”Woza sisi, wozobona [Come sister, come and see],” say the braiders on the corner of Kerk and Eloff streets in downtown Johannesburg.
Hundreds of women congregate here every day to provide a vital service to the city’s female residents: braiding.
At first, anyone could set up shop in this bustling pedestrian mall, flanked by furniture shops. Now, however, there are so many braiders that they have to apply for a permit to work in the area.
There are women from almost any Southern African country one could care to name — Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Angola — and all have been driven to sit on a cheap plastic chair in the centre of Johannesburg because they make more money here than many of their countrymen will make in a month.
Porschia Ncube (46), a teacher from Zimbabwe, says her colleagues in Bulawayo earn Z$3-million (about R680) a month, which she can make in three hours.
Competition is fierce. Before the Central Johannesburg Partnership — a non-profit company focusing on urban renewal and renewal of the inner city — introduced a system of permits last year, fistfights broke out as braiders literally fought for their customers. Now, a fight can see a braider banned from the area for a month.
Many of the braiders are frustrated because they don’t earn a regular income, so they can’t apply for credit. But, like everyone, they have hopes and dreams and, for the moment, are just trying to make ends meet.
Braiding trade
Being in the business of braiding requires patience, strength and strategy. It’s all about ”calling the customers yourself”.
”We book them before they even say they want a braid,” says Melita Mathusse (30), a Mozambican woman who arrived in South Africa in 1991 as she assesses the customer potential of passers-by.
Mathusse, along with 30 other braiders, has a prime spot on the corner opposite Charlie Parkers — a store that sells hairpieces and cosmetics. She says braiding is easy, but getting the customers is the challenge.
Mathusse braids because it is the only way she can make money. ”I must have been 13 or 14 when I came here. I was really scared but I had to come here because it was the only way I could get a better life for myself.”
Currently living in Yeoville, she first spent a few months on a farm in Komatipoort where she worked for food and clothes.
”I came to Johannesburg a year later and then I worked at a shoe shop near Westgate station. I was living in someone’s backyard room in Dube, Soweto, at that time,” she says.
”I saw a man who used to braid using a needle. I was fascinated because I could braid, but not with a needle … in fact, I had never seen anyone do that before. I would walk past him every day after work and I used to watch him do it,” she says.
”I believe that I can do anything with my hands, if I would just be given a chance to watch and learn. I mean, let’s face it, I didn’t get the time to finish school, so there is no other way I could try to make money,” she smiles, almost daring me to tell her otherwise.
Money matters
Withdrawing money from an ATM is something that Mathusse is unfamiliar with; the only time she ever goes to the bank is when she deposits money. She says she never knows exactly how much she makes each month.
”I keep the money that I make daily in a purse and then I do minor grocery shopping weekly, and then only do I go to the bank and save the rest. I make my money so that I can spend it on the things that I need.”
Mathusse earns about R200 a day. ”The days are not the same. Sometimes I get more than that, especially in December,” she says, adding that she makes between R3 000 and R5 000 a month. ”I use my money daily and weekly. By the time money reaches me I already have a purpose for it, so I don’t know how much it is monthly.”
She starts telling me about the hardships braiders face, and, right on cue, it starts to rain. ”This is what I was going to tell you about … the rain,” she says, moving her chairs and other belongings to a sheltered spot.
Now it starts to pour and the ”Shangaan corner” erupts as everyone scrambles for shelter.
”Come with me,” she says, running towards a nearby Spitz shoe store that is under construction. We settle under a shop awning opposite Spitz, and Mathusse gets her second customer for the day — someone who is there to have ponte fine (fine point).
‘Better life’
”Sometimes I go home without having had any customers for the day,” explains Albetina Sotoe, also known as Betina. She, like Mathusse, ran away from Mozambique to a ”better South African life” when she was a teenager.
She wears big gold earrings and has her Afro hair combed up because she has unbraided her weaved extensions. ”I have a very dry scalp and that’s why I can’t keep braids for long,” she says.
She gives me tips on how to deal with my dry scalp while calling on customers on the road: ”Wozo bon’umqhino, sweetie [Come and look at the braiding, sweetie].”
Fifteen minutes later, her three children arrive after school in their navy-blue-and-green checked uniforms, and the youngest climbs on to her lap. ”We are hungry, mama,” the oldest one says, and Sotoe sends her to a corner to buy fruit.
She lives in her own house in Zola, Soweto, with her husband and her three kids. She and her husband paid cash for the repossessed three-bedroom house in 2003. ”We borrowed money from family members and we are still paying it off,” she says of the R140 000 house.
Sotoe started a braiding business a decade ago as her vegetable business was not bringing in enough money.
”Everyone was selling vegetables, so I was forced out of business and then, not many people were braiders,” she says, expressing her concerns about the growing numbers of braiders in Johannesburg. ”There are too many of us now and I’m starting to get really scared because I don’t want my children to suffer if I go out of business, and that looks like a possibility.
