Mdukatshani - Fifty Years of Beading

The move to the Learning Centre was meant to be temporary for the building was already in use. Originally funded by the Equal Opportunity Foundation, it was a stone and thatch building that would have been beautiful were it not for the windows high up on the walls. They looked like the fanlights of toilets, only built to let in the air. They made the interior dark and gloomy, although they had been a concession from the men on the project who had resisted having windows at all. There was a war underway across the river at Msusanphi, and with bullets flying windows were dangerous. They wanted a building impregnable to guns. The Learning Centre was serving many functions when the first bead boxes were moved across. It was a venue for literacy classes, a mobile clinic, a legal advice office, and the many meetings and workshops of Mdukatshani’s land reform programme. Initially the beads shared space with the paralegals, an uncomfortable fit as there was no check on pilfering, with a queue of strangers always waiting for attention and an unguarded open door. It was a relief when the advice office moved back to Durban, and we could claim the room as our own. As the war across the river was over at last, we knocked down the walls to let in the light, installed large windows and built termite-proof cement bins for storage. The Bead Room was beautiful, an airy space with a view across the valley and craft work displayed around the walls. It is hard to describe what a difference this made to the women. For the first time they had a place of their own, and it gave them a formal identity. They still did most of their work at home, but the Learning Centre was theirs on Bead Days. It was a place for sharing work and innovation – like learning how to sit on a bench. The women giggled as they tried it out, hunched and awkward, feeling exposed. Traditionally women sat flat on the floor. Sitting on a bench was a claim to equality, a move into the modern world. Not much has changed in the long years since – if you discount the spectacles perched on the womens’ noses and the mobile phones hanging in the trees. It is almost impossible to get a signal at the Learning Centre. The phones hang on the branches, just in case. If a call came through it would be muffled by the chatter, the sound of laughter, the exchange of news. Inside somebody is boiling a kettle laying the tray for another round of tea. This is catch-up time, uninhibited and carefree, and an informal celebration in gratitude for work.

In election years this room becomes a voting station for the Independent Electoral Commission. For the rest of the time it provides a venue for workshops, meetings and film shows.

Ngakelephi Mkhize would find her calling in wirework, becoming a teacher who demanded quality from her students. Her own work was perfect, and there was nobody to replace her when she died in December 2003.

Finished work

Mdukatshani – Fifty Years of Beading

29