Sugar Girls (2025–): A Work in Progress

Sugar Girls (2025–) is a point of departure for a broader research project by Berni Searle, the Cape Town–based South African artist, that she developed during her Atelier residency at Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. The residency provided an impetus for this work in progress, which was presented as a series of images toward the end of the program. The following text is gleaned from a series of notes and journal reflections Searle wrote while creating and contemplating the work during her residency.As the title of the residency—“ON SITE”—suggests, the series evolved as a response to the specific maritime location of the museum, that is, the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront within the broader city of Cape Town, and most important, the significance of the site for various local communities that have grown around it. Searle's personal and collective connection to the city, its colonial trade experiences, and narratives of its history, memory, and place has often been central to her prolific career and conceptual research-based practice.Cape Town, a port city located between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, has historically played an important role in the exchange of various commodities between the East and the West. Its location facilitated points of contact and exchanges between people of different origins and local communities. In other words, Cape Town can be considered one of the most “globalized” sites of contact and interactions between people of global origins and local communities. Cape Town does not differ from other port cities as a site of globalized contact in this sense. Given its location at the confluence of Indian and Atlantic Oceans and the continued trade between the East, West, and Middle East, its port did, however, facilitate points of contact and exchange between people in terms of labor and leisure. The nature of such contact has changed considerably over the last few decades due to international developments in trade and South Africa's national racial policies, particularly the Group Areas Act, which drove people further away from the city.The Victoria and Albert Waterfront as a site of leisure has been built on various forms of labor, differential labor policies, and segregation, with some more overtly exploitative than others. Only a few decades ago, cruise ships departed from the docks with families gathering on the pier and on the ship before departing. Searle recalls going as a child to the docks to see her grandparents off, with streamers being tossed to the pier on departure. Many local people also came to the docks as porters and on the fishing trawlers as deckhands and cooks, among other skilled roles. Livelihoods around the area thrived, with these opportunities later decreasing as a result of international factors, including the development of aviation as a preferred choice of travel, containerization, and, most recently, the enforcement of stricter security after 9/11 in all port cities. At the local level, proximity to the docks in areas like Woodstock, District Six, and De Waterkant also decreased, with forced removals to areas like the Cape Flats taking place as a result of the Apartheid regime's Group Areas Act of 1950.1It is important to reiterate that the site has changed considerably in the span of the last forty to fifty years. The period of interest to Searle is relatively recent, with much having changed in a relatively short period of time. The impact that the Apartheid regime's racialization and segregation had at the time overshadowed such encounters, social, sexual, and otherwise. As a complex set of laws intertwined with racial segregation, the Group Areas Act of 1950 subsequently impacted Cape Town's racial spatial planning. In other words, many of these engagements would have been illegal under the Group Area Act. For example, some of those entering the port would have been classified as “white,” such as Japanese, making it illegal under the Immorality Act to engage with them sexually, or to be seen together with someone classified as “colored” or “Black.”As a work in progress, Sugar Girls (2025–) aims to consider the impact of some of these developments on the lives and livelihoods of people at the time, the ramifications of which people continue to experience to this day. The work is in essence about relationships between people as well as those connections between people and places—and by extension about alienation from places and between people.While many of the interactions between local women and incoming sailors were based largely on the expectations of providing sexual gratification, overall, Searle's work is not about sex workers per se. Not all engagements were purely about sexual “contracts,” as it varied by case. Some sailors simply wanted companionship after long months at sea; some women fell in love, and some even got married and settled either in Cape Town or in the countries from which the sailors hailed. Some had children and maintained contact with the fathers of their children, while other women and children were left with no contact at all. Consequently, due to the taboo nature of the project and its central subjects, relevant information has been difficult to access, particularly from people with direct experience working “in the docks,” as the area was referred to locally. Searle was, however, able to meet and interview a few such individuals willing to share their stories. Many of these women would be in their sixties and seventies now and often became born-again Christians or devout Muslims, having turned away from what the community at large considered to be “sinful” pasts.There are very few references to the term 'sugar girls.' It was a nickname given to the teenagers and women who worked at the Tate & Lyle Sugars factory. These women were known for being hardworking with an East End sense of humor.2 Besides hearsay, there are few references to the term locally, except for Henry Trotter's book Sugar Girls and Seamen (2008), which was based on the author's investigations of dockside prostitution and liaisons in the Cape Town and Durban. The term is derived from suikerhuisies, which directly translates to “sugar houses.” These were places where sugar girls socialized and engaged with one another and with visitors. These suikerhuisies were often run by family members out of the family's actual home. As a side note, Searle has come across a few examples where family members have been complicit in pimping their daughters, with some fathers taking their daughters to the