Well here it is, the last of the "holiday" posts ... this one is on the yearly Cape Town Minstrel Parade.
Like so many things in South Africa, this is not just a fun, simple parade. Behind the colorful costumes and fun music is a complex, racially-charged history.
Take, for example, the name that the parade is called by most of the Cape-Coloured community. And, please, please, you CANNOT listen/read to this with American ears. Because if you do, you'll just send me an email bomb. It's called the "Coon Parade."
When Aaron and I first heard that, our jaws dropped -- literally. The man who said it (someone who in the US would be called a "person of color" and who here calls himself a "coloured" person) asked us what was wrong. And he was shocked when Aaron and I told him that if he had said that in the US he probably would have gotten punched. It is a term that has not a whit of racism attached to it in South Africa. In recent years, the parade's name has been changed to the "Minstrel Parade," but only because tourists were offended by the previous name.
See, I can't even type that word again. It feels so wrong. But this is a good example of one of the many things I'm grateful to South Africa for -- for being a woman of color in a culture so other than the US. It is enlightening and vital to get out of that one, ultimately very narrow, viewpoint.
There is a good sum-up of the parade on Wikipedia, I highly suggest you read it. It goes into the links between the parade and American minstrel culture of the 19th century, why you see "white face" on many of the minstrels, etc.
For me, the first 2 pictures you'll see are my favorites. The first is of an elderly man with a District 6 cap on. And the second is of 2 lovely women who spoke with me for about a half hour, telling me all about the parade, the traditions, and how they too used to live in District 6. As I wrote about before, District 6 was an area of Cape Town that underwent forced removals.
These women told me, "We used to live right around here. We are the children of District 6." They told me about watching their school being torn down.
I asked them how it feels to come back to the area and they said, "We feel heart sore."
"Still?" I asked them. "Yes," they said, "always."
So as I watched the parade, their words rang in my head. I saw waves upon waves of young kids, the future of this country, celebrating. And I saw waves upon waves of old folks who grew up with apartheid and who still carry its scars.
I don't think my heart has ever broken or swelled as much in one setting.
I'm not going to comment throughout the pictures. You just enjoy them. But please do scroll all the way down, I've posted a short video of one of the troupes during the parade.
Please forgive the shoddy quality and such, but all I had was my little camera and I had a pretty terrible position:
No comments:
Post a Comment