Ria Brodell

In 1955, Johnny Williams shared his story with the Golden City Post, a South African newspaper, complete with a medical certificate, stating that he “has all the physical attributes of a woman. '[S]he shows mentally, a marked tendency to be identified with males, even to the extent of having girl friends.'”

Williams was born around 1930 in Wynberg, Cape Town. From an early age he was in trouble for stealing, skipping school, drinking, and smoking. He hung out with boys, playing marbles, cricket, and football. The girls would call him 'Galla man' and tomboy. After skipping choir practice and being found drunk, he was sent to a reformatory two hundred miles outside of Cape Town. For three months he worked on a farm, taking care of the farmers children and doing work in the kitchen. His workload was not difficult, but he was lonely and bored. After three months he snuck out at night and followed the railway back to Wynberg. He wrote to his mother in an attempt to cover for himself, saying the farmer had come to town. But his mother suspected something was amiss and he was soon arrested and sent to another farm near Caledon.

When the farmer and his wife came to pick up Williams at the station, he was wearing khaki shorts, a man’s shirt and his hair was cut short. Rather than working in the kitchen, this time Williams worked in the fields with the men and enjoyed the hard work. “No man could show me up because I kept up with them no matter how tough the work was.” He spent thirteen months on the farm and though the farmer treated him well, and he was happy that the men did not suspect his sex, he was lonely again and missed the excitement of Cape Town. He arranged an escape with a friend who was a lorry driver in Caledon. However, upon arriving home in Wynberg his mother again reported him, and he was sent to the Kimberly Home for Girls.

There he spent four months sewing, doing ‘fancy work’ and cleaning. At the age of fourteen he was sent to another girls’ reformatory. Shortly after arriving and being issued a uniform he was approached, “a longtimer, Doris X, came up to me and said, 'You'll be my girl friend.' I answered back very quickly: 'I am a man myself, so you'll have to forget about it.' I then told her that I was an old jail-bird, and then they agreed to let me be a 'man'. The few of us who were 'men' sat at table number one, and we were the big shots of the place. The girls all respected us.” Williams met a girl there named Irene who worked in the kitchen. They were together for the five years that he was at the reformatory. When King George visited South Africa in 1947, special remissions were handed out and Williams received a pardon. He was put on a train to Cape Town and returned to Wynberg.

Upon returning home he found a job at a shirt factory. He hit it off with a man named Arthur who hung around the same corner and was in the same gang, the Flying Tigers. “We were together for over six months, but although I was very fond of him, things just didn't click.” Williams broke it off. “On the same day, I decided that I would change over completely and become a man. This is what I had planned out in the reformatory. I left the factory, took my savings out of the post office, and bought myself a shirt and a pair of slacks. After that I went to a tailor and had a special suit made for myself. I like a long cut coat, two tickey pockets, two back pockets, six belt hoops and a 24 bottom.” Williams quit the Flying Tigers and joined the 44 Boys. They hung out on the corner, smoking, drinking, gambling, and fighting with other gangs. Williams liked to fight and had a particular method that involved the use of a belt and buckle. Occasionally he was subject to insults from rival gang members who taunted him about his gender, but he could hold his own with ferocity and was quick to retaliate.

Williams earned money doing odd jobs, like working as a caddy at a golf club, hawking vegetables, gardening, or doing handyman work like building walls and doing repairs. These jobs were few and far between, so he moved to Hout Bay and worked as a fisherman. He ultimately found a job on a trawler and was at sea for three weeks. The work was hard and he got blisters from the ropes and cuts from the crawfish, but he was, “ready for anything at any time.” Things were going well on the trawlers until Williams borrowed a nice blue suit from a man with the intention of returning it the next day. Unfortunately, the man reported it as theft. Williams’ grandfather told the police that he didn’t know a Johnny Williams and that Williams was a woman. The police didn’t believe it and had Williams examined. He was then ordered to appear in court in a dress. He was sentenced to one month and suspended for two years.

Over the years, Williams had a number relationships with women, but he was always worried that they would leave when they found out his sex, and a few did. Williams was afraid that his story in the Golden City Post would cost him his relationship. In 1956, at the time of an account in Drum, a South African magazine, he was happily with a woman whom he had met at a party. He had asked her to dance, and even after finding out his sex she stayed with him. Despite this, he continued to be anxious, stating “What the end is going to be, I don't know. There is no hope of marriage for us, and the raising of a family which I yearn for. We will have to spend the rest of our lives living like this, unless God is merciful and...lets me become a whole man.” He expressed multiple times throughout both accounts of his life that he wished to be a man. His closing thoughts in the Golden City Post were, “I also want you to know that when the first fruits of the season come to town I make wish before I eat them. My wish is that God must make me a man. It is the only thing I want most in the world.”

Sources:

Chetty, Dhianaraj, ed. “Lesbian Gangster the Gertie Williams Story.” In Defiant Desire, ed. Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron, 128. New York: Routledge, 1995.

McCormick, T. L., “Dragging up the Past: Investigating Historical Representations of Drag in South Africa”. Gender and Language Vol. 12, no. 2 (2018):168-91.

Peach, Ricardo. “Chapter 2 - Skeef: A Brief History of South African Queer Cinematic Cultures .” PhD: Queer Cinema as a Fifth Cinema in South Africa and Australia, 2005.

Perkins, Cody. Coloured Men, Moffies, and Meanings of Masculinity in South Africa, 1910-1960. Diss. University of Virginia, 2015.

Scott, J., & Theron, L., “The promise of heteronormativity: Marriage as a strategy for respectability in South Africa”. Sexualities Vol. 22, no. 3 (2019): 436–451.

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