(d)urban(a)

Sewing at Zamukuziphilisa

Today M and I met up with Mrs. G at the Zamukuziphilisa Community Centre to talk about sewing.  As I mentioned last week we have a mountain of decorator and upholstery fabric samples (mostly in small squares) and they have several sewing machines and overlocks at the centre, as well as women interested in trying to earn a sustainable income.  The Global Poverty Research Group estimates South African unemployment at about 40% using a broad definition and still at 25-30% using a narrow definition (where a statistically significant sample of unemployed acknowledged they both wanted work and actively looked for it).  What I was reading yesterday at the Killie Campbell Collections - about developing craft programs for economic development - was what we were trying to brainstorm together to put into practice today.  Before I spoke to the larger group of women, Mrs. G, M, and I spoke briefly and Mrs. G  said that we should make clear what the women would gain if they sewed with us today.  Basically, self-employed informal laborers have to make the daily decision about what to do with their time and any time where they are not earning money or potentially earning skills to earn money in the future in order to be able to sustain a basic level of living, is time wasted.  I'll be honest in saying that I felt some pressure after thinking about that.  When J suggested I could work with some of the women with the fabric samples to come up with product ideas, I really liked the idea, but I had not conceived of what was at stake in the situation until today. 

M and I spoke to the women and said they were welcome to join us and that I was going to show a basic sewing project - an over-the-shoulder basic purse with several options for applique or quilted pockets on the side - that could be completed in about an hour and that could sell for R35-70 (about $5-10 US) depending upon the time involved, additional materials used, and the amount of embroidery/beading embellishment.   For the first sample, I appliqued a generic bird shape and added a bead and some top-stitching as a quick accent.  M told me that when I return to sew with them again, the women participants would appreciate a certificate for each of them to acknowledge the (small) amount of training they received from me.  She said that merely because of my position - having a degree in Fashion Design and a brief work history in design in the United States - the certificate could function as employment capital in the future at some point.  What M and I realized after arriving was that unless we found a market for the items, then it wouldn't be worth producing very many of them (although J already gave us an order for five of them after she saw the finished bag).   Over the next few days and this weekend I'm going to visit the local craft markets and shops in the area to get a sense of how their consignment relationships work and if they would be interested in this type of product in this price range.  I plan to return to the community centre on Thursday with a hard-paper pattern for the body of the bag, its strap, a basic pocket, and several basic accent shapes (like a bird, cat, circle, etc.).  Maybe I can design and print those certificates by then too - I am still honestly fascinated at how my position/authority translates in this situation.  Because I have spent years occupying a critical standpoint, it is personally very awkward for me to occupy this position - especially one that is quite open for critique since I will act as the intermediary between the women craft producers and potential buyers/consignment lessors. 

"Umuntu umuntu ngabantu"

Today M and I returned to Umlazi to sew at the Community Centre.  I'll be honest - the past couple of days I had been feeling overwhelmed and incapacitated at moments to cope with some of the local realities here, especially the amount of poverty, how devastating it is to so many different people, its connection to racism, and how it stands in stark contrast to some of the gated communities and houses here.  Sometimes it feels too easy to let the feelings of frustration and empathy overwhelm and leave me prostrate.  After sewing for a while today, though, I really started to feel better.  I realized - I absolutely love sewing on an industrial sewing machine.  Starting a project and being able to adjust the tension on the machine, wind the bobbin, lift the presser foot with the kneelift, and just press down on an industrial's pedal feels good.  It's also giggle-inducing for me to watch someone sew on one for the first time and see how surprised he or she will appear because of the machine's power (the women at the centre all use them but M is just learning on one).  Today reminded me of when I had just graduated high school and I didn't have any plans about what to do next.  I was frustrated with reading and sitting still so the thought of continuing on at a community college didn't really enter my mind.  That summer I enrolled at West Valley Occupational Center and started working towards a certificate in Power Sewing/Operating Industrial Garment Machinery (including overlocks, blind hemmers, and buttonholers) and one in Flat Pattern Drafting.  I stayed there for another two semesters to complete my certificate and I don't think I read a book - unless it was a sewing manual or patternmaking textbook- for that entire year.  That was when I really got spoiled on using industrial machines and saved to buy my own Juki single-needle ($500!).  Someday I'll be reunited with it since I couldn't affordably or easily move it to Urbana with me.

