Fred De Vries : Melville

The 'fearless councillor' of Melville

fred — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:42:52 GMT

“Melville is my pet child,” she says, followed by a long pause. “And I’m surprised I’m not getting more grey hairs from Melville.”

By then we’ve talked for some fifty minutes about the life and times of ‘fearless councillor’ Sharon Sabbagh, a journey that took us from her birth as the third child of eight in PE in 1961 to the acrimonious separation from her husband in 2005. In between there were markers like Sharon experiencing her parents’ divorce when she was five, living in Rhodesia and wasting away in Luxemburg, going to a convent, studying while pregnant, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and raising four kids. “I’m very new to the interview game. I’m not a true politician, you must remember that,” she says after she has checked her watch and notices how long we’ve taken to cover her CV.

Eventually we reach that point two years ago when she became the Democratic Alliance-councillor for Joburg’s Ward 87. “That’s Forest Town, Parktown West, parts of Richmond, Westcliff, Parkview, Greenside East, Greenside, Parkhurst and Melville,” she says and sighs.

Most of these Joburg suburbs have affluent, assertive residents who live secluded lives behind high walls. Sabbagh’s main problem is to make them care for a wider community. “People have become very selfish. There’s no community spirit anymore, no concern for your neighbour or the other person who might be affected by what you do. It’s all me me me, that whole not-in-my- backyard syndrome.”

But things have changed, bit by bit. Over the last few years residents associations in most of ‘her suburbs’ have gone through some kind of regeneration. Sadly, crime has been the driving force, but other matters such as town planning, heritage, outdoor advertising and environment have benefited in the slipstream of the newfound solidarity. Sabbagh has successfully been advocating the idea of forming multi-suburb committees that deal with each single issue. Because seven well-informed, motivated people from different areas can work as an efficient pressure group when it comes to fighting issues like tearing down historical buildings or putting up atrocious billboards. “You’re fighting big fish with lots of money, big corporates. But when you have people with the knowledge that can put up compelling arguments to take them on…”

Melville, however, is a different matter. The neighborhood has grown from a white working class suburb to one of the few remaining parts of Joburg with proper, multi-cultural street life. For many of its residents Melville is something of a last bastion of bohemia, which virtually died following the demise of Hillbrow, Yeoville and Troyeville. Living and partying in Melville is still the antidote to clinical townhouse/mall existence.

But for the last three, four years also the situation in Melville has deteriorated. Most of the day-time trade and small shops couldn’t cope with the competition from Campus Square and the Boulevard and closed down, while the number of bars and clubs increased, dragging a motley crew of clubbers, dealers, drinkers, thugs, perverts and criminals along. Admittedly, a Friday night in Melville is nothing compared to a Friday night in Amsterdam or London, but its symbolic value as the decaying heart and soul of bohemia is so important that a much bigger battle is fought here. It’s about the free spirit of the metropolis, about big versus small and village idealism versus thug life.

Sabbagh agrees. “I spend a lot more time on the Melville issue than on any other issue. It shouldn’t be like that. But I believe it’s warranted because if we don’t pay attention to it, Melville is going to fall by the wayside.”

Sharon Sabbagh was elected councillor in 2006, finally giving in to the requests from Gauteng’s DA-caucus leader Mike Moriarti who had been pushing her since the early nineties. She declined because her husband wasn’t happy with a wife in politics. But after the separation there was no longer a controlling man. She would however have to combine her political career with her business as forensic accountant, the emotional turmoil of her divorce and mothering four children. “I spoke to the kids and they all looked at me and said: ‘Why are you asking us? Are you stupid? You always wanted to do this. Do it!’

And the DA? How did she slot in with what then still was Tony Leon’s party? She laughs. “We had to go through various interviews and they had to select the candidate. One of the questions was: do you believe in the DA morals and codes etc? I turned around and said: ‘It’s not so much if I believe in this, but whether the DA believes in what I stand for.’ Because how do you change who you are? Can they adapt to me?”

