64 Yeoville The EconomistDecember 21st 2019
12 seam and named it after his hometown and himself. He touted it to
the rich as an oasis away from the dirt, dust and noise.
In the end Yeoville proved still too close to the mines for the
newly monied. But it became popular with migrants, many of
them Jews from eastern Europe. In the decades after the second
world war, when the South African economy boomed, new mi-
grants from authoritarian and communist Europe flocked to Yeo-
ville. The streets were dotted with vendors selling falafal and Ger-
man-style sausages, Italian cafés and Greek tavernas.
Kristina Gubric was born in Yeoville in 1973. Her parents were
ethnic Hungarians from Yugoslavia who had paid for the move by
smuggling cigarettes and tights. Ms Gubric recalls a childhood
buying shawarma and Wurst, and watching her father play chess in
cafés. She observes that by moving from Josip Broz Tito’s Yugosla-
via to apartheid South Africa, her parents “swapped one form of
oppression for another”.But in Yeoville oppression was frequently discussed, and often
resisted. The area has always had a radical streak. Mandela and Ma-
hatma Gandhi both lived there briefly. It was home to many mem-
bers of the South African Communist Party. Diasporas today keep
up the area’s tradition of politicking. “When you see Congolese in
Yeoville they’re probably discussing politics,” smiles Gilla Botaka,
a security guard.
In the late 1970s and 1980s Yeoville stood out amid the starched
wickedness of apartheid. Gay-friendly clubs such as Casablanca
sprang up. Under the Group Areas Act, first passed in 1950, South
Africans of different skin colour were segregated, with non-whites
forcibly removed to peripheral townships. But in Yeoville authori-
ties sometimes turned a blind eye to “greying”. There was probably
more mixing in the area than anywhere else in the country.
The mixing increased as apartheid neared its end. The Group
Areas Act was repealed in 1991. Exiled members of the African Na-
tional Congress (anc), the party of Mandela, returned home. Pro-
gressive South Africans of all colours imagined what a democratic
version of their country would be like. A lot
of that dreaming—and a lot of drinking—
went on in Yeoville.
“You left white South Africa at the door
when you arrived in Yeoville,” remembers
Laurice Taitz, who grew up in Benoni, an
affluent white town outside Johannesburg.
“You left all the conformity, the evil dull-
ness of it all.” She recalls a heady time of
parties and politics. “It was a coming of age
for a lot of people...the first hint of what a
new South Africa might be.”Thanks for the memories
Some of Mr Sandile’s recollections of that
time seem still to be glimpsed through a
hedonistic fug. Did he really see Paul Si-
mon on stage with Thabo Mbeki at a jazz
club? Was he actually sent to help Mick Jag-
ger find some “really nice stuff”? Either
way, Yeoville was where he first saw blacks
and whites mixing together, and, just as
unusual, black people drinking chardon-
nay. Here were the “smart blacks” who had
been suppressed and squandered underapartheid. Here, he continues, “We were free.”
Looking back, though, Mr Sandile also sees the eve
of democracy as a missed opportunity. “We could have
created an alternative suburb in Yeoville. We could
have all co-existed.” It is hardly a feeling unique to the
area. A quarter of a century after the end of apartheid,
many all over South Africa feel that the country has
squandered its democratic dividend. But the Yeoville
residents who lived through the heady days of the early
1990s feel an especially acute sense of regret.
In 1991 Yeoville was 79% white. By 1998 it was more
than 84% black. “It’s like I’ve lived in two different
countries,” says Gabrielle Ozynski, one of the few
white South African residents to have stayed. But Yeo-
ville’s story was not just one of “white flight”. It saw
“black flight”, too. The anccadres who had partied and
plotted in Yeoville got government jobs. Many moved
to Pretoria, the administrative capital.
In the late 1990s and 2000s the South African mid-
dle classes were replaced in Yeoville by migrants from
the rest of Africa. Under Mandela, South Africa wel-
comed refugees. Under his successors that was cou-
pled with a spotty approach to illegal immigration; the
army was removed from border patrols in 2004, re-
placed by a small, ineffective police contingent.
One of the largest communities in Yeoville is from
the Democratic Republic of Congo. A former syna-
gogue has become the “Congolese mall”, complete with
hair salons, Pentecostal churches and a courier service
(“Much cheaper than FedEx”, says the owner). The
Congolese are hard to miss. Their elegant clothes are a
sign of “sapology”: an elegant protest against stifling
poverty that began in the dictatorship of Joseph Mo-
butu, who banned Western clothes. Mr Botaka, the po-
litically active security guard, insists he is dressed ca-
sually while sporting a diamanté earring and a tuxedo.
But if the Congolese stand out, they know they are
but one group among many. “I didn’t travel before com-
ing to South Africa,” says Joris Bondo, who moved to Jo-
hannesburg in 1996 from Congo. “But in Yeoville I tra-
vel across Africa every day.”Mr Botaka insists he is casually
dressed while sporting a diamanté
earring and a tuxedo