Aunty Kobera Manual of Ocean View died at the age of 98 on Wednesday 27 July 2016. In 2009 I interviewed her at her home in Ocean View, when she shared some intimate memories of her life in Simon’s Town …………………
I was born in Alfred Lane Simon’s Town on 25 June 1918, the youngest of three children. My earliest memory is of our kitchen. From the minaret of the mosque the people who called the prayer could see right into our kitchen, which led onto the garden at the back. And we could distinctly hear the call. That is one of my first recollections, the call of the Adham.
Beautiful and graceful, at 91, Aunty Kobie’s eyes sparkle with the memories she shares with me as we sit chatting in her pretty lounge in Ocean View. At the window the lovely cream curtains draped elegantly around golden rods, belie her love for beautiful things.
“My great aunt stayed with us and she didn’t allow me to do any chores except to polish the spoons. My eldest sister did all the work, but they did not let me do housework until I was 11. I think it was because I was such a delicate child.
But I loved to play in the street with my friends, that time it was so safe, and we used to run to the beach. In a minute you were at the beach, the one where the yacht club is today, there was no wall there then. My mother was also delicate. That is why my great aunt came to live with us, to help my mother run the house”.
A bright child at school, coming first in every standard except one, she learnt Arabic from a young age, her first teacher being a Turk by the name of Farouk Effendi. “One day he called me up and for no reason at all he hit me. I couldn’t understand it, because I did nothing to him. I ran outside crying, my hand was all swollen, and this older girl who knew me took me home. She kept asking me what I had done to make the teacher hit me and I said I had done nothing. Anyway not long after that the teacher left the school, I don’t know whether the principal or my father had something to do with it, and we got a new Arabic teacher from Salt River, Mr Ismail Taliep”.
“The first house on the left in Alfred Lane belonged to Mr Potts, who was a fisherman. His adopted daughter, Rugaya was my friend and when he came in from the fishing we used to go and help him carry his equipment. Rugaya passed away a few weeks ago, we remained friends all these years”. Aunty Kobie also describes how they as children would stand outside Alfred Hall over the weekends and watch the people dancing inside. “Coloured people and sailors used to go there. We loved to watch them dancing”.
She describes having many neighbours and says “we were friends with all of them”. “Mrs Mary Greeks stayed upstairs with her two children, Ellen and Tommy. Opposite was the Chinese family. His surname was Shangley, but we called him
Mr Hakoen. Mr Hakoen was a widower and he had four sons and a daughter, Mary. Mary was a few years older than me and she used to sometimes take me to the bioscope. Mr Hakoen used to catch crayfish. He used to boil it in a cauldron and we could eat as much as we liked. He had a big yard and the rooms were on the right side. It is where the parking area is, the three lanes, Hospital Lane, Wickboom Lane and Alfred Lane, now it is the parking area, that was his yard”.
According to Aunty Kobie, there were many poor people living in Simon’s Town and many of the housewives took in “washing for the Europeans or for the Navy”. She tells the story of a little girl who would come and ask her mother for stale bread for frikkadels every night and how, when her mother discovered that they actually had no food, she would send food over to this family every night. “People were poor and there was always someone coming to ask for a bietjie tea, or a bietjie suiker, and my mother always gave. My father was a storekeeper for the Navy”, she explains. “We were not rich, but we were comfortable”.
I was the spoilt baby in the family and my adopted brother, Noor Kariem, used to help me with my schoolwork, he taught me how to do fractions.
My father wanted Noor Kariem to become a school teacher, but he ended up becoming a tailor. Because of this my father said I should become a teacher, which I very much wanted to do, but my mother said that because I was a girl I should be trained as a seamstress, as girls should stay in the house. I was most disappointed, but still I did some very good needlework and lacework.
Aunty Kobie says her mother Bahiya nee Kariem and her father, Hadjie Bakaar Manual, were in actual fact first cousins and direct descendents of the two Tuans buried in the Kramat in Dolphin Road, Simon’s Town.
Aunty Kobie takes up the story: “The two Tuans from Sumbawa, Indonesia were Ismail and his son Jaliludien. Ismail had another son in Indonesia who died as a child. His name was Zainab Abedien. Jalilludien fathered Abdul Gakien, Amina, Kobera, Fatima, Aiasa, Abdul Kariem, Abdul Majied, Gadija, Mymoma”.
Abdul Kariem was the father of Aunty Kobie’s mother, Baheya, and Mymona was the mother of Aunty Kobie’s father, Hadjie Bakaar Manual who was born on 02.01.1878.