Ostensibly they did. And she won the local elections with a huge majority. “But I would hope that in the next elections, if I do stand again, the seat is won by me and not party I represent. I think I do have a lot of support in my area.”

She sure ain’t your avarage politican, she’s more than hollow words and grand slogans. Sharon Sabbagh became known as the fearless councillor who patrols Melville, armed with a video camera and a decibel meter. One of her tactics is to be such a nuisance to the troublemakers that they’ll move elsewhere. She identified the drug dealers and tried to talk sense into them. She approached cars during drug deals on 4^th Avenue with the message: “Listen, we’re watching you guys, we’re taking your registration and handing it over to the police. Don’t come and buy drugs here anymore because this site is monitored.”

She’s the one who looked after Melville’s street kids. “There’s clubs that bring in the street children, who in turn are part of the petty crime. We also have the situation where they are involved in child prostitution. People come and place an order for a particular street child. We’ve arrested two offenders. One was a transsexual and one a restaurant manager.”

Melville’s problems look intractable, the proverbial chicken and egg, with no quick fix. The main drags are 7^th street and Main Road, with 4^th Avenue as the lively link. Many of the bars have transformed into clubs and stay open until 2 am, after which the drinking continues on the street, often turning ugly. Sabbagh is reluctant to mention specific clubs after receiving letters that threatened to take her to court. “But we know where they are and where the problems are,” she says and sums it up: noise levels too high, trading way past trading hours, not complying with the liquor license, allowing people to take their drinks out to the streets, allowing drugs to be sold and not complying with the environmental laws.

This is how she hopes to tackle it: show what is being done is against the law and then make sure proper and efficient law enforcement takes place. But it’s an uphill battle. Take the rag-tag army of self-appointed car guards, who feel that their line of duty stretches well beyond protecting cars. “Some are good and genuine,” she stresses. “But there’s also a very problematic element. They are the ones that sell drugs or keep the drugs for the dealers that that walk the streets. Others are monitoring the cars to see if they meet the demand; if a certain car comes in they make the call and someone will come in and steal the car and pay them R500-600 for the information, and the car guard disappears for the night. Others will monitor and watch and see a certain thing in the car and someone else will come and break in and steal the sound system. They’re all in cahoots, it’s very organised.”

Over the last two years Melville has witnessed some serious incidents, including violent robberies, muggings, shootings and the rape of a waitress. The disturbances stretch well beyond 7^th Street and Main Road. Inevitably house prices have dropped and many old Melvillites have moved. She nods. “It’s because of the perception of Melville falling into disrepute. A lot of people just want to sell up and go. I tell them to reconsider. Your sunken costs [when you sell and move] are easily R200,000. If you put R20,000 into the community to try and fix it we can resolve this problem and you can stay in the area you want to be in.”

She’s confident things in Melville can still be turned around. “The number of revellers has reduced, the clubs are closing earlier because the people are not there anymore. There’s a visible change.”

Would that be the small but symbolic success that the city and country so desperately need? Or would it merely be a Pyrrhic victory? “The biggest problem is that too many South Africans have almost given up and aren’t standing up and coming forward and fighting the good fight. They’ve become so apathetic that they don’t want to be involved, and that’s the problem. We have to look past the divide. That’s where we have to come together as a community, as a people. And that’s what we lack in SA. I see a change, but only in the community that I work. You can only do so much…”

1961 Born in Port Elizabeth as Sharon Mellon

1967 Parents get divorced

1974 Family moves to Rhodesia

1977 Family moves to Natal to avoid draught

1980 Matriculates in Transvaal

1981 Studies Accounting at Unisa

1983 Marries Danny Sabbagh

1994 Starts pre-school at home which grows into nursery

2000 Moves to Luxemburg where husband has a job

2001 Returns to SA because hates Luxemburg

2001 Climbs Mt Kilimanjaro for charity

2006 Wins local elections on a DA ticket

2007 Divorces Sabbagh

Heroes/influences:

“My mother more than anything else inspired me and what made me what I am today. Also because of what she went through (eight children and a divorce) and how much she battled. But she managed to bring us up with right morals, principals and values, which she instilled in us more than anything.

