Dougie Oakes
EVERYONE with a connection to District Six has a District Six story to tell. Sadness, anger and regret are themes that run through most of them. And that is understandable.
The Group Areas Act robbed thousands of families of more than just a way of life.
In many ways, it changed their lives forever.
Singer Leslie Kleinsmith is from the District, so he has a favourite District Six story too. But his account is more unusual than most. And it comes with a tiny twist of humour…
We’re sitting in the coffee shop at the Baxter Theatre on a sweltering day, sipping ice-cold water out of plastic glasses and reminiscing about music, newspapers – and the notorious Group Areas Act.
He wasn’t there when the Sword of Damocles struck his family home in Eckard Street, he says.
“I’d been singing in Swaziland for six months – and from time to time when I’d called home, everything seemed fine. We all knew for years that our having to move was inevitable.
“It was dangling there all the time as we continued as best we could with our daily activities. But, sometime after my last call home, my folks were moved out.
“And so, blissfully unaware of all this, I zipped into Cape Town for a quick visit and the first thing I did was set off for the old neighbourhood, only to find that it was gone. Flattened.
There was no neighbourhood. No house.
“I made enquiries and found out my family was now in Mitchells Plain. I organised a car – and off I went, in search of a place called Section 1. But finding it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. The place was all sand hills, bush, houses and roads – with no street lamps and no names.
And everyone was a stranger. No one knew anyone because, as one of the people we stopped explained: ‘Miester, ons het maar oek gister ingetrek’.
“Then I hit a stroke of luck. Someone came out of a house with a baby on her hip. And I looked, and I said to myself: ‘That looks like a Kleinsmith.’ Then the door opened again, and my sister stepped out…”
Kleinsmith takes another sip from his plastic glass, ahead of speaking about his love affair with music. “My story always starts with my cousin Elspeth Davids,” he says. “She started singing way before I did – and because I also wanted to be a singer, I hung out with her. That way I got to know everyone who was anyone in the local music business.”
Kleinsmith’s first big break was a booking on the bill for a charity show at the Silvertree Boys Club. That led to more gigs. “And then, out of the blue, someone offered me money to sing,” he says. “I was paid R4 – for singing two songs before interval and another two after the break – assuming the promoter hadn’t gone off with all the proceeds.
“I like to believe though that I learnt through ‘trial and success’, rather than ‘trial and error’. Looking back to that time, I like to believe that I must have done some things right – because here I am, almost 50 years later, still singing for my supper.”
After a short “apprenticeship” on the “charity gig circuit”, Kleinsmith started joining bands – or, as he put it, “bands started asking me to join them”. He was 13 years old at the time and happy to sing anywhere. “I took any offer that came my way.”
This was understandable. He didn’t make it to high school. Music was going to be his career.
All that time he was based in District Six.
“The District was… an interesting place,” he says. “People mixed easily. Teachers lived next door to street sweepers and a factory worker could easily have an author as a next-door neighbour. And most of the time there weren’t any problems. It was a liquorice-all-sorts type of place.
“People talk about the gangsters in the area. Yeah, there were gangsters. But this is how it worked, and this is why during moments of nostalgia we always speak about ‘how nice our gangsters were’. It was all about turf. Gangsters protected their turf – and the ordinary people who lived in it.
“It was this that made them seem nice. Of course, anyone who ventured into the territory of another gang was possibly asking for big trouble.”
As a musician who often played in the centre of Cape Town until 3am, Kleinsmith says he had to have his wits about him when walking home. “But we were trained to be streetwise. It was often a case of ‘if in doubt about the safety of the normal route home, follow another route’.
“Sometimes we were given a lift from the cops. We got to know some of them from their visits for free drinks to the clubs we played at. They’d often pick us up if they saw us walking.
“There was even a cop who drove around with his trumpet in his van. Often, when we were jamming, he’d run to his van, fetch his trumpet and jam with us.”
Sometime in the 1970s, Kleinsmith joined the popular band Big Daddy as a second vocalist. “Their main vocalist, Jimmy Engelbrecht, often went awol – and I guess they needed cover,” he says. Or perhaps they simply thought: “Ons kannie meer nie!”
It was during this time that he had long chats with Zayne Adams. “One day, Zayne asked: ‘Why don’t you do some cabaret with me?’ I wasn’t keen, but he kept on and on in that Zayne voice. Eventually I decided to give it a try.
“And that’s how I started singing Sundays for R40 an evening at the Sherwood Lounge (which later became Club Montreal), near Manenberg. All the top celebs came to the Sherwood – even the heart surgeon Chris Barnard and Jan Marais of the then Trust Bank were visitors.”
Another big boost for Kleinsmith was getting the role of Cassiem in the hit show District Six, the Musical. It was another instance where he had to be persuaded to “try out” for the role. “I was living in Lansdowne when Taliep Petersen called me,” Kleinsmith says. “He ended up calling me three times to audition for the part of Cassiem. I told him I wasn’t an actor. But Taliep was a lot like Zayne. He also had wonderful powers of persuasion.
“He said: ‘But it’s not a big acting part. It’s mostly singing. Come on, you can do it’. But I had another reason for not wanting to audition. I was young and arrogant. And I believed I was good. And so I asked him: ‘Why should I audition for anything’. He replied: ‘Maar die mense by die Baxter kennie vir jou nie’. I went for the audition.
“I was up against another actor, Wayne Bowman, who’s now living in Canada.
“It was just the two of us vying for the one role. When Sue Roberts, the stage manager, asked who wanted to go first, we started playing a game of ‘You go! No, you go!’ Eventually, I went first. Taliep strummed, I sang a Lionel Ritchie song and I got the part. They didn’t call in Bowman.
“The rest, as they say, is history. I played Cassiem 414 times. Ek was slams vir twee jaar.”
l France-based Kleinsmith recently took part in “Remembering the Lux”. He has been singing on cruise liners of the Italian company Costa since 2009.