Lizeka Mda : City Limits
It’s no Swiss bank account, nor is it a safe full of jewels. But nevertheless, it is an inheritance. A spot under the Anderson Street overpass off the M2 freeway is Ntombeyiningi Zondi’s inheritance from her mother.
Every morning she leans a table against a freeway pillar and sets out her wares: kidneys, liver, brisket, heart, wors and binnegoed. Customers pick their favourite meat and Ningi grills it over the open fire, where a pot of phuthu and another kind of stiff pap are also cooked. When it is ready, the meat is served on a chopping board with tomato, green chillies and a plate of phuthu or pap.
It’s the last place one would expect to find an eatery, a la carte or otherwise. The freeway criss-crosses above. Splintered boxes that are used as firewood lie around and bits of paper and garbage wait for municipal workers to clean up. From across the street, Zulu music blasts through very powerful speakers placed at the door of the music store.
Ningi is perfectly at home in this little Zululand on the eastern fringes of Johannesburg. Zwangobani, her late mother, started grilling meat on this very spot 13 years ago. The spot is well placed, just outside the gates of KwaMayiMayi, with its men’s hostel and booths for a dry cleaner, a fast-food outlet, sangomas, fruit and vegetable stall, grocery store and Johannesburg’s city engineer.
It was the violence in KwaZulu-Natal that made Ningi join her mother in Johannesburg in 1994. Then, she hated the city so much she used to cry herself to sleep. Two years later, her mother went home to Msinga, to open a shop. Ningi stayed behind to run the business. Tragedy struck six months later in May 1997 when Zwangobani was killed by robbers in her spaza shop. Ningi, then 19, had to take over the financial responsibility of looking after her siblings.
There are five grill stands under the freeway. It’s a veritable carnivore’s paradise. By far the busiest one is Nelisiwe Maphumulo’s, a dozen or so metres away from Ningi’s. She is a generation older than Ningi, and she and her two assistants bustle about resplendent in traditional Zulu clothes.
Nelisiwe says she was the first to grill meat under the freeway six years ago. She was selling cushions outside the hostel when she saw the need for a grill.
Hearing this just vexes Ningi, who insists it was her mother who started, and who got so successful and so busy she was magnanimous enough to allow Nelisiwe to start her grill nearby. Before too long, Nelisiwe’s assistant had started her own grill a few metres away, and so on until the current situation where five of them have exactly the same business in very close proximity to each other.
Nelisiwe buys R600 worth of meat every morning and sells out every afternoon. Her selection has more binnegoed than anything else. Ningi, the next busiest, buys meat for R200, mostly brisket and liver. She, at least, operates in a semi-hygienic manner. Her meat is covered with a white lace cloth which is lifted only for customers to make their selection.
Both are cagey about profits. “It’s certainly better than slaving in a white woman’s kitchen,” is all Ningi will concede. From the business, Nelisiwe has managed to buy a car that operates as a metered taxi.
“Of course there is jealousy among us,” says Ningi, “but it is better to co- operate.” It is through this co-operation that they can set uniform prices — currently R2 for pap and R5 for any helping of meat — and certainly the reason why there won’t be a sixth grill.
It is not immediately apparent what makes customers choose one grill over the other because the modus operandi is the same. But each woman has her own special clientele, some of whom come from the farthest ends of the city.
Ningi gets a lot of business from people from the Msinga district, where she comes from, just as Nelisiwe’s “homeboys” from Ladysmith support her exclusively. Ningi’s boyfriend works at Gallo Records in Steeledale, and his workmates are Ningi’s customers.
Bhekisisa Nkosi, a professional, drives from Braamfontein at least twice a week to eat at Ningi’s. “I find the atmosphere very pleasant,” he says. “When you think that back where these people come from their villages are probably at war with each other, and yet everyone minds his own business, it’s a very liberated place.
“You just know the food is fresh, because it’s prepared right in front of you. It’s simple, tasty food and definitely value for money. A friend introduced me to this place a few years ago. I did try the others, but I’ve stuck to Ningi because I like the service here.”
Ningi’s assistants are Nomsa Mvelase, her best friend from when they were small, and Ningi’s 14-year-old sister, Zizwe. Ningi finds a lot of time to talk to her customers, many of whom are taxi owners and drivers.
She spends as much time giggling with these men through the windows of their combis as she sweats in the sweltering heat of the grill. Perhaps not surprisingly, both Ningi and Nomsa met their boyfriends — married men — at the grill.
An ancient Mercedes Benz sputters to a stop near Ningi’s spot, and out of it step two young black women and a white man of around 60. The woman who is fashionably dressed in skin-tight lime bell-bottoms is clearly with the man. She places their orders and walks back to the man, who is swaying to the music coming from across the street. She plays with a hair here and another there. These antics elicit amused chuckles all round, except for one customer who mutters into his wors: “Why do these children allow themselves to be exploited by old men?”
Ningi left school in standard four. She’s perfectly aware that Zizwe should be at school, but the younger sister has never liked it. “School made me dizzy,” says Zizwe, dishing up some pap.
“What was it that made you dizzy exactly? Sitting at a desk?”
The sarcasm is lost on Zizwe, who nods her head vigorously and says: “I would be sitting in class and my head would start going round and round. Sometimes I would feel dizzy just standing in the playground with other children.”
“Zizwe is pig-headed, just like Sindisiwe my twin,” shrugs Ningi. “I can see how she squashed the other babies in my mother’s stomach.”
Ningi and Sindisiwe are two of a set of quadruplets. That is how Ntombeyiningi got her name, which means “too many girls”. It was a home birth in rural Zululand and there were no incubators. Two babies died a few days later. Ningi thinks about those two sisters a lot these days, because she feels alone since her mother’s death. She was still very small when her father abandoned the family.
She went home for a week for New Year. “I could have gone for Christmas, but I have no love for my home now,” she says. “No one lives there, so it’s closed up. Why go there when there is no one to be excited by my arrival?”
Of necessity, home is a room she rents for R400 in a two-bedroom flat above the music store, which she shares with Nomsa and Zizwe. This room is where they retreat to on Saturday afternoons. There isn’t much social life to speak of. They are more likely to sit in the flat listening to Zulu music. Some weekends they may have some flavoured wine.
Sunday is washing day. It’s also the day for Ningi to cook a huge meal of samp, vegetables and chicken. “I do not like beef because I work with it for six days every week.”