Mdukatshani - Fifty Years of Beading

The Msusanphi crafters wade every week, balancing their beads on their heads. When the Thukela is in flood they use their sons to swim their work across in buckets. The boys let the river take them, bobbing out of sight, kicking for the beach, pushing the buckets ahead of them. An empty bucket on a bank says an order has arrived. The courier has made a safe delivery.

THE RIVER CROSSINGS For Dora Masoka wading the river is an ordeal. It’s partly her glaucoma, the growing struggle with failing sight, although it’s not vision that helps you across. It’s finding a grip with your feet. She drags her sadness with her, trying to hold steady as the rocks slide away under water. The crossing is never easy. Even in winter, when the water’s knee deep, the rocks are treacherous, a slippery tumble that lie in wait, ready to trap the unwary. Dora is too slight to do battle. She was always slender and a little aloof, not given to ready laughter. Now her thinness suggests an illness, and she carries an air of defeat. Yet her work is diligent, and she is always on time with an order. Sometimes she wades alone across the river, sometimes she wades with a group. They have all had loss, and they have shared loss with her. The death of her son Thuthukani, shot when he was twelve. A warning shot. Accidental? He was carried across the river on an old iron bed to the police van waiting at Mdukatshani. And there was the death of her husband, Ntabela, his body found lying in the river one morning, killed with a

blow to the head. Others learnt to go on. Dora struggles. Although the Thukela is the largest river in KwaZulu- Natal, long stretches of its course are lonely. There are few bridges, upriver or down, which makes the wading places important. There is one upriver at Nomoya, a placid drift of water with sand underfoot, which means crossing is easy if you know the hidden contours of the currents. It’s the shadows that have frightened the crafters. Once you’re in the river there’s no visibility. It’s the people on the banks who report the crocodiles, random sightings that are hard to confirm unless the crocs take up residence for the summer. They appear and disappear with the seasons. Some big, some small, usually alone, sometimes in pairs. In 2009 there were crocodiles everywhere. Two on the island at Sahlumbe, one near the pump, one below the cliffs, two at the corner of the river, a group where the cattle graze.

Until the Nomoya ferry was sabotaged in 2008, crafters paid a special price of two rand return for a crossing. The boat landed them 5 km from the farm, so they were fetched from the river bank on bead days.

Dorah Masoka

Ncedile Xaba

Zandile Sithole

Thombo Masoka

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Mdukatshani – Fifty Years of Beading