Why would you go to a venue where you know you’re not going to see beautiful black girls? Unless of course you’re coming with one,” asks Buti Ndamase*, a 34-year-old advertising executive. The topic of conversation is segregated clubbing in Johannesburg’s proudly “cosmopolitan” clubland but, specifically, the tricks of the trade used to separate the wheat from the chaff. “I have never come [to Fashion TV Café] with a black girl and been stopped,” he continues. “Maybe it’s because I’m a regular.”
According to Ndamase, who regularly entertains clients at the exclusive Sandton venue situated near the Michaelangelo Hotel, Fashion TV Café discriminates against “black prostitutes”, whom he says are indiscreet in their soliciting. “There are white prostitutes that go in, but they’re not that blatant,” he reveals. “First of all, they’re white and they can blend in with other customers. The place is like 85% white, and the other 5% is coloured models, who are either on contract to be there or whatever, but they just gain access easily.”
According to a former employee, Mavuso Gwedashe*, a barman, who says he quit there after several well-heeled black customers complained to him about apparently racist treatment, they make it “as hard as possible for black people to enter”, either by charging them at the door, or by refusing them entry based on dress code.
As the Mail & Guardian found out this week, discriminatory door policy is quite prevalent in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, particularly in Sandton, where the lily white queues are peopled by teens with fashion sensibilities almost as gaudy as Paris-by-way-of-Kinshasa sapeurs.
In these parts, there are several ways to keep prospective punters of the wrong shade beyond the velvet rope. One way can be to double or triple the entrance fee. Another can be to pick on one’s clothing. Failing that, a bouncer can be instructed to claim that it is “a private function” or just ask you for “membership”.
Hussein Rasool*, for example, a Muslim youth I met outside Taboo in Sandton last Saturday, was unsure how much he’d have to pay to get in. On his first attempt some weeks ago, the 19-year-old forked out R300 instead of the normal R100 because he “was not a regular”, as a bouncer told him. According to a black kid I met outside who seemed to know all the girls, the trick is to tell the bouncers (who, he said, work for his dad) that you know “Chris”, the owner. Since I didn’t know “Chris”, I turned back from the velvet rope with my R300 intact. Rasool went in for the same fee. It seems he likes the punishment.
“If I’m speaking as a consumer, it is unfair, but from a business point of view, it makes sense,” reasons Ndamase. “I mean a club is a place where people who think alike meet and consume the products they like to consume.” Surprisingly, the 30-year-old Gwedashe*, a veteran in the industry, agrees. “The clubs want to be politically correct, but too many patrons of colour will keep away the much-needed Jewish and Greek patrons,” he explains. “They are heavy drinkers and they know how to club. One guy can blow about five grand on champagne, shooters and cigars. They are not shy to spend on premium brands.
‘The problem with people of colour is that they are not fast moneymakers for a club. And they have a habit of coming in there already drunk. In my history as a barman, I’ve never seen white people do that, or walk into a place and ask how much an Amstel or a Heineken is and then not tip. That’s why as a barman, if it is busy, I prefer serving white people. I’ve had stupid altercations with black people where it was busy and the guy was hassling me for R2 change. We usually don’t get much respect from our own people.”
According to Gwedashe, club owners have simply recognised their predicament and have devised ways and means to deal with it. “Another thing they do is liquor prices,” he continues. “At the Palms, where I used to work, it is R21 for a bottle of water, R24 for a Red Bull, and a bottle of champagne that would cost about R250 will sell for like R750. If black patrons do manage to slip through the cracks, they won’t afford the evening. They have that covered. To show you the difference [in spending habits] at the Palms when they’d have the [month-end] Jack Daniels parties, which were popular with black people, they’d cash in about R3 000 per till. On a normal Saturday when there’s Jews or Greeks, they’d cash about R15 000 per till.”
Strip clubs, at least those where white flesh is on parade, are also in on the fun. Brian Ngwenya*, a bouncer at a Cresta branch of Teazers, informs me that black, Indian and Chinese patrons have to pay R250 at the door, instead of the normal entrance fee of R100, the reason being “they don’t like to pay for the dancers once they are inside”. He quickly mentions, however, that they do get a free table dance, which white patrons don’t get. While the standard rule in a strip club is no touching, it would seem that dancers don’t mind being touched by white patrons, and that black patrons who try the same thing “get publicly humiliated”, as investment banker Muzi Nxasana* puts it. He has tried unsuccessfully to set up a bachelor party for one of his mates.
