Cape Town: In a tweed suit against the gangs – the amazing methods of the Brotherhood Social Club

The Brotherhood Social Club tries to save young people in the townships of Cape Town from a gang career. The amazing antidote: tweed and dance. The stern foundation supports the project. Now young people apparently murdered one of the members.

Marc Goergen

In spring 2021, the star reported for the first time on the work of the Brotherhood Social Club in the townships of Cape Town. Their men try to protect young people from a career in the criminal gangs. Using designer suits and dancing, they grab teenagers’ attention and then help them find jobs or quit school. The stern foundation supports the project.

Now a fellow member of the Brotherhood has become a victim of gangs himself. Mphikhaseya Npuhly, 49, (far left in the lead picture, with a stick) was murdered on November 12th in his home in Kayelitsha township. His 23-year-old son is seriously injured in hospital. The alleged background: Young gang members had stolen tools from him a few days earlier. Npuhly had wanted to confront her. Thereupon they attacked him and his son. The police are on and have started the investigation.

“It’s so tragic,” says Mncedisi Sogwangqa, one of the founders of the Brotherhood, but it fits in with the current situation in the townships. “The gangs are becoming more and more powerful and brutal – also because of the growing poverty, because many people here have lost their jobs in the pandemic.” Sogwangqa, just called “Izzy” by everyone, doesn’t want to give up. The Brotherhood Social Club wants to continue its activities. The star foundation will support him in this.

Reread the article on the work of the Brotherhood.

Sometimes it is only a few kilometers that separate the dream from the nightmare – like in Cape Town. Here the beaches, the restaurants, the parks, the glamor of one of the most beautiful cities in Africa. There, just behind Table Mountain, the other world: a seemingly endless sea of ​​small houses and corrugated iron huts, criss-crossed by a cobweb of paths. The Cape Flats are a universe of their own, riddled with drugs, murders, rape. Mncedisi Sogwangqa calls it his home.

“Violence is part of everyday life here, the young people totally lack perspective,” says Sogwangqa, 49, whom everyone just calls Izzy. It starts with a theft, then a robbery, at some point it’s just a small step until they end in a corridor. “We didn’t want to accept that any longer.”

We – this is Izzy’s association, the Brotherhood Social Club. And his surprising antidote to violence and gangs: designer clothes and dance.

Tap dance with an African influence

Tap dance with an African influence: Pantsula is the name of the dance with which the club draws attention

© Isabel Corthier

It’s an amazing sight to see Izzy and friends roaming the streets. Fine leather shoes and hats, tweed jackets with checked shirts, then again they combine sneaker classics like the “All Stars” with bow ties and white shirts.

Like a strange splash of color

They stand out – and that’s exactly what they want. People stop, some laugh, others clap. And again and again guys come up to you who want a selfie, you start talking, discussing, it’s something like the first contact.

Suits and dancing also impress many young people: This is how the Brotherhood starts talking to them

Suits and dancing also impress many young people: This is how the Brotherhood starts talking to them

© Isabel Corthier

The line has been cast, now comes the second bait. Some from the Brotherhood begin to dance, fast and rhythmically, it is reminiscent of a kind of tap dance in which African elements are mixed. The feet drum on the floor in a fast rhythm, the bodies twist and twist, the performance seems like a foreign splash of color in the dreary everyday life of Cape Flats – and yet it has a tradition in the townships of South Africa. “My father taught me all this,” says Izzy.

The performance has its origins in Sophiatown, a poor district of Johannesburg. In the early 1950s, Sophiatown was one of the cultural hotspots for black South Africa. It was the first years of apartheid after the “National Party” came to power. Some men from the township began to counter poverty and increasing disenfranchisement with designer suits that they had laboriously saved for themselves.