I learned the expression "umuntu umuntu ngabantu" today from one of the women I was sewing with - it is a Zulu expression (it also occurs in several other languages here, including Sotho and Xhosa) which means "a person is a person because of people."  Since I'm always trying to decenter the human from everything (thanks to my theoretical obsessions with Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour), I would say that a person is a person because of relationships.  Relating to Mrs. Gambushe's sewing machine today helped me feel in action again - it shook my prostration. 

I've included some pictures from today - the first is of M and some of the machines and hanging patterns in the community centre; Mrs. Gambushe is pictured in the second one and she is a really great teacher to the rest of us sewers (I got mixed up when I was attaching a lining to a purse and she walked me through it); I'm in the third picture in the foreground and B is at the sewing machine behind me.

* Pictures taken and published with permission by those depicted - I use initials with the exception of Mrs. Gambushe because of personal preferences.

Archival Moment of Joy!: Finding Connection Between US Bureau of Indian Affairs and SA Bantu Authority Policies on Craft Production

I am not embarrassed to admit that I grinned widely and even joyfully gasped aloud today when I found a concrete connection between the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bantu Authority's policies on craft production.  Since early 2006 I have been collecting research on craft production as a form of economic sustainability sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with a focus on the historical and contemporary production and reception of Navajo woven textiles.  This particular focus grew out of an August 2004 visit to a Navajo Craft Fair and Workshop in Flagstaff Arizona and after meeting Alisse Portnoy when the UIUC Center for Writing Studies sponsored her talk about her book, Their Right to Speak:  Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debate (2005).  I have written critiques of institutional archival practices for Navajo textiles in their tendency to devalue innovation in design and other contemporary practices not deemed "traditional," and also the related archival practice of periodization that effaces influential events on Navajo groups and textile production.  For example, most large institutional collections of Navajo textiles fail to mention the 1864 internment of Navajos and Mescaleros at the Bosque Redondo military reservation, which both limited access to standard weaving materials (such as the churro sheep used for home-spun wool yarn and plants used for dyes) and inspired Navajos to depict the conditions of their internment thematically (now known as the "Fort Sumner" motifs) with the crappy commercial yarns they had access to.  Instead, these very important and disruptive designs often get lost within the broader categorization of the "transitional" period (where I suppose "transitional" is supposed to stand in for and euphemize "forced removal/internment/marginalization").  I was also recently inspired by Jane Simonsen's amazing book, Making Home Work:  Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860-1919 (2006). 

As I began to read about the craft policies advocated here in South Africa both by missionaries and later by Bantu authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries, I noticed strong similarities between the governmental and institutional rhetoric surrounding the function of craft, craft production and marketing for Native American groups and "Bantu" groups.  My concern in making an argument connecting them, however, was that it may wash over the very specific, local conditions and situation of two very large indigenous groups and two very different forms of settler colonialism..  So maybe you can understand why finding a concrete connection today to support my argument was a near-cartwheel-inducing moment for me.

I was rifling through the eight files the Killie Campbell collections holds of J.W. Grossert's papers and notes - Grossert was the Organizer of Arts and Crafts (Division of Bantu Education/Department of Native Affairs) in the mid-twentieth century.  In one of the files, on delicate pieces of onionskin, I found a typed report to the Carnegie Corporation Grossert composed upon the completion of his travel grant to the United States and Canada from July 1958 to January 1959.  In the report, Grossert describes and applauds the Bureau of Indian Affairs' craft programs and advocates the establishment of similar programs in "Bantu rural communities."  In the same file, there is even a typed speech that Grossert gave to the Pietermaritzburg Rotary Club on 26 March 1959 where he compares Bantu and Indian education practices and describes the burgeoning "big business" of "various Indian tribes" craft industries.  I can use this 1959 date (which represents a known point of intersection), then, to look at Bantu Authority's policies prior and subsequent to this date to consider the development of craft programs in South Africa and how the Bureau of Indian Affairs' programs may have influenced their development.

* Terms such as "bantu" and "Indian" and their use have been thoughtfully contested - my use of them in this post accords with their use by Grossert and other US and SA governmental authorities during the particular 20th century moment to which I am referring.