There is a note of desperation in Gabrielle Ozynski’s voice when she asks “How long can a suburb go on deteriorating before you can’t get it back; before it reaches a point of no return. My suburb looks like Fallujah — we are paying taxes and coming home to a place that looks like a war zone.”
The suburb she is talking about is Yeoville — where she has lived for most of her life and about which she feels passionate — passionately positive about its potential, its ambience and its future and passionately angry about its neglect at the hands of many of its residents and those who should be responsible for the upkeep and preservation of one of Johannesburg’s oldest and most fascinating suburbs.
“I don’t know what’s stopping Yeoville from being fired up,” she says sadly. “There are wonderful people who hold it dear to their hearts — everyone wants it to work. But … there are also a lot of illegal immigrants; a very big community of people waiting for their status to be legalised and many are transient and don’t feel connected. Nobody seems to have a long-term view.”
She believes that the agencies that should be dealing with the problem are not “coming to grips with the reality of the situation”. Litter is an enormous concern for all those who care about their environment and, she points out, there are no bins in Yeoville; the streets are awash with garbage. Even if there were bins people might not use them because in the great scheme of the struggle to survive — jobless, stateless, rootless, the environment is simply not an issue. “People need to realise this isn’t Sandton; a suburb like this needs more resources, not fewer; in wealthier suburbs the residents have more resources and they obey by-laws.”
Although she sometimes despairs, Ozynski, along with many other concerned Yeoville residents, does not merely sit back and complain. Unable to take on the whole battle, she has selected corners of it — beautifying a pavement opposite her home, fighting for street lighting that doesn’t constantly go on the blink, pressing Pikitup to deal more effectively with litter.
But most importantly and creatively, she has set about beautifying public spaces — initially swimming pools — first in Yeoville, later at Ellis Park and in Turffontein, where pool users are now welcomed by dramatic swirls of glorious colour, inviting them in and making works of art out of utilitarian entrances.
The concept was born when Peter Kroll (a tile designer who was later to be brutally murdered), hearing about Ozynski’s plan to use mosaic to beautify public spaces in Yeoville, invited her to help herself to a selection of his designer tiles. After his death his ex-wife, Tina, proved equally generous.
“I wondered where to start and decided the pool was the perfect place — it is one of the few places in Yeoville that is really well kept up, clean and safe.” With the enthusiastic support of Junior Ramhova, head of sports and recreation within Region 8 (inner city), who, she says, “would love Yeoville to be covered in murals and mosaic”, and with help from a group of friends and volunteers, she set about the project. Initially there was no budget and Ozynski contributed her own money to covering the expenses entailed in the first section of the work.
Later, with funding provided by the National Arts Council and Business and Arts South Africa (Basa), she was able to employ two young women from a battered women’s shelter and the night security guard from the building in which she lives — “they were my crew and we worked at weekends”.
Ozynski, a magazine sub-editor with an artistic bent, who has always been interested in arts and crafts, designed and oversaw the project, consulting mosaic artists en route. Mosaic, she says “is a brilliant public medium — it has a big visual impact, it’s hardy, vandal proof and lots of people can be involved in creating it”.
It’s also a quick way of lifting the environment and giving people pride in their surroundings. She hopes the swimming pool project will have a “knock-on effect” and become part of the Johannesburg Development Agency’s Rockey-Raleigh upliftment project. “For the future, I’d love to do more inner-city upliftment projects — that’s my passion — and to get local people involved, local artists. There’s a lot of space for that — Jo’burg’s a young city and still evolving and there are people like Junior who are open to these ideas.”
The swimming pool mosaic project and Peter Kroll Designer Tiles were recognised recently with a Business Day/Basa Arts Sponsorship Award in the small business sponsorship category