Grace against poverty – people in other African countries also rely on this principle. The so-called sapeurs, for example, wear their often flashy suits with a proud gesture through the slums of Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo as well as in neighboring Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

When buying shoes, men look for small mistakes in order to get the pairs cheaper

When buying shoes, men look for small mistakes in order to get the pairs cheaper

© Isabel Corthier

In South Africa there is also the dance: the pantsula. Inspired by American jazz, Sophiatown developed its special choreography. The similarity with tap dancing also has its background in poverty. Fumbling on the floor should stress the expensive shoes less. Resource conservation is a principle that still applies today: Izzy and his friends glue thick rubber soles under their shoes so that they last longer.

Sophiatown was a victim of apartheid and brutally evacuated, but Pantsula survived. The increasingly rigorous separation of black and white caused the townships to grow rapidly from the 1970s onwards, and gangs began to compete for power and territory. At the same time, a harder, faster pantsula developed. In the 80s, influences from hip-hop mixed into it. Today companies such as the jeans brand Diesel have recognized the fast moves as an image vehicle and shoot YouTube spots with the dancers.

A society of inequality

Izzy and his friends at the Brotherhood Social Club have not yet received much of this trendiness. For them, suits and dance are not an advertising medium, but rather a means of attracting young people at risk. Once they are fascinated by the weird group, Izzy and his buddies try to win the boys over by talking to them. They help with the job search and sometimes even directly support poor families with money.

The men and women of the Brotherhood Social Club depend on support.  We will forward your donation without any deductions.  This is where you can help.

The men and women of the Brotherhood Social Club depend on support. We will forward your donation without any deductions. This is where you can help.

Even more than a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and nowhere else do rich and poor meet as hard as in and around Cape Town. Drugs are ubiquitous in the townships, especially Tik, as the local variant of crystal meth is called here. The offcuts, which sometimes contain battery acid or rat poison, are so sexually stimulating that even 16-year-olds have asked their mothers to have sex with their pants down.

Izzy is a mixture of job counselor, probation officer and chaplain in this world. A shrill suit wearer between corrugated iron huts – and a figure of authority for the young people; many call him Tata, father, the traditional and respectful form of address in his Xhosa people for older men.

Izzy talking to a former gang member

Mncedisi Sogwangqa, called Izzy, in conversation with a former gang member. Izzy is respected, the boys call him Tata – father on Xhosa

© Isabel Corthier

Like so many in the Cape Flats, he was not born here. Izzy’s home is the Eastern Cape, the landscape in southeastern South Africa with hundreds of hills, from which Nelson Mandela also comes. Izzy’s village is just a few miles from the green valleys where little Nelson once tended the goats as a child.

He came to Cape Town in 1994, the years of brutal upheaval at the end of apartheid. He found a job as a warehouse worker in a transport company. He still works there today – a privilege in times of the pandemic. “Many of us have lost our jobs,” he says.

They are hit hard by the pandemic

Last year, the South African government ordered its citizens to have one of the toughest lockdowns in the world, and even the sale of alcohol and cigarettes was banned. Families from the more affluent districts of Cape Town no longer wanted to have a cleaning lady in the house for fear of Covid-19, the gardener also seemed unnecessary, large companies fired a number of workers.

At the moment shops and restaurants have reopened, but autumn and winter in the southern hemisphere are just around the corner and the number of infections is expected to rise again. And because the rich countries have secured most of the vaccines, vaccines are not in sight for most of them.

Women are still the exception in the Brotherhood Social Club

Women are still the exception in the Brotherhood Social Club. Those who are there also value appearance and design

© Isabel Corthier

The club also had to cut back on its activities. Founded seven years ago by Izzy and four friends, the “Brotherhood” was actually expanding. In addition to Cape Town, men – and some women – came together in groups in six other cities; The club has more than 100 colleagues in total. They usually all meet once a year, but last year’s meeting fell victim to the pandemic. In Port Elizabeth, a club member even died of Covid.

During these months the men rarely roam the Cape Flats as a group, Whatsapp has replaced a lot of personal contact, but the idea of ​​not letting young people slip into the gangs and getting them excited about style, clothing and dance is in the days pandemic more relevant than ever.

Or as Izzy puts it: “Regardless of whether Covid or not: Anyone who dresses like a gentleman also behaves like one.”

Published in stern 17/2021

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