Phillip Kakaza strolled down Yeoville’s Rockey Street and noticed it is ready for reinvigoration
Rockey Street, in the heart of Yeoville, is probably South Africa’s most famous jolling street, lined with watering holes and clubs, rocking till dawn. Some say it has gone downhill in recent years, but it still draws the crowds at night.
In many ways, the street represents the demographic changes that have taken place in South Africa since the scrapping of the Group Areas Act, with all the contradictions that implies. It provides a recreational space for young black entrepreneurs – as well as those youngsters who just want to have a mindless jol. Amid the crime and urban decay, people are having fun.
Drive down Rockey Street on a Friday or Saturday night and you are likely to be trapped in a traffic jam – double-parking is rife. Walk down a few blocks for a cup of coffee and you’ll find nothing of quality. The pubs are noisy, the restaurants dingy and often dirty. Revellers suck the “peace pipe” of dagga or drink till the last drop at the bottom of the beer bottle.
Rockey Street has evolved considerably since the late Eighties, when the area founded by Thomas Yeo Sherwell in the 1860s went beyond racial barriers. Young black intellectuals moved in to make the area Johannesburg’s first multicultural surburb. Many came from Soweto; others returned from exile abroad or moved from outside Johannesburg to find homes there.
The jazz clubs, coffee shops and bookshops that lined Rockey and Raleigh Streets became home to intellectuals, artists and journalists.
“It was a period of African renaissance,” says Khubu Meth, a film-maker who has lived in Yeoville for many years. “Blacks wanted to break away from racial groupings and were eager to rub shoulders with their white counterparts. They wanted knowledge, books to read and had energy for creativity. You would find artists on the rooftop garden of Tandoor playing music while some were engaged in intellectual debates.”
For years, Rockey Street was about the only place in South Africa you could see a dreadlocked rasta with a white girlfriend sitting in an eatery reading newspapers on a Sunday morning.
You were also able to walk into a bookshop in the middle of the night and buy a book. But now crime has pushed stores, coffee shops and fearful whiteys out of Yeoville to places like Melville and Rosebank. Yeovillites are disillusioned and have expressed anger at the lawlessness that has invaded the area. Many are even avoiding Rockey Street.
“Rockey Street is a bitch that has lost its beauty,” says Bongani Madondo, a journalist who used to patronise the popular Rumours jazz club when it still existed. “But it still lures the lost generation.”
Yet Yeoville’s nightspots are racially divided. Rockerfellers and Da Joint are popular among Indian and coloured jollers. The two venues are in competition and sometimes end up playing the same music, if it’s not R&B then it’s soul. Pubs like Crackers have a predominantly white clientele.
The controversial Thebe nightclub, next to Tandoor, lures mostly black teenagers. You’ll find them there in teeny-weeny skirts, skimpy shorts and high heels, gyrating to sexy music on the dance floor. I asked a twentysomething guy what the appeal was. “They want to be recognised in their own little world,” he said. “Check their outfits – they are their trade marks, like nurses have uniforms. Many men like coming here just to lure them.”
Tandoor, once a top spot for alternative white rock, is now a meeting place for patrons who are into kwaito, soul and reggae. According to the manager, Simon Annett, there are plans to turn it into a cultural centre for musicians. “I see talent going down the drain because of the lack of resources,” he says. “Our plan is to open a recording studio and provide a performance platform for aspirant musicians. We have already started working on these plans and such a project could be up and running before the end of the year.”
At the other end of Yeoville, Time Square has become a meeting place for black middle- class intellectuals and “wannabe-black” whiteys. On the night I was there, I was surrounded by black yuppies who speak the township transmigration of American slang. Journalists, film-makers and artists hang around there until the early morning hours, discussing stories and projects over glasses of sparkling wine.
“This is where you meet personalities and artists who are working on projects,” says Fred Khumalo, a journalist who spends most of his weekends there. “You also get involved in intellectual debates that stimulate your mind and each weekend I end up going home with a story idea.”
Ekhaya jazz venue, opposite Times Square, has also become a comfort zone for peace-loving jazz enthusiasts. “We set the trend and many follow. I cannot share the same liquor table with my grandchildren. They have to wait until they are old enough to hang around pubs and clubs,” says an Ekhaya patron. “It is time to teach our children to unlearn all the American plastic culture they see on television. It is time for going back to our roots – Black to the future’, to borrow some words of wisdom from Bra Hugh Masekela.”
According to the Yeoville Community Forum (YCF), Rockey Street is to be revisited and the less hard-edged culture of the early Eighties could be re-introduced.
While the Eastern metropolitan council wants to close down pubs and night clubs in the area, the YCF has a different plan – to develop the area by bringing back bookshops, coffee shops, trendy restaurants and jazz clubs.
At a community meeting last week, it was stressed that the business people trading in Rockey Street will have to be responsible and keep their premises clean: health inspectors who rarely do their rounds in Yeoville will now frequent their businesses. The YCF also hopes to open a community office where people can place complaints and acquire information on Yeoville.