While I have no problem with prohibitive door policy per se (my whole thing is why go there if you’re clearly not wanted), clubs make their racism obvious by applying the rules inconsistently.
So, while Buti Ndamase* may blow his department’s entertainment budget at Fashion TV Café regularly, and hire a coat on request to comply with the dress code, others like me might be told that the place is closed, as I was last Saturday night around 11pm, when the place was still teeming with smiling whites and a smattering of blacks. Or, if I’m lucky, I might get “charged R80 as the place fills up”, which according to marketing manager Mike Love, is the prevailing door policy.
But, to paraphrase rap duo dead prez, next time I’ll stay at home, with a bottle of my favourite booze and some CDs, rather than give some greedy club owner my hard-earned R300.
*Names have been changed
Long street to freedom
The fashionably skinny, dark-haired white girl in her Eighties bubble mini-skirt, black tights and ballerina shoes has got her face stuffed in her handbag and looks like she could be shnaafing something as she walks.
Following her is a deeply stoned coloured guy with a teased-out Afro. He’s wearing some old ripped Levi’s, hanging low to expose a crusty pair of Y-fronts. Up top he’s sporting a sports jacket with the sleeves pushed up Don Johnson style and a Billabong trilby rip-off, like Justin Timberlake. Early 20s, hot, fit, in the prime of their lives and rocking Long Street this Saturday night.
She pulls her head out of her handbag just in time to nod a greeting to the big, black, Congolese bouncer. His arms are folded across his chest, like the gate in a security complex. This is Jo’burg. The bar, in Cape Town, one of Long Street’s longest lasting nightlife institutions. Soon enough they’re snogging on the couch at the back. On Long Street, Cape Town’s nightlife nexus, any night will toss up a mixed salad of young South African DNA; drinking, some drugging, but mostly just mingling.
The rest of Cape Town, alas, is a café latte when it comes to integration — before you add the sugar. You’ve got your dark black at the bottom, brown in the middle and the thick white foam floating on top. And granted, if you hit a club in a place like Durbanville, you can bet the only black people will be washing glasses and serving drinks. At the same time, the average shebeen in Nyanga is unlikely to have ever served a white punter. The Flats is much the same, a spot like the Galaxy is almost 99% a coloured jol.
Racial integration in South Africa rides the wave of economy. To go back to our café latte reference, money is the sugar. Sweetens the deal and mixes it up. People need money to break through the hazy distinctions of colour and class, to make the move from eKasi to emaSubarbs and partake in the great global oneness of consumerism.
In Cape Town tourism and a global run on real estate have not created the same kind of large-scale upward mobility that is so evident in Gauteng. Integration remains stifled by the long-reaching tentacles of apartheid and locked in place by unemployment and poverty. But things are definitely changing downtown. In the city, alongside all the development and gentrification, the upper-middle classes mingle. Movement across the colour line is more fluid and Long Street is a pulsating beacon of new South African-ness.
But don’t be duped into believing that we have achieved our goal of technicoloured utopia. The street looks integrated, but in South Africa we’re masters at window dressing. The attitudes of young people don’t always match up.
“It’s not really a race thing, but you don’t want to be a minority when you go out,” says Steve, a 20-year-old white student, sipping on his beer. “I wouldn’t dig to take my girlfriend to a so-called black club. Lots of the whites, especially the girls, are afraid of the Zulu culture.”
Louella and Nicole, a legless pair of white girls, holding up the wall outside, agree. “We used to go to Marvel but now it’s really ghetto,” says 22-year-old Louella, wearing a low-cut top. “Black guys love boobs and mine are really big so it’s a problem,” she says. “In a black club they’ll just come up and grab on to you even if you’re not booty-dancing. I mean you can just be going to the toilet and they’ll grab you.”
Kwanz, a sharply dressed black dude cradling a beer, is on the prowl in the back section of Marvel. “Nowadays if you’ve got money you can go wherever you want,” he says. “I never go after white girls; they come after me. I want to keep it that way. When a white girl comes into a black club, well you know, you’ve been restricted from that shit for so long … I want to try that shit out,” he admits candidly. — Andy Davis, additional reporting Brendon Bosworth and Zane Henry