Fiyani John ‘Johanni’ Masondo

Born in 1965, Fiyani John Masondo, who signs as Johanni, has spent most of his life as a farm labourer, picking up skills that are never put to use, although they would make an impressive CV. Farm labourers, of course, don’t get to have CVs. They have a temporary existence, based on temporary jobs, with long spells of nothing in between.

Two of Fiyani’s employers were murdered – which meant the end of work. Other jobs were seasonal or affected by the market slump. He’s not a talkative person, so one has to work alongside him, digging in a field, to discover the wide range of knowledge he has acquired about farming. His experience has been diverse and practical. He’s learnt and observed – and lost another job.
In 1999, during another spell of unemployment, Fiyani signed on for temporary work with a poverty relief programme, clearing land for the plough. When that work came to an end, he joined a copper wire class, sitting with twelve-year-olds and learning from the beginning.

It wasn’t easy for a man with such a strong sense of manhood. He is independent, stubborn, slow, and methodical – and he faltered learning to bead (traditionally seen as a woman’s activity). He would come into his own with the use of brass beads on copper baskets for metal is perceived as a male element. Fiyani was comfortable with brass, a ‘male’ decoration – heavy and assertive, forged out of rock.

Necessity has made him come to terms with glass beads, and his skilled coloured beading has drawn admiration from the women. But that’s a necessity. His real love is metal – and his best work is metal with no beading at all.

Text adapted from correspondence between Creina Alcock and Julia Meintjes, 2011.

Fiyani John ‘Johanni’ Masondo

Born in 1965, Fiyani John Masondo, who signs as Johanni, has spent most of his life as a farm labourer, picking up skills that are never put to use, although they would make an impressive CV. Farm labourers, of course, don’t get to have CVs. They have a temporary existence, based on temporary jobs, with long spells of nothing in between.

Two of Fiyani’s employers were murdered – which meant the end of work. Other jobs were seasonal or affected by the market slump. He’s not a talkative person, so one has to work alongside him, digging in a field, to discover the wide range of knowledge he has acquired about farming. His experience has been diverse and practical. He’s learnt and observed – and lost another job.
In 1999, during another spell of unemployment, Fiyani signed on for temporary work with a poverty relief programme, clearing land for the plough. When that work came to an end, he joined a copper wire class, sitting with twelve-year-olds and learning from the beginning.

It wasn’t easy for a man with such a strong sense of manhood. He is independent, stubborn, slow, and methodical – and he faltered learning to bead (traditionally seen as a woman’s activity). He would come into his own with the use of brass beads on copper baskets for metal is perceived as a male element. Fiyani was comfortable with brass, a ‘male’ decoration – heavy and assertive, forged out of rock.

Necessity has made him come to terms with glass beads, and his skilled coloured beading has drawn admiration from the women. But that’s a necessity. His real love is metal – and his best work is metal with no beading at all.

Text adapted from correspondence between Creina Alcock and Julia Meintjes, 2011.

Hlekisile Mtshali

Hlekisile Mtshali was born in 1963, and everything about her expressed order: her work, her yard and her clothes.

She got engaged to Mashobeni  Mvelase when she was fifteen years old, and neither of them had ever gone to school. But in an age when there were no schools, a lack of formal learning wasn’t seen as a loss.

Although Hlekisile Mtshali had grown up with the sound of guns and intermittent tribal fighting, nothing prepared her for the years of war that marked her early married life in the district of Msinga. It was the only district in South Africa with a full-time Firearm Squad based at Tugela Ferry since 1955. Originally sent in on a six-month operation “to clear out the guns”, the Squad would eventually remain for forty-seven years, confiscating thousands of guns and leaving many more thousands hidden in the hills. In 1987 Msinga was described as “the most vigorously patrolled police district in the country,” but the police made little impact on the fighting. In the cities and at home, the killing went on.

Ngubo was at war with Ngcengeni when Mashobeni  Mvelase was shot and killed in Johannesburg. Hlekisile Mtshali was a window at twenty-four with a small daughter and no means of support. She had come from a traditional home, so, in due course, Hlekisile Mtshali followed tradition, accepting the courtship of her brother-in-law, Mgabadeli Mvelase. He already had a wife, so he kept his two homes separate and did his best to provide for both, despite his small income selling fruit on the streets of Johannesburg.

Hlekisile Mtshali has been doing handcrafts for as long as she can remember, starting as a small child when her mother and grandmother taught her how to weave grass mats on a homemade wooden loom. She had never touched a needle when she joined the Mdukatshani craft group, but she was a natural, first learning how to thread beads for fine jewellery and later weaving fine copper bowls. Her work is faultless, and you don’t have to look at the label to recognize her finish and precision.

The steady routine of weaving helped her through the unexpected death of her second husband in 2011. Widowed for a second time at the age of forty-eight, she found herself struggling to support the teenage son and daughter Mgabadeli Mvelase had fathered. Unlike their parents, the children grew up in an age where education was relevant, and they were both in high school when their father died.

Hlekisile Mtshali died in July 2019 after a long and afflictive illness.

Text adapted from correspondence between the Mdukatshani Trust and JMFA, 2021.