2012 Cape Town Minstrel Parade

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:

Book Recommendation: Buckingham Palace

So, last week I talked about the District Six Museum and how a colleague gave me a copy of a book all about that lost neighborhood.  The book fueled my curiosity and gave an almost "insider's" understanding of the museum.

So I felt I had to talk about it:  "Buckingham Palace" by Richard Rive:

I really -- but really -- recommend this book.  It is so vibrantly written that you hear, feel, see, smell District Six around you.

It deals beautifully with the mix of the ugly -- poverty, prostitution and racism -- and the beautiful -- family, food, music and traditions.

As I walked around the museum, I could imagine Pretty-Boy and Zoot ambling down the street, hear the jazz records of the Jungle Brothers, and smell the pastries made by Mary and the Girls. 

In fact, I just about squealed when I saw this:

And as I read the book, I kept wondering, what the heck is "koeksister?"  And right there in the museum was an embroidered family recipe for them!  (By the way, they are a a very typical South African pastry, a syrup-soaked donut.)

And look what was on the back mural:

The book is very much what I imagine District Six was -- both gorgeous and heartbreaking.

Happy Friday kids!

District 6 Museum

Before I moved to South Africa, a co-worker gave me a book (more on that later) about a neighborhood which was razed during apartheid called "District Six."  Since reading the book, I couldn't wait to go to the museum that commemorates this neighborhood.  And I have to say, it is one of the most moving and haunting museum visits I've ever had.

 

Here is some info. from the District Six Museum website:

"District Six was named the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town in 1867. Originally established as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants, District Six was a vibrant centre with close links to the city and the port. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the process of removals and marginalisation had begun. 

The first to be 'resettled' were black South Africans, forcibly displaced from the District in 1901. As the more prosperous moved away to the suburbs, the area became a neglected ward of Cape Town.

In 1966 it was declared a white area under the Group Areas Act of 1950, and by 1982, the life of the community was over. 60,000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats, and their houses in District Six were flattened by bulldozers.

The District Six Museum, established in December 1994, works with the memories of these experiences and with the history of forced removals more generally."

The museum is housed in a former church that hosted many anti-apartheid meetings and is stunning.

 Former street signs are displayed 2 stories high:

The floor is covered in a huge map of the area, where former residents have written their memories and poems -- or just simply where they used to live:

Commissioned art pieces -- like a huge mural that fills the back wall -- mix with everyday and household items, a huge name cloth with former residents' messages, family recipes, kids' toys, and really great information displays and time lines:

This mosaic piece is called "District Six, Piece of My Heart" by Patric de Goede and is a collage made of debris from District Six.

The most striking for me were the hundreds of photos and stories of former residents:

 

I think if there is one issue with the museum, I'd say that the amount of information is almost overwhelming.  Of course, this is probably just because Aaron and I are the worst museum nerds ever.  We WILL read EVERY SINGLE sign.  Every one. 

It's one of the things I love about the dude ... every other person I've ever gone to a museum with gets so impatient with me.  But I can't help it!  And neither can he ... so we did walk out a bit cross-eyed that day ... But it was absolutely worth it.

I walked out of the museum very much thinking -- as so often happens in Cape Town -- of how lucky, lucky, lucky I am, and how much I owe back for that luck.

This plaque called "The Plaque of Shame" was erected on the outside of the church in 1966... I like to think of that small bit of defiance in the midst of apartheid:

Humbling as hell.