Cape Town carnival and legacies of slavery in South Africa

Dr Samuel North is a former University of Hull PhD scholar, whose thesis explored how slavery is remembered and memorialised in South Africa. He explores some of these themes in this blog, and particularly the connections between slavery and Cape Town's New Year carnival.

In South Africa, slavery is an uncommon feature in collective consciousness. Whilst academic understanding of the topic developed markedly in the 1980s and 1990s, this has taken a while to begin to translate into popular recognition. Popular histories such as museum displays and walking tours have typically borne at best passing reference to slavery. Centered on the modern-day Western Cape, this was a form of enslavement which differed from that which dominated the Atlantic world. It involved Asian and African people being taken to Africa rather than African people being shipped across the Atlantic. Early historiography deemed Cape slavery to be of mild form, taking place in domestic environments distinct from the graphic cruelty of plantation slavery which defines Western understanding of the term.

In a country which has experienced successive forms of racial oppression, this complex history of enslavement has not always been viewed by politicians as conducive to unitary narratives aimed at creating shared understandings of the past in the name of reconciliation. It is only in the past two decades as activists, museologists, and descendants of the enslaved have looked to the more distant colonial past to understand modern day injustices that recognition of slavery in society has begun to increase.

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.

To explore Dr Samuel North’s research further, read his recent article:

Remembering Slavery in Urban Cape Town: Emancipation or Continuity?