DECORATED hard hats and booming vuvuzelas have been an integral part of local soccer culture for decades. Legend has it that protective headgear was first donned in the 1970s to deflect flying objects at soccer games. Fans then began painting and decorating them with everything from feathers to sunglass cutouts.
Several years ago, the hats’ bright colours and wacky decorations caught the eye of Cape Town-based graphic designer Michael Souter. He’d studied fine art and graphics at Rhodes University and began producing paintings of the soccer supporters.
Souter soon realised that the hats themselves were an art form. He was keen to try his hand at making them, and through his mother-in-law’s domestic worker, was introduced to Mteto Somana in Khayelitsha.
Somana had taught himself to make the iconic headgear after attending a small business training course for six weeks. He buys paints from a hardware store and still uses simple, traditional methods such as heating the hats with hot coals to make them easier to cut and bend out the “pop-ups”.
Somana instructed Souter in the process and he added his own look and feel, introducing innovations to help bind the enamel paint to the headgear.
Souter initially sold his products through craft markets and soon captivated English tourists, who loved the puns and witticisms on the hats. Local customers now include corporate marketing departments, curio shops, advertising agencies and sports fans.
International inquiries took off when Souter launched a website last year and he soon received orders for single, customised hats, as well as small collections of the headgear. The largest export order has been for 11 hats and 25 vuvuzelas from the SA foreign office in Hong Kong, plus other orders such as eight hats to Sweden and six to Germany. One hat was bought at the Design Indaba and taken to Dubai to show off at a recycling conference.
Numerous other orders — many for much larger quantities — have sadly fallen through, as customers generally want the hats immediately and this requires air freighting rather than shipping. The hats are costed according to volumetrics, explains Souter, which means that a hat weighing 600g works out at 10kg. An order for 10 hats from Cape Town to Dusseldorf was costed at around R13000 — fortunately, the client company persuaded its regular courier to assist with this.
“We have a lot of interest, including from African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana, then the deal goes cold when we tell them the freighting costs. We really need a freighting firm that can help us, possibly as their corporate social responsibility project, as we want to generate much-needed jobs.”
Makaya Makaraba, as the company is known, already has a core team of six workers, and when large local orders come in, takes on up to four more workers from Men at the Side of the Road, a project that assists unemployed men.
There’s huge enthusiasm among the team — Souter’s right-hand man, Kaiser Chiefs fan Sipho Mhlana, was based in Soweto when he read about the business and jumped on to a bus to Cape Town. He arrived unannounced on Souter’s doorstep this year and is now a key team member working on the final artwork.
Making the hats is a laborious process — up to 12 hours, spread over four days. It includes sanding, cutting, trimming and priming before the detailed painting starts. Batches of four to eight hats are worked on at a time, and Souter is considering making a high- volume merchandising line of standard hats, which will need investment.
“Art doesn’t make money, so you need an avenue to bring in the money to support the art side.”
The company has also branched into vuvuzelas, sourcing locally made trumpets and painting them. Vuvuzelas have been used to decorate the hats and Souter produced a fan set with a hat decorated in the colour of a country, a vuvuzela with a country’s flag colours, plus sunglasses.
“Each helmet takes between eight and 14 hours of passion, and skill to make. They are works of art that sports fans worldwide truly value,” he says.