Fordsburg, a suburb on the Western side of Johannesburg often called the city’s ‘little India’, has grown in recent times, its identity shifting and merging with the different customs and flavours that have made it a centrepiece in the cultural design of the city.
Bargain ‘n’ Braai
Drifting through the crowds on a bustling Saturday evening, smoke floats out of a nearby “braai” stand, spurts of fire and ash erupt from the coals, and the smell of sizzling tikka chicken clutches at your senses.
Irshaad, a Pakistani man, bellows over the hip-hop beats filtering from a nearby car, while the latest Bollywood hit twangs from the window of a CD store. Taking an eager customer’s order, Irshaad shouts instructions to a smiley faced helper.
The pavement in front of his makeshift “braai” stand is soaked with colour and noise; vendors sell everything from pots to scarves and bangles, to make-up and knock-off designer gear. An Egyptian vendor, called Eid Ramadan, speaks in accented English, coaxing you into buy a ‘sheesha’ pipe that “you won’t find cheaper anywhere else”.
‘The Square’
The surrounding streets, littered with people filing in and out of restaurants, take-aways and bakeries, echoes scores of weekends spent in this place known affectionately by the locals as ‘the square’.
‘Fordsburg square’ to be precise, is a growing radius in what many have come to call the ‘little India’ of Johannesburg. Within walking distance from the famed bargain heaven - the Oriental Plaza, and Newtown - the city’s new cultural hub, the square is a slice of South African eastern culture made famous in recent times, not least because of its food.
Fusion
Almost 200 years ago, the writer Brillat-Savarin said “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.” But that was before globalisation, fusion food, and Fordsburg Square. Now, Savarin may just have to eat his words.
Food is a legacy, a history, a trace pattern binding us to our cultural heritages. But, merged with today’s trends and traditions, it also connects us across cultural lines in a way that sees a little of each of us in everyone we meet.
In Fordsburg, you can literally taste the union. An array of influences from ‘indigenous’ South African Indian, to North Indian, South Asian, Arabian, and good old American fast-food, assaults your senses from streets away.
Recent times have seen an influx of Middle Eastern and eastern foreigners into the area, each bringing with them a cuisine that is as intriguing as the people they leave behind. Today, this area is an assortment of foreigners and locals all coming together in a place that always feels like home.
Community
Bate Felix, a Cameroonian who studies in Johannesburg, says that he loves the sense of community in the area. “It’s the first thing you notice,” he says, “and it stays with you.”
Community has always been central to Fordsburg. The narrow roads and suburban, cityscape streets which outline houses with front doors opening straight onto the pavement, frame a community that is a part of each other’s lives.
Fordsburg was initially created to serve white gold miners and artisans in the area. Named after Lewis Peter Ford of the Jeppe and Ford Estate Company, which laid out the suburb, it eventually came to house a majority of Indian people, and it still does today.
Being primarily an Indian area was the result of apartheid segregation laws that are still evident today. Here, most people still know each other’s families, and can tell you stories that date back to the days of the spice route when their ancestors came all the way from South Asia.
Oriental Plaza
Apartheid law also facilitated the building of the Oriental Plaza, now a landmark in the area. The Nationalist government, in an attempt to move all Indian traders out of nearby ‘Fietas’, established the ‘Plaza’ in 1978; to some a ‘showpiece of apartheid’, but to most, a success in spite of what it was made to be.
Fordsburg Fame
Many famous South Africans have their roots in the area, like the writer Herman Charles Bosman who wrote about Fordsburg in his books, and the playwright Athol Fugard who worked in the area as a clerk in 1958.
Anti-apartheid activists, like Yusuf Dadoo, GM Naiker, and even Mandela himself frequented Fordsburg during the struggle. Activist Amina Cachalia and her late husband lived just two blocks away from where the square is today, where she served out much of her banning sentence under apartheid. Fordsburg is also where she started her ‘Women’s Progressive Union’ in the late 1940’s.
The roads in the surrounding area now pay physical homage to the heroes and cultural icons of the struggle. Dolly Rathebe and Miriam Makeba roads, link Fordsburg to Newtown, an area that was once recently dilapidated, but that has now become the cultural hub of the inner city, and a historical and artistic centre of Johannesburg.
Gateway
Fordsburg has grown in recent times, and by more than just size. It is now a bridge between our many worlds, a mini India in the middle of Johannesburg, a gateway to foreign societies and cuisines, a step away from the best bargains in the city, and a road up from a wealth of history and culture, and the stories that have made us who we are.
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