harbor. Searle was told of a father who took his daughter to the docks when a particular Japanese ship arrived to engage specifically with the captain, who requested and expected these visits. Japanese sailors were highly prized as “customers,” as they paid the most—some women learned to speak Japanese to secure the attention of these sailors. Some of them also became skilled in traditional Japanese cultural practices, like bathing men and offering them sake and other popular Japanese drinks or food. In another account that Searle came across, there was a woman who for years had been bringing home US dollars to support family living on the Cape Flats, and who at some point was forced to cut her hair as an act of “repentance” after being shamed within her community. It is unclear whether she voluntarily shaved her hair or was coerced into doing so. This could also be read as an act of rejuvenation and renewal.Not much has been written about these experiences, which continue to have implications on people's lives today. The little information that does exist focuses primarily on heterosexual engagements, with no, or only dismissive, mention of same-sex encounters. Much of the information we have about this period and location is based on hearsay and anecdotes. Because these activities are cloaked in secrecy, the sparseness of information regarding many of them can be seen as an omission of sorts, but it also creates the space for speculation and imaginative interventions based partly on fact and partly on fiction. Hence the work includes a fantastical element, rooted in aspects of history, seduction, sex, attraction, and, in some cases, unintentional procreation. The names in the titles of the works are fictional to protect the identities of some of the individuals that Searle interviewed. The lives and livelihoods of such individuals are often cloaked in invisibility and taboo, which form part of the current and continuing lives of sex workers.The Sugar Girls series serves as a springboard from which to explore broader implications. Searle has engaged in several conversations and conducted interviews. However, people's reluctance to discuss issues related to sugar girls has clearly demonstrated the taboos that exist around the subject. Children born to local women as a result of these illicit sexual encounters are part of various communities on the Cape Flats, like Manenberg and Tafelsig in Mitchels Plain. On the one hand, they are accepted as part of the community, speaking Afrikaans for the most part, but are often ostracized, teased, and bullied, particularly as children. They are often called nicknames like “Jeppie” or “Chingy,” either affectionately or matter-of-factly, despite their uses pointing to sensibilities that would be considered offensive.How do these children, some of whom are now adults in their forties, navigate existing circumstances in a space and community with distinctly different features that set them apart from others? In most cases they are aware that their existence is the inadvertent result of interactions between local women (their mothers) and the men (their fathers) sailing into the port, while carrying the potential shame associated with these encounters. While navigating this space was often quite challenging, people also built ongoing relationships with sailors. Announcements of boats entering the harbor were published in newspapers, which some would use to look for specific boats in the hope of seeing a particular sailor again. One young woman, for example, carried a photograph of her father with her, and her mother would take her to the harbor when her father's ship came into the harbor to see him.The names used in the titles of the works in this series are mostly fictitious. In some cases, however, the titles include likely nicknames, with associative words for each name included in brackets. Some of these words are often descriptive of visual elements within the work, while others are more symbolic. The following are some references on the process of selecting and naming works in the Sugar Girls series and their implied or imagined references.Our Lady of Fátima, formally known as Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of Fátima, is a Catholic title for Mary, mother of Jesus, based on Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three shepherd children at the Cobe da Iria in Fátima, Portugal. The name Fátima is a feminine name of Arabic origin that means “one who abstains” or “one who weans.” The name can also be used to describe someone who separates good from evil or who weans themselves from the punishment of hell.Layla has Arabic and Finnish roots. It comes from the Arabic Laila, meaning “night” or “dark,” and is typically reserved for girls born during the night.Hazel has biblical origins and is a derivative of the Hebrew name Hazā’ēl meaning “God has seen.” The name brings into question some aspect of morality in terms of what is right and wrong, God being the omnipotent, all-seeing judge. Hazel also refers to the color of the eyes in this image. As a verb, peek encompasses the idea of looking at something quickly or secretly, often from a hidden location, pointing to secretive liaisons and voyeurism.Guise, as in pretense, is a reference to a display of emotions or behaviors that are insincere or intended to deceive or mask. It is also a reference to clothing put on to hide one's true identity or imitate someone or something else.Bruna is derived from the Dutch word brun. This Italian girl's name can either mean “armor,” “protection,” or the color “brown.”Ghaybah is applied loosely to anyone whom God has withdrawn from the world and kept invisible to the eyes of ordinary humans. The life of such a blessed person is thought to be miraculously prolonged by God through many generations and even centuries. Shiites maintain that their imams, though invisible, still live and return to human society from time to time to maintain order and to guide their followers along the right path. The ghaybah of the Mahdi (“divinely guided one”) will end, according to the Shiites, when the Mahdi finally appears in the last days of the world. Unlike Shiites, Sufi Muslims understand ghaybah to mean the absence in the heart of all thoughts except those of God. It is the fanāʾ (passing away) of the carnal self. For Sufis, ghaybah is not a goal in itself but rather a stage that leads naturally to h.ud.ūr (presence) in God.Many of these working titles point to aspects of morality, religion, taboo, and the navigation of seduction, shame, and survival, as part of the context of Cape Town's dockside culture in the 1960s.