Direct connections with the slave past are scarce, with very few artefacts having been preserved. Personal stories have largely been lost to archiving, and where they have been pieced together have not captured popular imagination, partly due to some of the aforementioned patterns. For those who wish to look, the legacies of slavery can though be found in the built environment, in market squares, in the bells on wine estates which used to dictate the working day for the enslaved, and in former slave quarters, albeit often coalescing with the quotidian to the point where these links are buried. They can also be traced in customs and people. As the 2017 exhibition “My Naam is Februarie” emphasised, the surnames of many inhabitants of the Western Cape and wider country carry links to slavery, in particular where their surname is the name of a month.
Events centred around New Year represent another link. In 1674, the governor of the Dutch Cape Colony decided to include enslaved people in culturally significant New Year celebrations. 2 January became a rare day of rest for such people, and over time came to be defined by lively celebrations with enslaved people in Cape Town joined by those from the surrounding rural hinterland who had travelled with their owners as they too celebrated New Year. These festivities were maintained after emancipation in 1838, and indeed with emancipation taking place on 1 December, celebration of both events merged to an extent.
Celebrations over time formed the Kaapse Klopse (Cape Minstrel Carnival) which takes place annually in late December and early January today. The enslaved and later formerly enslaved, together with exiles and others who formed Cape Town’s working classes, originally sang a primarily European repertoire of songs. This was expanded by American minstrel groups who began visiting in 1848 with popular songs and beguiling performances. Local performers soon drew inspiration from these visitors.
The carnival survived the apartheid era, though not without state influence. As a custom associated with what became defined as the ‘coloured’ population, it formed part of the government’s attempts to create a ‘Malay’ identity. It became viewed both as a disparaging state imposition which integrated the ‘coon’ stereotype with ‘coloured’ identity, and a means for ‘coloured’ people to assert their place in central Cape Town, at least until marches were banned in 1977 and celebrations moved to stadiums, prior to the reintroduction of marches in 1989. Whilst the links with slavery are not always immediately obvious nowadays, it is nonetheless a significant connection to this past, standing as one of the few direct connections with a slave culture otherwise lost from memory.