Mdukatshani - Fifty Years of Beading

Horns on the roof say the spirits are at home.

HOME GROUND 2008 -2009 The Subprime Mortgage Crisis

The interior of the home of Khulelaphi Mbatha, a veteran beader and our needlework instructor.

The crafters were prepared for bad news when they gathered at the Learning Centre at the end of February 2008. There had been no orders for the January trade affairs, and if they were sitting without work, the outlook wasn’t good. They had come for an update on the year ahead, and listened intently to a simplified account of the looming subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. What was a mortgage? A lifetime debt on a house? They went home sombre. The attacks on the World Trade Centre had affected orders. So had the Iraq War. And the Palestine War? After Zulu radio reported fighting in Palestine two women rushed down the hill in anxiety. Where was Palestine? Would it affect their orders too? When the subprime mortgage crisis pushed the world into recession, it marked a point of no return for the crafts.

Shops closed, businesses collapsed, exhibitions were cancelled, and Jablonex, the great Czech bead firm, had to shut down furnaces due to lack of demand. The days of big orders were over. There would be a recovery, but it was gradual, and never on the scale before the crash. Orders would be smaller, items cheaper, and seldom did the women have full time work. But hardship tended to obscure the real developments of the period that were changing life on the hills. In 2002 the mountainous area adjoining Mdukatshani was identified as one of the poorest districts in South Africa, and government launched a “Mashunka Flagship Poverty Relief Project” that included bringing in a road, electricity and water.

The large Dladla homestead was originally built by three brothers. Today it is shared by their widows (all veteran crafters), their makotis and grandchildren. Nozi Ntshapa had only one child and finds happiness in the shared company of the combined families.

Homesteads have become a mix of buildings. Square and round. Cement and mud. Iron and thatch. With the help of her father, Mpembe, Siphokuhle Mvelase started building her home herself, and although she has “flats” with iron roofs, her main room is mud and thatch.

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Mdukatshani – Fifty Years of Beading