Stay-at-home Jan has it all in his Bo-Kaap palace

“I AM embarrassed to ask, but what do you want to do the interview about?" said the artist Jan du Toit when I contacted him. “I'm far away from the limelight these days and live in isolation with cats, books, TV and a phone."

That may be so, but his paintings still hang in collections around the world. Jan is not yesterday's marigold become today's molehill.

He is constantly working on private commissions – the fact that he doesn't do flamenco with clapping castanets at art exhibitions populated by men-about-town does not mean he has become irrelevant.

He likes to stay at home. Jan sends a message: he is nervous.

Unnecessarily, because when I arrived for lunch at his house on the slopes of the Bo-Kaap and he opened the door, he was as mild as the call of the wild. No, he doesn't smoke the weed, but he does get through 40 cigarettes a day, I later discovered.

He speaks in a deep Barry White voice, a mature tobacco timbre, and with a slight burr, like a tractor idling in the barn.

The house smells of curry and I am transported back to my childhood in the 1960s. My mother had friends in the Bo-Kaap and District Six, and I am reminded of the scents that swirled in the streets and homes.

Sea Point always smelled of the sea, the city centre of petrol fumes, Tamboerskloof of mountain, District Six of braised fish, wieners, stews, and the Bo-Kaap of spices. 

I meet Auntie Minah Morris, busy with her pots when I arrive. She is his dearest neighbour who helped him make the real Gheema curry and bake the rotis for our lunch. Auntie Minah was born and raised in the Bo-Kaap.

“She is an angel who always gives food to one and all, even the birds, and feeds me just as often," he says. “That's how it goes here, we take food to each other."

I see cats wherever I move, it feels like Istanbul where there is a cat lurking on every corner and chair. He has six.

I hear the prayer caller's voice from the mosque. He calls five times a day – at dawn, noon, late afternoon, sunset and at night. Jan says it gives rhythm to his day; he doesn't have to look at a clock, the prayer caller's voice tells him what time it is.

Where is Jan from? He is a farmer's son from Tulbagh who, as an only child, made interesting older friends such as the painter Christo Coetzee and his artist wife, Ferrie Binge-Coetzee, mother of film producer and director Herman Binge. All three deceased now.

“I was bullied badly when I was little and always tried to find acceptance. Oh, I was lonely and I couldn't understand why the other kids were so mean to me.

“We lived on a farm, mixed farming, with sheep, cattle, vineyards and fruit," he says. Jan lights a cigarette and pours a gin (from a blue bottle) and tonic.

“When I started with pottery classes I started living from Friday to Friday. It made me forget about all the nasty stuff.

“There was a stage in primary school when the kids wouldn't play with me for two years. It naturally came from their parents," he says. And the church, I wonder aloud.

As an escape, he started hanging out at Coetzee's studio, and the artist and Ferrie broadened his horizons. Slowly, he realised there was another life beyond the mountains.

“I had to get out, beyond the borders of that town. I was good at rugby, can you believe it," he says. “Later I played finals, but I didn't feel like it any more. The farm wasn't really for me either, not driving tractors, my life there was in the kitchen."

In Std 8 he decided Cape Town was calling. He applied for entry to Jan van Riebeeck High's residence and school.

I mention to him that I was in the same standard when I went to the same hostel, which they called the “Rog". As an only child I was lonely too, but during my time in the hostel my social life blossomed.

He agrees. This happened to him too. After school he studied art, but first we talk about other things.

His friendship with Binge-Coetzee continued until her death in the St Martini Gardens complex on Queen Victoria Street (she had moved from Tulbagh). A heater caught fire and she died from the smoke and flames.

It hit him hard and he still remembers going to her place with her son Herman. “The rings were stolen from her fingers," he says.

“She was a keen correspondent, and after the fire very little was left of that. There were letters to and from the writer Stephen le Roux (Etienne Leroux), who once asked her to marry him.

“But she didn't feel like (his farm) Koffiefontein at that stage and going off to live in the middle of nowhere. She also visited (writer) Jan Rabie and (artist) Marjorie Wallace in Paris. It was very cold because there were these holes in the walls.

“Then they would invite a bunch of people and there was only one bottle of wine. She then passed money under the table for Jan to buy more wine. Aunt Ferrie and I shared big secrets. At one point, (writer) Uys Krige was also making advances to her."

Jan was a confidant of the short story writer Hennie Aucamp. They talked on the phone every day.

“I had to know my stuff, speak well, he did not take kindly to lazy language. I drank four coffees before we could talk. People thought Hennie and I had an affair, that's not true at all."

Yes, I remember he was single and a flaneur who wandered about and observed society. “About two years before Hennie's death, he began to withdraw from his circle of friends. He only had contact with a few people," says Jan.

