The golden era of South End

The Herald

08-05-2025

There are tears for a long-lost era — and then there are the vibrant memories. Happy ones. Of children playing in the Baakens Valley and its quarry.
The kind of outdoor games kids played and loved back in the 1960s. But there is a difference.
Something unique to a divided country which is slowly heading towards its date with its democratic destiny.
The difference then were the dark shadows of members of the apartheid government police's dreaded Security Branch, keeping an ever-watchful eye over their fun activities.
But children and security policemen are not a good fit. Why should they be?
Then again, this is what was then Port Elizabeth's (Gqeberha) South End in the mid-1960s.
A vibrant, colourful and densely populated suburb of cross-cultural homes and tight-knit families which, like Cape Town's District Six, had defied the draconian rules of an unnatural and menacing social system.
Apartheid ruled its racist roost throughout the land. But not here. And South End — with its beloved food shops, greengrocers, clothing outlets, hairdressers and candy stores — thrived.
It is, in the nature of history, a brief shining moment.
In 10 years hence, all this will be gone. A wasteland. With only its memories swirling about the demolished buildings and dusty rubble of the city's notorious northwesterly gusts.
'But it didn't really bother us — the Security Branch guys,' says Yusuf 'Mannetjie' Cassem, 81 this month, who — with two of his older brothers — was earlier this year visiting the now very changed playground of their youth.
'We were so used to having them [security police] around all the time.'
And The Herald was there in 1965,to reflect the news, the views and the happenings of the old South End, and its eventual demise.
'The Herald played a very important role in our daily lives,' Yusuf's brother, Addie, 86, recalls.
'There was a lot of coverage of what was happening in South End. And of course, we loved the sports pages. Sport — all kinds of sport — was a big part of our lives.
'It was the paper for the people,' the brothers recalled.
'And the stories of South End and what happened to it were recorded.'
Yusuf is moved to tears as he sits alongside his brothers in the South End Museum.
They immigrated to the UK as young adults when the Group Areas Act became the ruling National Party's chief weapon — one of social mass division and inequality — to enforce its segregation policies.
But in South End, the population of Malay, Asian, Chinese, black, coloured and white residents couldn't have cared less about the race of their neighbours; the members of the large Cassem clan and other families got along famously.
On their first visit back in 30 years, it has been a roller-coaster journey.
'It has been very emotional, to hug and see old friends,' Addie said.
He grew up with his family — six brothers and four sisters — at 29 Fairy Street.
'You could see the docks. We all helped my dad work-wise. He was a builder, home decorator, working on art interiors: a real all-rounder.'
Anwar Cassem, 83, said their father had a motor workshop in their backyard where the brothers would help their father fix cars.
'You could fit 21 cars in there. And we would spend most of our time helping him with this after school.
'He was strict because he didn't want us hanging out on the street corners with the so-called 'skollie boys',' Anwar said, chuckling.
While the brothers' father, Omar, may have been a talented artist, decorator, builder and mechanic, the Cassem brothers said he was — foremost — a vocal and tireless anti-apartheid political activist and campaigner, who was also a close associate of renowned educator, journalist and poet professor Dennis Brutus.
'It was quite normal to have people like Helen Suzman (of the then Progressive Party) and Dennis Brutus coming through our front door,' the brothers said.
The Security Branch was checking on their father all the time and taking note of what he was saying at rallies — taking him in for questioning, but never arresting him on any charge related to his political activism, they said.
All three of them smile wryly when they remember how security police even went as far as to suggest that the Cassem home's workshop was big enough 'to be a bomb factory' and they would be searching behind panels for evidence of any such 'bomb-making'.
But for the Cassem boys in their teens, such interference in their lives did not matter. They did what teens did in the 1950s and 1960s.
They went to the movies, drew pictures of James Dean and Elvis Presley on the backs of their jackets, painted flames on their scooters, and chatted about girls.
Today, they look at the huge mural in the museum hall, depicting a carefree, sunlit street scene.
'That's exactly how it was,' Addie said.
'We were barefoot, in shorts and playing happily. And it was beautiful.'
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