Feb 09- South Africa
Katy Beinart
In February I visited South Africa to try and track down more information about our familys journey and arrival there. Talking to my Great-Uncle Magnus was fascinating. While it was hard to distinguish between myth and reality (eg. His father's family had descended from a spy for the Russian czar) I loved hearing his stories, particularly of his grandfather Leopold Pearlman, who had come to South Africa in 1902 with a British regiment to supply them with suits and later set up a tailors shop.. His wife Anne was rather fierce and smoked 50 cigarettes a day, in a holder, and collected cigarette cards.
In Cape Town I found a huge amount of information at the Jewish Museum and found records of Beinarts who had stayed at the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter in Whitechapel, London, en route to South Africa. I also found a Russian brochure, advertising the delights of South Africa to potential emigrants, and giving advice on what to take:
“It is recommended not to take too many things..
Women- two pairs of shoes, one warm dress, one paper dress, light wide brimmed cap or thick felt cap, one little cap, one pair of shoes, coat, 6 changes of cloths, sewing accessories, towels and linen sack”
I did feel I'd overpacked a bit.
Talking to Gail, another Beinart, I found out that my great-grandfather Woolf had had salt pans out near the Great Berg River, where he would collect salt to sell in his general store in Malmesbury (near Cape Town). I began to get interested in salt, and wanted to visit, but running out of time I compromised with a visit to the Department of Land Affairs. This is a fascinating place with hundreds of maps and aerial photographs of the country, and I got taken down into the bowels of the building where cavernous corridors of plan chests threaten to topple at any minute. There I found aerial photos of the salt pans, and also 19th century maps of Cape Town docks where my family would have arrived, now filled in and gentrified into a top tourist destination.
While in Cape Town I met Kathryn Smith, an artist who lectures at Stellenbosch University, and she invited me to give a talk at Stellenbosch to the undergrad art students. Visiting the campus was like yet another country, and Kathryn gave me an insight into the Cape Town art scene in all its contradictory wonder. I also went to a VANSA event where more Cape Town artists gathered to share their work, Pecha Kucha style, with short presentations. There seemed to be a huge amount going on, from live art festival Infecting The City to a discussion between David Goldblatt and Jo Ratcliffe about image space/reality in photography. A quick visit to Greatmore Studios in the Woodstock area of town got me excited about the possibility of spending longer in Cape Town through their residency programme.