Another cigarette, another tot of gin. “Dick Enthoven, I miss him too. Even more blessed now."

Enthoven was a billionaire businessman who owned Nando's, the Hollard Group and Spier.

“He was a private person and he had an obsession with beautiful things whether they were old or contemporary. He and Jeanetta Blignaut came up with the wonderful idea that every Nando's should have South African art.

“He and she went to studios and one of my paintings was for sale in a gallery. So they bought the first painting of mine.

“After that he took me and many other artists under his wing and supported us so much that we could make a living from art. When Nando's opened overseas, they hung every new restaurant with South African art. This is how my and many other artists' works reached all corners of the world.

“He could have bought any expensive or well-known established artist's works, but he believed in investing in young and emerging art of a high standard and especially from South Africa and the rest of Africa," says Jan.

He ponders for a while, strokes a cat: “I was lucky to know and be friends with interesting people," he says. “I love strong women and have the utmost respect for them. I really love older people and their wisdom and acceptance of life.

“Also here in the Bo-Kaap. I have lived here for eight years.

“Still, there is a misconception about this neighbourhood. Everyone thinks it's all one front, everyone standing together, such a monogenic affair. That's not true.

“There are many people here who are suffering, then again there are very rich people. Sometimes people fight and then they just go to another mosque to avoid each other.

“Property tax is very high because we live in the city bowl, it is forcing people to move away. The new generation doesn't want to be hairdressers or butchers either," says Jan.

Auntie Minah moves closer and agrees with everything. “They are professionals who want to move to the suburbs, with swimming pools and more space," she says.

“You would have noticed that in the Bo-Kaap there are almost no high walls with electric security wires. I think it is the last neighbourhood in the Cape that still is as it originally was. We have aunties who are better than the security cameras."

Jan says the house he lives in was a blank canvas when he arrived. “My house was probably built around the latter half of the 19th century. When I moved in here I had to recreate everything from front to back.

“The biggest compliment is when people think the house looks original, because everything has been redone with my restoration," he says. “Sometimes people say it's too stuffed and others believe it's out of fashion, but I don't mind at all."

He also has a lot of decor from painter Johannes Meintjes and potter Hylton Nel, who recently made a splash in Paris when Dior used his work as inspiration for the new men's fashion season.

“I collected his work when everyone said it was ugly and I should collect good Chinese porcelain instead. I did that too!

“I even have the bedspread under which Marlene Dietrich slept when she was in Cape Town and stayed in the Mount Nelson. My beds have a history. There are two four-poster beds.

“The one I sleep on is stinkwood and yellowwood and I had to raise the roof to accommodate the bed. The other bed upstairs is Anglo-Indian and belonged to Pat Cavendish O'Neill," he says.

Cavendish O'Neill was a famous horse breeder and a highly eccentric and beautiful woman who lived in Somerset West. She was a great animal lover and a lioness, Tana, slept with her on this bedstead.

That she wasn't devoured in her sleep was a miracle. She is the author of the book Lion in the Bedroom, in which she writes about this very bed.

At one stage, she was feeding 80 dogs and cats, as well as her horses, donkeys, sheep, goats and baboons who freely roamed her home. Some of the baboons also used to take a cosy nap on the four-poster.

“People can call me anything they want to call me," says Jan. “It does not matter. I am very happy with such things in my life. Most of my possessions are ugly, I made them beautiful later."

He does gilding, which he taught himself online during the Covid-19 lockdown. He had to have gold and other materials couriered from England.

We've talked a lot by now and haven't even discussed Jan's art. He loves oil painting. “Previously, my works were very kitchen sink, everyday objects that I put together, passing moments that I tried to capture," he says.

“Later I painted on glass and Perspex." His figurative work has to be of people he chooses or likes.

“My work has never been in fashion and I hope it stays that way."

We are getting hungry and I am somewhat light-headed from the wine, Haute Cabrière Pinot Noir Unwooded, I have been sipping.

The table is nicely set and we eat Auntie Minah's authentic steaming Gheema curry, served with sweet potatoes made by Jan, with cinnamon sticks, butter and honey. It is inspired by his Boland culinary influence of sweet, salty and strong flavours and tastes. The salad to go with it is brown vinegar with tomato, onions, peppers, coriander, a little sugar and butternut squash.

“Tick, tock, tick,” pronounces the old grandfather clock on the other side of the table. It strikes four times and vibrates through the house.

“It was my grandmother's. I listen to it at night, it gives me a feeling of bliss and I think of her," he says.

“I have told you I don't go out very often. Do you know why? A friend of mine mentioned I don't have to."

“Why not?" I ask.

“I have created a whole world for myself in here, isn't it? A whole world."

For more information about Jan's work, visit his Instagram page or e-mail jan@jandutoit.com.

♦ VWB ♦

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