“And what inspires me to do what I do is that I honestly believe there’s still a lot of good in SA. There’s a lot that was wrong in the past and I don’t agree with about every bit of it. People can’t forget the past because it impacted on many of us, but we have to be bigger and better than that for the better of the country. And I do believe that there are still many people across all racial spectrum and religious beliefs and creeds and cultures and genders that really do want SA to turn and to be a better place.”

Riaan Botha and Canned Applause, Melville's gateway to Gen Y?

fred — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:27:00 GMT

Is Melville ready for Generation Y? Does Joburg’s hippest neighborhood have space for twenty-something kids who don’t moan about the “disappearing old Melville”, and who don’t sit in the Xai-Xai endlessly lamenting the “decline of the country” and turning those alcohol fuelled conversations into sour magazine articles?

Check the block on 7^th Street between 1^st and 2^nd Avenue, and you’ll discover a handful of funky new shops that are run by and cater for those who never really experienced apartheid and don’t miss the “old Yeoville days”.

“It’s Ke ai across the road, a kind of Asian pop shop, the punk tattoo parlour next door and us,” says Riaan Botha, who runs the Canned Applause music shop next door to Nuno’s restaurant. “There’s quite some traffic between those three shops. Like the girls will go for the clothes while the boyfriends will come here for the music. That kind of vibe.

We order hot chocolate. The Xai-Xai waitress looks slightly puzzled. No alcohol? “We get a lot of positive feedback from the community,” continues Botha. “They are happy that young entrepreneurs are starting up here. There are too many bars that attract a scummy crowd. In December it was dreadful here, the crime rate went through the roof, people got abducted and raped and left stranded. It was awful.”

Riaan Botha was born in 1981, which makes him a genuine member of Generation Y, i.e. those born between 1979 and . The website ‘Y-Gen for dummies’ describes them as “having a reputation for experiencing boredom and frustration with slow-paced environments, traditional hierarchies and even slightly outdated technologies.”

These are the iPodders, the MySpacers, the downloaders and file sharers, who draw from the endless possibilities of the web to build a truly eclectic frame of reference, which to most of us sounds like a foreign language. Like Riaan’s current favourite bands are Mice Parade, 65 Days of Static and Paper Cuts…

These are the kids that grew up in the lap of luxury, in a safe, sheltered and nursing environment, where stubbornness, assertiveness and individualism are prized qualities. It’s an anti-slacker world. Ideas bubble like fizzy drinks. Risk taking is a must. Because, let’s face it, who would have thought Canned Applause had a lease of life when it first opened in 2005 as a badly stocked, awkward little shop on 3^rd Avenue with a hyper enthusiastic, if somewhat tiring young salesman with long curly hair.

“It was good for a little experiment, to see if viable,” says Botha, whose sales tactics are more mature these days. “Word of mouth was my strongest aid. People were like: there’s this little shop, all tucked away and you have to give directions to get there, and started coming and looking for that stuff.”

Canned Applause is basically an alternative music store, a real life version of the shop that features in the film and novel Hi-Fidelity. Botha laughs from underneath his beanie. “I get so many comparisons to that. But if any movie would have had any influence, it would be Empire Records, a 90s film about all these kids from different backgrounds working at this record shop. There was the musician’s type, the arty type, the weird student type. It actually inspired me to work in a CD shop.”

While working for big music stores in Durban and Johannesburg, he got fed up with the money fixated corporate world, where everything is geared towards “shifting units”. Hence his store only stocks independent releases. Want to buy the latest Comets on Fire or Bright Eyes, check Canned Applause, where you’ll find them, reasonably priced, on CD and vinyl.

