This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
| "Chinese South Africa" |
|
   June 2009 China and the Chinese have been increasingly prevalent in both media reports and dinnertime conversations over the last few years. Nevertheless, despite China’s burgeoning global profile (culminating, perhaps, in the 2008 Olympic Games), and although China will be key in helping the world economy recover from the financial crisis, international perspectives on China have not really become more nuanced than the tongue-in-cheek sentiment expressed in a Monty Python song some decades ago: “There’s more than a billion of them in the world today. You’d better learn to like them, that’s what I say!” Likewise, in South Africa, perceptions about China and Chinese people tend to hinge around news headlines such as China Buys Into Standard Bank, China Launches Africa Investment Fund or Chinese South Africans Now Qualify For Black Economic Empowerment Benefits. This superficial awareness is a pity, as the history of Chinese involvement in this country – and, moreover, the growth of the Chinese South African community – is a complex topic that ought to be more widely understood. Most visitors to Johannesburg have heard about Chinatown in Cyrildene, where thousands of revellers join in the annual festivities celebrating the Chinese New Year (usually at the beginning of February). The strip of restaurants and shops along Cyrildene’s Derrick Avenue is slightly quieter during the rest of the year, but it remains a hub of activity. It’s not all dim sum, dumplings and roast duck – although, admittedly, these and other dishes from Shanghai, Canton, Beijing or Hong Kong are among the main draw cards for many patrons. In addition to the restaurants and noodle bars, there are also fruit and vegetable sellers, hairdressers, general dealers, tea houses, herbalists and even a DVD rental store. Those who can’t read Chinese characters and don’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese may find themselves somewhat disoriented. Although there are signs in pinyin (Roman characters) and many of the restaurateurs or store owners speak some English, in Cyrildene’s Chinatown you’re unlikely to find anyone familiar with South Africa’s other ten official languages. That’s because the majority of the people who live, work and socialise in the area are comparatively recent immigrants to the country. Most of the approximately 300,000 people in South Africa who are of Chinese descent arrived from the People’s Republic of China (PRC, which comprises mainland China and Hong Kong) in the last two decades. Since the ‘opening up’ of both countries in the 1990s, more and more Chinese people have chosen to make South Africa their home. The numbers are, of course, an estimate; but although there are no official figures, it’s certain that the local Chinese population is expanding. The core of the Chinese South African community, however, consists of those who were born here – a minority group of second, third and fourth-generation citizens numbering up to 12,000 people – most of whom do not, in fact, speak Chinese. They are the descendents of numerous ‘waves’ of Chinese emigrants over the course of more than a hundred years. In fact, there is evidence that Chinese mariners interacted with the indigenous peoples of southern Africa as early the fourteenth century. But the most significant period was from the 1870s onwards, after a combination of political unrest and natural disasters forced thousands of people from the Kwangtung (Guangdong) region in south China to leave their homes and make a new life elsewhere. Many travelled to Mauritius, and from there onward to the harbour cities of Durban and Port Elizabeth. Ethnic tensions amongst these exiles remained (there were two major groups, the Cantonese and Moiyeanese, who spoke different languages and were culturally distinct) and these differences were heightened by the stresses of arriving in a new country. While the Moiyeanese stayed in the coastal towns, the Cantonese tended to travel further inland. They saw opportunities in the diamond fields of Kimberley and, later, the gold reef of the Witwatersrand. But life was not easy for ‘John Chinaman’, as early South African newspapers referred to the new arrivals; as the scornful name suggests, Chinese people faced the strong prejudice of European settlers in the cities, who felt their business interests threatened and whose bigotry was fuelled by ancient stereotypes about ‘orientals’. Other Chinese were even less fortunate. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Chinese convicts and indentured labourers (or ‘coolies’) had been shipped to South Africa at the request of the British colonial government. Those who obtained their ‘freedom’ were subjected to restricted movement; both Natal and the Cape prohibited Chinese immigration. The treatment of Chinese people in the Boer republics was not much better and they were banned from settling in the Orange Free State. Then, after the Anglo-Boer War, over 60,000 Chinese workers were ‘imported’ to South Africa to work on the mines – only to be ‘deported’ again after three years. Despite these hardships, those Chinese who were able to stay in the country combined an entrepreneurial energy with a steady determination to make a place for themselves in their adopted homeland. Various clubs and business associations were formed, providing support networks as well as opportunities to affirm Chinese cultural traditions. Two regions developed particularly strong Chinese communities: the Eastern Cape and the former Transvaal. In Port Elizabeth, Malaikam (adapted from ‘Malay Camp’) was the common name for a small but flourishing Chinatown in Evatt Street. There is still a substantial Chinese community in the friendly city. It was in Johannesburg, however, that the major Chinatown developed. This was not in Cyrildene – which, technically, is Joburg’s ‘new’ or ‘second’ Chinatown. The original Chinatown was and is at the bottom of Commissioner Street in Ferreirastown, south-west of the CBD. The area is fairly run-down, but there are still Chinese stores and restaurants amongst the tenement buildings and vacant lots. If you ask any of the locals to tell you about Ferreirastown, they will reply: “Ask Walter at the Gift Shop”. Sure enough, when I visited Sui Hing Hong Gift Shop – the oldest remaining business from the high days of ‘old’ Chinatown – Walter Pon was there, with a ready smile even as he busied himself with inventories and staff meetings. The store stocks every conceivable type of cooking sauce, spice and noodle; ceramics of the decorative and functional variety; fireworks; miscellania for performing traditional ceremonies; and, inevitably, a generous display of adult magazines, erotica and sex toys (along with cans of “Dr Fong’s Sex Powder”). At Sui Hing Hong I also met Molly Fok, who – though she wouldn’t tell me how old she was – assured me that she’d been working on Commissioner Street for a long time – “Long enough to see lots of changes”. Like all Chinese who grew up under apartheid, Molly was affected by racist segregation laws. Unlike the Japanese, who were granted ‘honorary white’ status, the Chinese were partly tolerated but never integrated into white society; indeed, even when the National Party offered white status to the Chinese, community leaders rejected the proposal because they wanted to be granted equal rights while remaining ‘non-whites’. Molly is dubious about the value of the belated recognition that the Chinese were disadvantaged by apartheid legislation and should therefore be included in the government’s BEE codes. Others, however, feel that it serves a useful symbolic function. Either way, as evidenced by the growth of Chinese goods markets in Bruma (near Cyrildene) and, more recently, Ottery in Cape Town – as well as by phenomena such as the anomalous but popular Buddhist temple established fifteen years ago in Bronkhorstspruit – Chinese people in South Africa will continue to make an important contribution to the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the country.
Read all about it
- All Under Heaven: The Story of a Chinese Family in South Africa (Darryl Accone) |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|