‘Yoh! When was the last time I did this?” mutters Xoli Ntshingila (40) as she looks around for a brush. Ntshingila recently won the Black Trophy at the World Hairdressing Championship in Moscow, making her the best ethnic hairdresser in the world.
She’s about to give me a haircut, a privilege she doesn’t often extend to men these days. Seeing her out of her comfort zone, I start to feel guilty, as if I’m asking the divorced mother of three for an autograph during family time. But it’s too late. I’m already seated at the hairdressing area of the Softsheen-Carson Academy in downtown Johannesburg where she teaches four days a week. A waterproof cape is draped around my neck. Bemused staff and students glance as they pass. Others simply stare.
“Xoli, giving someone a chiskop?” they seem to be thinking.
“So, have you decided what you want?” she asks, looking at my reflection in the mirror.
“I was hoping I’d let you decide that, you know. Let you get creative.”
“Well, it can only be i-chiskop or i-brush [closely cropped hair]. Unless you want the whole s-curl and cut deal,” she retorts, plugging in the clippers.
I chuckle incredulously. The last time I went that route was in 1993. “If you still do that [s-curl] these days, they’ll look at you funny like, ‘Where’s this one from?’ … I used to enjoy styling men’s hair back in the day but not anymore,” she says with a half-smile.
“Are you saying that black men aren’t as flamboyant any more?”
“Ja, I don’t know what that’s about,” she says, clipping a “guide” on to the clippers. “All you guys want to do is a chiskop and it’s not really challenging. In West Africa, guys still do s-curls and cut their hair nicely.”
Despite my insistence on a clean shave, Ntshingila has other plans. She starts with a number one guide. I feel it sliding up the back of my head in barely perceptible scooping movements. She then changes direction and glides it across the left side of my head in longer strokes that taper behind my ear. When I see that she has spared me some hair for my brush, I think “what the heck”, and instruct her to take it all off.
She removes the guide and switches to quick, short strokes, as if shearing my hair off with a razor blade. My head becomes a whirlpool of conflicting temperatures. The heat from the friction makes it increasingly warmer, while the dropping afternoon temperatures make it feel like a fan is rotating close by. She weaves a haphazardly circular maze around my head, closing in on the top of my head.
“I can go closer if you want.”
I don’t respond on time. She then angles the clippers even deeper into my scalp. In a novice’s hands, I’d be bleeding, but Ntshingila pulls it off with a finesse that belies the closeness of the shave. It’s a strange feeling, getting cut by a famous stranger. Something about it feels like a one-night stand. I’m not sure whether to talk to her about my problems or not. Maybe have a post-shave smoke together? Rather not.
“So how much would that be?” I ask her in the post mortem, the er … morning after.
“About R50.”
“Really?”
“Ja, in places like Southgate Mall or anywhere like that. You’re paying for the whole service, as opposed to getting your hair cut in the corner of some street. There, they’d cut you without shampooing and conditioning your scalp.”
“I get the feeling you were a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing,” I suggest as she removes the hair-covered cape from around my neck. “You were uncomfortable. Even the way you were sitting,” she says, commenting on my lazy posture. “Most guys, when it’s their first encounter getting cut by a woman, are never comfortable. This is why I started from the back. I hoped that, by the time I finished, you’d be fine.”
Trust was not the issue throughout our strange interaction. For me, the general lack of rapport boiled down to just how much policing seems to surround Ntshingila’s life since Moscow — a bit like the house cat spying on you when you’re up to you-know-what. She jokes that the PR agent who sat through my entire haircut and subsequent interview was her bodyguard.
She was there to make sure that Softsheen-Carson gets name-dropped at least once during the interview and that “the competition”, which forms an integral part of her history, gets no mileage.
My visions of whisking her away to visit old township haunts like Dr Fingertips and Alex’s in Mofolo, Soweto, had to go up in smoke. It was here that Ntshingila established herself in the Nineties, leaving her colleagues to wonder how this “little girl from Xhosaland” made off with all the tips.
Under the watchful eye of Ms PR, she speaks in guarded tones about the “ghetto fabulous” life of a hairdresser. “I miss the tips,” is as far as she is willing to reminisce.
Ntshingila’s path from Mdlankomo in the Eastern Cape to Moscow was set in motion by plaiting her mother’s hair at home. After studying cosmetology in Durban, she returned home to work with Jim Williams, an African-American who had just moved into the area. She worked for one more hair salon before heading to Jo’burg to advance her career in the hair industry. She walked into a job at Dr Fingertips in Soweto and within no time, she was “one of the best”. Soon after a stint as a senior stylist at Alex Hair Salon, also in Soweto, Ntshingila was recruited to became a trainer and technical supervisor at Black Like Me in 1993 before joining Softsheen-Carson as a creative coordinator in 1999.
She entered the World Hairdressing Championship in Moscow at the behest of her company, which was sponsoring the whole jaunt.
After six weeks of intensive training on the “line” they were going to be judged on, followed by another intensive week in Moscow, the five-member strong South African contingent held a dress rehearsal in their hotel lobby, a day before the competition. After seeing this, the American team decided to pull out, fearing embarrassment. South Africa went on to win the first three places in the ethnic hair category, with third place going to Oupa Masululebe, Ntshingila’s former student.
I was surprised to learn that Ntshingila has never owned a salon of her own and has no plans for doing so any time soon. “Working here is better,” she says.
“If I feel I want to experiment with a different hairstyle, I can do it. If it comes out right, I can share it with my colleagues.”
As for why her own head is clean-shaven, “I’m just taking a break from hairstyles,” she reveals. “I usually wear my hair in a weave. But, when it comes to hairstyles, you name it, I’ve had it.”
For someone who has reached the apex of her career years ago, quietly gathering accolades, Ntshingila can be forgiven for sounding complacent about her future.
She plans to hold on to her current gig for as long as it takes, cloning other champs along the way.