Yes, vinyl, as in the 33rpm long players that everyone thought would become obsolete with the advent of digital music. “My vinyl stock is slowly growing,” asserts Botha. “A lot of people who download prefer to own their music on vinyl, because of the tangible thing and because of the art work. Like that new Bright Eyes album, the art work is beautiful! It comes with a little thing that you have to slide across the sleeve, and pictures come out. You can’t download that!”

Botha’s way of stocking and selling is an intricate mix of reading music magazines like Mojo, Uncut and Magnet, visiting internet blogs, downloading free tracks, keeping customers informed of his latest orders, and imagining what clients might like. The trick is to be fast and affordable. Hence he mainly orders direct from the United States and tries to help customers in shaping their taste. It works, because as we move from the shop to Xai-Xai next door, he, in passing, manages to convince a client to purchase the latest 65 Days of Static, explaining that it’s “like Aphex Twin, but with real instruments”.

Later he says: “A lot of people make a trip to come here. You get media people, advertising guys and lots of lawyers. I have one guy who lives somewhere in Africa, he’s Spanish or Brazilian. He comes and phones and says: ‘I’m on my way, pile me some stuff up.’ And he goes through it and chooses what he wants. That’s my favourite customer, the type who says: ‘I listen to this and this, what would you recommend.’”

Apart from flaunting obscure music at unsuspecting customers Botha also organises acoustic performances and art exhibitions at the back of his shop, visited by energetic young kids with colourful clothes and crazy hairstyles – the breath of fresh air that jaded and scummy Melville so badly needs.

In fact, says Botha, it’s the beginning of a truly new scene, centered around bands like Kid of Doom, Desmond and the Tutu’s and Green is for Turbo. “Everybody is superhappy to help each other out. All those bands are getting together and collaborating. That’s how scenes are started. I often thought of throwing in the towel and go overseas. But my friends always encouraged me, and now I don’t want to leave anymore, because of all the bands coming up and the scenes starting, it’s very exciting”

And these scenes - essentially like-minded arty people collaborating – are very much on par with those in the rest of the world. The days of isolation are over, says Botha. “Thanks to internet you can download any music at any time, simply by downloading. So you’re exposed to so much more influences. Therefore the music coming out in this country is way fresh and much more interesting than it was five years ago.”

Riaan wants Canned Applause to be a catalyst in this process. He has plans to turn the upper part into a space with couches, a coffee machine and a projector, so people can hang out and meet. He wants to open another store in Cape Town. He’s plotting to go to America, work there for a record company to learn the trade, come back and start his own record company. He’s even thinking of buying a vinyl presser, so local bands can release limited edition LPs and singles on his label.

With most people you’d scoff at all those dreams and ambitions. Not with Botha, who with a big grin says his best characteristics are perseverance and being open minded. And his worst? “I moan all the time and I’m highly strung. I stress a lot, more than I need to.”

And Melville? Is he happy here? “My former business partner wanted me to go to Edenvale to that freaky new suburbia. Horrible! I hate that environment. He wanted me to keep commercial titles and soft porn, just to make ends meet. He was helping out a lot on the financial side, but in the end we couldn’t see eye to eye about what I wanted to do. He was: ‘Do you wanna make lots of money and make this fly, or keep doing what you’re doing and make little money?’ I was: ‘I’ll get by for a while and it will get bigger.’ Which it is doing. Fantastic.”

Heroes/influences: Lester Bangs (“Rock writer who always stuck to his opinion. I loved his character in Almost Famous”);music: Modest Mouse, Red House Painters, Jeff Tweedy from Wilco; movies: Empire Records, Hi Fidelity; Bernard Black (“He’s a character in the BBC series Black Books, about a bookshop. In the first episode he’s a prissy and arrogant, the complete opposite of me. He’s shoving people out of the shop with a broom even though it’s only 3 o’clock. Yes, I’d love to be like that.”)