Mashumini, who moved with the Benjamins from Kimberley.
This year they were joined by Illone (15), who is in Grade 7 at Roseneath Primary School, a private school at the corner of Queens and Empire.
Life in Kimberley was nicer, say Renaldo and Simone, but not for the reasons one would expect.
“In Johannesburg people throw rubbish from those flats and it falls in our flat,” complains Simone.
“In Kimberley school was nicer,” says Renaldo, “because when the schools were about to close, we didn’t have to wear uniforms. Here we have to wear uniforms every day!”
There are no sports at their school. They look on in envy as Roseneath pupils get into “high jump and all kind of sports”.
In Kimberley, Simone swam at school and Renaldo was looking forward to playing soccer. He could have played rugby and cricket too, had he wished.
“There is a pool near Checkers where you have to pay 20c to swim,” says Simone, “but we have never been there.” Of course, that is on the murkier end of the street.
The fun times for the family are when they go to shopping malls like Eastgate or Southgate where the children can play games without the parents being worried about who else is playing with them.
Illone is enjoying Johannesburg because it’s not in the middle of nowhere like Kimberley. It’s a shorter distance to places like Durban where her mother’s family lives. “I get sick in the car,” she says.
Her problems, if any, come from the conflict between her teenage hormones and school rules. There are just too many unreasonable rules, she feels. Like no nail polish, no jewellery and maximum one earring per ear.
Once in a while, the seedier side of Hillbrow makes itself felt. One evening last month a man flew out of a ninth floor window.
Renaldo says he saw the accident. He understands that the man got into a fight with the friends he was visiting and they threw him to his death.
And one day, says Simone, they were chased by the street children who sniff glue. But maybe they were just pranking.
Later that afternoon, a friend calls to Simone from the courtyard below. She would like to borrow her roller skates.
Simone flings the skates at the friend from the third floor and they shatter.