Charlene Smith
Time was when the weekend sun burned freckles on the backs and faces of a myriad of flea market shoppers and sellers; when shoppers would endure being jostled by thousands of others; when Zulu dancers or ageing jazz buskers would compete for coins; and W est African museums would be looted for African artefacts to clog South African markets.
The first, and for a long time the best, in Johannesburg was the flea market at Michael Mount Waldorf School in Bryanston which sold beautiful handmade and organically grown goods. Over the years it became too commercialised, the goods trite and repetiti ve. It lost what attracted all to every flea market in the beginning: the touch of something original.
The flea market at the Market Theatre was for a long time the place for the trendiest clothes, most off-beat clientele, way-out jewellery, best CDs and fantastic African arts and artefacts. But it exercised no quality control and soon ordinary folk were selling their jumble alongside mounds of cheap Asian kitsch.
A recent visit to the Market flea market on a perfect summer’s day saw desperate sellers pursuing clients who briefly paused to look at bad fakes of African artefacts and cheap Eastern plastics and porcelains.
Market officials were having a loud argument with stallholders who were refusing to pay for stalls in a trading area that has shrunk to less than a third of its heyday size.
Parking was no problem. There were no shoppers, the person attracting the most interest a magician who turned torn newspaper into crisps in the hat of an astonished schoolgirl.
At Bruma Lake flea market, which was so crowded in the old days that the volume and pressure of crowds was enough to carry you along, the most trade was happening around fast-food outlets and even that was lacklustre. The smell of sick animals wafted fro m a pet stall.
“Artworks” of astonishing gaudiness, with jagged frames painted in layers of blues, pinks and purples, had half-price stickers on them.
People dressed in cheap cottons and stretch fabrics shopped for more cheap cottons and stretch fabrics, most with slogans and bastardisations of designer brand names plastered across them.
The crowds of yesteryear have been replaced by bored afternoon strollers who had given up on television sport.
The Rosebank Mall flea market was the upmarket answer to the dross at other markets. Savvy shoppers would dash to the market early on a Sunday to avoid queues for Italian cheeses, French coffees, mounds of flowers, fresh pumpkin and tomato breads, elegan t candles, antiques and cut-price foreign magazines.
Now Sundays see a more frugal shopper. Bradley Fisher of B&B Markets says attendance at the market is 10% higher than at shopping centres in the area, and that on a Sunday 13 000 people still visit the market.
He says that while flea markets catering for the lower end of the market are experiencing difficulties, Rosebank remains buoyant.
But in Cape Town, Greenmarket Square has the tattiness of Johannesburg markets. The antiques market at Groot Constantia that held oodles of promise when it began, is a jaded shell shoehorned into a corner.
Durban’s beachfront flea market nightmare is a bee-buzzing, coconut-oil-smelling, pickpocketing, kitsch paradise. However, Essenwood flea market in a beautiful Berea Park is one of the nicer ones left.
The day of the flea market has gone. Waste long ago replaced taste. Cheap quality imports overwhelm all. Flea markets cashed in on crowds, assumed that most shoppers lack discernment and set few standards. Peddlers now sell their wares on pavements and h ighway verges.
The best of Mozambican cashews, yams, and Portuguese salted cod can be bought from hawkers in the Delvers and Kerk street areas. Johannesburg’s CBD has excellent, inexpensive fresh fruit and vegetables sold on brightly coloured plastic plates. For many, the best options lie with these small bargain islands.
However, Mark Israelson of Fleamarket Enterprises, which runs Bruma, says that while flea market consumer traffic is up by about 10%, annualised turnover for the industry has dropped by around R200-million since the 1996 heydays to an overall annualised turnover of around R1,3-billion.
“People are spending down. Markets have been hit by competition. We are also a leisure event. We are visited, on average, once every four to six weeks whereas a shopping centre will be visited once a week,” he says.
“[But] we at Fleamarket Enterprises have a blueprint for a flea market revolution. The markets have to change. When we started in 1990 the public could get second-hand clothing, arts and crafts. Then we allowed factory goods too.
“We want to more closely define the products available, and respect, to consumers. We will commence a R6-million renovation in May at Bruma, to make it more upmarket.”
He says they are trying to discourage consumer perceptions that only junk is available at flea markets, with no consumer protection. He says they underwrite products sold at their flea markets, but admits they don’t advertise this fact to consumers.
The flea market revolution was spawned in part by relaxations in public attitudes and border controls after the unbanning of political organisations in 1990. That led to a sex industry that boomed briefly before going limp and all-night raves which have raved to the grave.
Flea markets were a niche until they sprawled across the gamut of the retail industry, turning their eccentric charms into tawdriness. Can they survive into the next millennium?
ENDS