As a child she remembers going to visit the kramat in Simon’s Town.
Aunty Kobie was 50 years old when by government legislation she was forced to move from the home she was born in. Ironically, years before this came into effect, she wrote a moving letter to the Cape Argus about her love for Simon’s Town, entitled “The charm of Old Snoekie”. In it she said: “Most of the inhabitants of ‘Old Snoekie’ here are of the four generations and they are grandparents. We wouldn’t change Simon’s Town for all the wealth in the world. It is really one of the nicest places to live in. Those who have left for some reason, find themselves coming back again and again for visits or to stay. The place really gets into your blood. Though it is very quiet with its one main street and has little in the way of entertainment, with one bioscope, we are content to end our days here”.
In a heart-wrenching letter to the Argus entitled “Heartache Simon’s Town”, Aunty Kobie expressed her anguish at the move:
“On September 1 a thunderbolt changed this happy town into a place of sorrow.
We have borne with patience and resignation all the injustices and discriminations that are our lot and could still thank the Almighty for the goodness we could share in this beautiful country.
We pray He will continue to guide and sustain us in whatever the future holds for us. It would need a book to tell of all the heartache this news means to each and every one of the affected inhabitants. May I quote from Kahlil Gibran’s “The prophet” to express our feelings in a few short words:
‘How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city’
Those who attended the meeting held in the rest room felt a lifting of the heart to know there are still many who are prepared to help the downtrodden. It brought tears to many eyes to hear the words of encouragement and sympathy spoken by the White speakers. We will be forever grateful and never forget their kindness to us”
The move to Ocean View was a bitter one, as it was a move she did not want to make. She recalls standing in the kitchen and looking out of the window for one last time.
She says she felt defiant and told her family that she would not go, but they convinced her that she could not stay there alone.
Once she moved to Ocean View she realised there was a great need in the community, especially with the children. “The children were running wild, they needed guidance”, she tells me. When she was approached to teach Arabic to the young children at a salary of R10.00, she refused the salary and taught the children for nothing. Here at last, her dream of being a teacher was fulfilled and she taught many children, some of whom are grandparents today. There was no mosque in Ocean View at the time and Aunty Kobie brought a savings tin to the school and got the children to put all their cents in there. Her mind was once again transported to the time when her father, Hadjie Bakaar Manual was raising funds to build the mosque in Simon’s Town. She remembered going with him as far as Paarl and Wellington to collect funds for the mosque, even naming every station that they passed on that journey, to me. Hadjie Bakaar Manual would have been very proud of his daughter and would know that the example he set had borne fruit in this child of his, as next a cake sale was arranged and the proceeds of this, in addition to the cents collected from the children, was the first donation towards the building of the mosque in Ocean View. “There was a lot of struggling for the mosque to be built, it is all the community and the poorest person gave towards the mosque. And they gave bazaars and ratiebs and all kinds of help towards this. The community built the mosque, but they had some professional people, because the mosque was built without the sadekar for the women, and then later they built the sadekar for the women and then they had professional people in. But it was wonderful how the community worked and the poorest person made something for the stalls”.
Aunty Kobie also voluntarily assisted with the Ocean View Dental Clinic for several years, and amongst her papers is a letter from Dorothy Hacking, the Honorary Secretary of the Fish Hoek Welfare Association dated 6 December 1976, thanking her for all her good work over the years.
A mine of information, she is often visited by historians and researchers for advice or help with their research. (A copy of her father’s diary is on file at the Dept of Anthropology at UCT). Lately though, she says her brain only starts working after 2pm, so she prefers to keep all her appointments after that time. Her keen memory goes all the way back to her childhood. She relates how, as a little girl, when the Moslem School was two years old and her father needed to know the names of all 100 pupils there in order to prepare their end of year presents, she was able to name 99 out of the 100. I was totally flabbergasted when she recited the names of each station she passed from Cape Town to Wellington, on a trip with her father as a little girl (so quickly that I could not type them down in time!)
Her only “complaint” with age is that she says she has become shorter, which is a bit of a nuisance as she has had to have all her dresses shortened to accommodate her shorter stature.
I asked Aunty Kobie if she would go back and live in Simon’s Town. Her first response was that there was no Moslem butchery there, and then she smiled at me and said, “My child, I am old now; but if I was younger, I would go back tomorrow”.
Note:
This article is based on an interview with Aunty Kobera Manual conducted by the author, Joline Young in 2009. The newspaper excerpts were typed verbatim from copies in her file. Unfortunately, the dates were cut out of the clippings.