”Every time I go home [to Mozambique] people ask what I do back in South Africa because they see the things that I’ve done for my mother and they think that I’m rich. That’s why there are so many of us now because, let’s face it, Shangaan women can braid hair, hands down,” she says.
Styles
Kerk Street has close to 200 braiders — most of whom braid the same styles. Some of the more popular styles include soft dread, yukky bulk, ponte fine and twist.
In the same street, however, there is a group of people in Block E of Kerk Street who can braid the traditional style of isibhaca se naliti (isibhaca woven with a needle). Isibhaca is astonishing is its simplicity — wool is woven into the hair and stitches of similar sizes and patterns are made.
According to Vusimuzi Sithole, the oldest braider and one of only a handful of male braiders on Kerk Street, the isibhaca braiding style was perfected by the Bhaca people, who are isiXhosa-speaking people from Umzimkhulu, KwaZulu-Natal.
Sithole, a thick-haired, tall and slender man who looks younger than his 72 years, says he knows many Zulu men who stay in hostels who braid isibhaca.
”I have been doing this for more than 20 years now,” he says, slowly braiding a customer’s hair into thin, tight rows.
He turned to isibhaca because he couldn’t find a permanent job. ”I used to temp for many different companies and then came a time where I decided that working at a company was not for me because that is all I was; a temporary worker,” he says.
The charge for isibhaca in 1992 was R12 and today, at R55, it is the cheapest braiding style on offer.
Sithole started braiding in the Eighties in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, and then moved to Newcastle. ”I saw that this business helps me pay my bills, so I decided to move to the golden city of Johannesburg. Back then, men moved here to work in the mines but I moved here for different reasons,” he says.
He lives in Kliptown, Soweto, with six of his children. ”I have four other children but they are older and they all have different mothers. They are not under my support,” he says, adding that all his children go to school and they have everything they need.
”I think that I can afford my children because if the day is really good I can braid up to 15 people, and that amounts to about R700; and if it’s not so good, then I get four people — which is not all that bad, because I then go home with R200, which can secure me until the next day.”
Sithole believes that he and his colleagues are financially content because they do not do other styles of braiding. ”We are known for mastering isibhaca se naliti, and if anyone wants to braid this specific hairstyle they know where to come. Where there is too much choice, there will be too much competition.”
A question of credit
Zandile, who is also an isibhaca braider and has been under Sithole’s mentorship since 2003, says that she sometimes ends up with R3 000 a month.
”I love this job,” says the 26-year-old mother of four. ”My only problem with this line of work is that we can’t open up credit accounts at clothing stores or even buy on credit at furniture stores because they always want pay slips as proof of employment and we never have them,” she says.
”It really bothers me very much because I would like to buy a second-hand car, but I have no credit record, therefore I can’t be trusted as a good, paying customer.”
Zandile has a certificate in computer literacy from a college in the CBD and says she too has never worked for a boss in her life. ”Of course I don’t want to end up in Kerk and Eloff, but I will never work under anyone because I am used to this independence. My dream is to start a training school for hair braiding, but I can’t get a lot at the bank. Do you see how serious this [credit problem] is?”’ she asks, shrugging her shoulders.
The braiders all say that starting a braiding business on the streets of Johannesburg is not child’s play. ”Every braider you see in the streets of Johannesburg’s CBD has a permit that looks a lot like a student card. These documents allow us to sit here and do what we do,” says Julia while explaining the nitty-gritty of running a braiding business.
”I am laughing because people don’t know all of these things and they think that we are just sitting here and looking pretty. Our jobs are as serious as anyone else’s,” she says.
As the sun begins to cast long shadows over the braiders, Sotoe braids the last soft dreads into a customer’s hair. ”It looks like she was my last customer for the day,” she says, stacking her chairs and gathering tangled bunches of fake hair to clear the street for the next day’s business.
Explaining African hair
Relax: African hair has a coarse texture that can be softened and grown in different ways. One and most common ways of softening hair is ”relaxing” it, which women do throughout Africa. Some of these hair relaxers, which transforms the woolly texture into silky, straight hair, contain strong chemicals that make the scalp burn.
Braiding: Braiding is not done for softening purposes, but for beauty and to boost natural hair growth. In Johannesburg, most braiders are Shangaan women from Mozambique. Most braids are done using synthetic hair extensions that are braided on to the natural hair. These hair extensions have different styles of texture and length. The yukky bulk, for instance, is a long and straight hairpiece that costs about R60. Yukky bulk looks better when braided on to relaxed hair.
Dreads: Soft dread is a curly hairstyle that is normally preferred by women with shorter, natural hair. A hairpiece is braided on to the natural hair and then longer pieces are cut into curls.
Ponte fine: A braiding style that originated with Shangaan women from Mozambique. It is flatly woven into naturally or relaxed hair using the simplest synthetic fibre, which costs R6 a piece (excluding the costs of braiding).
Isibhaca: This is the most Afrocentric style of braiding. In this style, braiding is done using only a person’s natural hair; sometimes with a needle and wool if the hair is relaxed or too long.