Kit Peel
Don’t be fooled by the stoepville houses, the laid-back feel, the picture-book tranquillity.
The fact that it was mostly Afrikaans civil servants until the 1970s and thereafter arty eccentrics. The oh-so- carefully maintained fib that says: “We’re this alternative little lamb in the commercial beast city of Africa.”
The old Melville crowd will lie to you, they’ll turn you against the 1980s and 1990s yuppies who moved there. The millionaires, the media brats. These petty bourgeois who’re gentrifying the place, who’re putting in car parks and spearheading neighbourhood watch. Heed them not! For Melville has a dark secret, forgotten or airbrushed until now – the yuppies are reclaiming their own. Melville was designed for them.
The ad in The Critic, October 23 1896 – “Gigantic Sale of 850 stands in the New Township of Melville” – gives it away. It is “situated in the very finest position for suburban residences”, where “the tired man of business, the clerk and the millionaire may rest after the labours of the day”, enjoying the views and the peace “which are and ever must be the peculiar and exclusive attractions of Melville”. And don’t forget punters, the “enormous profits accruing to those who are the fortunate holders of desirable suburban plots”.
Exclusivity, ambience, profit-yielding! This is yesteryear’s Hyde Park.
Roll up! Roll up and witness genteel suburban violence!
In the right corner, featuring colourful corrugated iron-roofed houses, bookshops, the Ant coffee shop, the Bassline, ye olde butchery, the defending Melville champ. In the left, the young pretender, bringing an impressive record of chic restaurants, bars, clubs, trendy shops and gracious living.
You don’t care? Well, would you rather know that Melville is Jo’burg’s oldest suburb? That there’s a cave in the Melville Koppies – a rocky hill across DF Malan Drive – dating back half-a-million years? Or, archaeology students, that a 1E000-year-old furnace was found in the same place, littered with slag, pottery, iron axes, spears and hoes? Or that residents occasionally dig up South African Anglo-Boer War shells in their backyards?
The last bit is good. At least you start to get the feel of the place.
Go there after work, for dinner, to the clubs and bars. Hang out at the weekend and walk the tree-bedecked streets, the noisy high street or the pretty 7th Avenue. It’s so appealing, so peaceful, so friendly.
The Dizzy Lizzy Laundromat, the Mugg and Bean, the secondhand bookshops, the secondhand clothes shops. Jo’burg’s own slice of Cape Town, the model suburb where folk greet each other with a smile and pop over for a cup of sugar and a chat about the garden.
But don’t let them fool you. There’s a war on and it’s raging. Who ya gonna back? The yuppies who are out to reclaim Melville’s birthright, or the old guard who gave this funny little hillside oasis its laid-back, oddball character?
Or do you take a ringside seat at the Pomegranate Restaurant, order a knockout tomato tart, and don’t give a damn.