Mdukatshani - Fifty Years of Beading

Mbulwana – a destitute group of flood survivors who were settled in tents on the outskirts of the Waayhoek resettlement village early in 1988. Tess was going to train them as crafters, and within three years their work would be displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

WAAYHOEK and MBULWANA

Tessa was with us the day we drove to Waayhoek to set up a garden for Mbulwana. We had a close connection with Waayhoek, a government resettlement village 60 km from the farm. It had been established in 1985 for families forcibly removed from white farming areas, families who had once been our neighbours, and now found themselves living on the open veld in “tins”. There were three rows of tins when government lorries trundled in with the half-crazed community of Mbulwana. They were given tents on the outskirts of the village and left to fend for themslves. There were 87 families – 287 people – an alien group, most of them Basuthos, who had been squatting in shacks on low ground in Ladysmith when the river came down in the night. Some had drowned, others were in hospital, and all seemed a little unhinged. They had lost all they had and had nowhere to go – a small group of survivors who didn’t count for much against the scale of the wider disaster. For Natal had been devastated by heavy rains which left thousands homeless, towns isolated, roads impassable, and bridges gone. Government and charities were doing what they could, but town halls were filled with people like Mbulwana, whose homes were lying buried in mud.

Tessa used one of Natty Duma’s tin prefabs as storeroom and headquarters for the Mbulwana weavers until she paid to have a building constructed for what came to be known as the Waayhoek Mbenge Co-operative.

When they arrived at Waayhoek they were given tents, mattresses, blankets, cooking pots and food. Six months later they had sold all they could and were begging scraps from the village. Natty Duma and Olga Miya alerted us. The people in tents were starving. Was there anything we could do to help? The first time we drove up in our ten-ton lorry it was loaded with blankets and food. But it was temporary relief and it wouldn’t go far. There was a need for more permanent help. The next time we drove up, Tessa was visiting, and she came along for the ride. This time we carried fencing, poles, picks and spades. There was a lot of waste land in among the toilets and if we fenced it off as a garden … but Tessa was

already wandering among the tents, noticing the jam tins used as cooking pots, poking and prying, listening and observing, asking questions in her lilting Zulu. A few days later she was back. Would the people of Mbulwana like work? If they were willing to learn she could train them to make imbenges , traditional baskets made of telephone wire, woven on enamel bowls. She was already working with a group of night watchmen in Johannesburg, finding outlets for the beautiful work, sourcing wire, extending their range. But there were difficulties. Because Telkom lost millions to cable theft each year, there were legal restrictions on the sale of scrap, and good colours were hard to find.

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Mdukatshani – Fifty Years of Beading