Opinion
Written by Heinrich Muller
I recently stumbled upon a post on facebook published by a Henri Fortuin about the “Cape Coons” he grew up with and while reading through the comments, I noted a commentator challenging the use of the word “coon” as racist. Then I recalled the names they had back in the day, like the Union Commando Darkies, or the Young Broadway Students Gentlemen Coons (1964-1977) and I just had to share my opinion, but not on facebook, as it is too “sensitive” for adult debate.
Enslaved people at the Cape were first given New Year’s Day off in 1674, under Cape governor Isbrand Goske, who wanted them included in New Year festivities — they were given money, clothing, and tobacco, while cannons were fired from the Castle and from ships in Table Bay.
However, for generations now, Capetonians have been told that the Kaapse Klopse carry the burden of an uncomfortable past. We are reminded of American minstrelsy, offensive terminology and costumes borrowed from another continent.
Yet history tells a different story.
If there are culprits responsible for the confusion, decline and continual controversy surrounding one of Cape Town’s oldest cultural traditions, they are not the men and women marching through the streets each January.
They are the institutions that have spent more than a century regulating, exploiting, renaming, dividing and misunderstanding the carnival.
The first culprit is the colonial and apartheid state.
Long before anyone argued about “blackface”, successive governments systematically dismantled the communities that gave birth to the carnival. The Group Areas Act of 1950 uprooted thousands of families from District Six, Green Point and other historic neighbourhoods where carnival culture flourished. Traditional routes disappeared. Community networks were broken. By 1968, carnival processions had effectively vanished from Cape Town’s city centre, and from 1977 to 1989 the marches were banned altogether.
No imported American influence inflicted damage on the Kaapse Klopse comparable to apartheid legislation.
The second culprit has been organisational fragmentation.
The uncomfortable truth is that the carnival movement has rarely spoken with one voice. Since the early twentieth century, rival carnival boards, competing associations and competing commercial interests have repeatedly weakened the movement from within. The failed attempt to establish a unified South African Carnival Board in 1961 demonstrated that organisational rivalry has plagued the Klopse for generations.
Today’s disputes between organisations such as the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association (CTMCA) and other carnival bodies like the Kaapse Klopse Karnival Association’s (KKKA) did not emerge overnight. They are part of a century-old pattern in which competing organisations have often found themselves battling one another as much as they have battled bureaucracy.
A divided cultural movement inevitably weakens its own negotiating position.
The third culprit is official bureaucracy.
The recent dispute between the City of Cape Town and the CTMCA illustrates how cultural heritage can become trapped in administrative procedure. The City insisted it was merely applying the Safety at Sports and Recreational Events Act (SASREA) and ensuring compliance with risk management requirements. The CTMCA argued that those requirements have been inconsistently applied and amount to systemic discrimination. The Court said they wasted judicial resources and should find a suitable venue. It did not happen!
What cannot be disputed is that one of South Africa’s oldest living cultural traditions has once again found itself fighting government departments instead of preparing to entertain the public.
When heritage survives slavery, forced removals and apartheid, only to become entangled in permit applications, venue disputes and legal proceedings, something in the system has gone badly wrong.
The fourth culprit lies outside South Africa altogether.
The modern internet has effectively outsourced the interpretation of Cape history to American cultural narratives. Search online for the Cape Minstrels and discussions quickly become dominated by “blackface”, “Jim Crow” and American racial history. Those subjects deserve study, but they are not the beginning—or even the majority—of the Cape story.
The result is that centuries of local history are reduced to a nineteenth-century American import.
That is intellectually lazy.
Cape Town’s carnival was already more than 150 years old before American minstrel troupes ever set foot here. They undoubtedly influenced costumes and performance styles, but they did not create the festival, nor did they define its meaning for the communities that made it their own.
The Fifth Culprit Is the Media
The media, too, must accept its share of responsibility.
For more than two decades, much of the public conversation about the Kaapse Klopse has been shaped less by Cape history than by headlines that prioritise controversy over context. International media have frequently framed the carnival through the lens of American blackface and the legacy of Jim Crow, while too many local newsrooms have echoed that narrative without giving equal prominence to Cape-specific scholarship and history.
One of the earliest examples appeared in the Mail & Guardian on 6 January 2001. Its article, “Cape minstrels make light of blackface“, reflected the growing international debate surrounding the carnival. The newspaper quoted then Cape Town Tourism chief Sheryl Ozinsky, who explained that the official shift away from the name “Coon Carnival” was intended “to avoid negative reactions from foreign tourists.” The article also fairly reported opposing viewpoints from Faggie Carelse of the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association, who said many participants still embraced the traditional name, and cultural activist Vincent Kolbe, who argued that the term’s racist origins could not be ignored.
Editor’s note: Vincent Kolbe passed away in September 2010
The Mail & Guardian deserves credit for presenting those differing voices. Yet the article also marked the beginning of a public discourse increasingly shaped by how overseas audiences viewed the carnival rather than by the carnival’s own historical evolution.
That pattern has continued.
Coverage by News24, TimesLIVE, EWN, Cape Argus and Cape Town Etc. has extensively documented the recent legal battles between the City of Cape Town and the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association over venues, permits and allegations of discrimination. These reports have been valuable in informing the public about court proceedings and municipal decisions.
What has received far less sustained attention, however, are the deeper structural issues that gave rise to those disputes.
Where are the in-depth investigations into the century-long fragmentation of carnival organisations? Where are the analyses of the failed attempts to unify the movement, dating back to 1961? Where are the detailed reports on the destruction of carnival communities through the Group Areas Act, the banning of the marches between 1977 and 1989, or the continuing effects of apartheid-era planning on the carnival’s geography?
Even more striking is the limited attention paid to South African scholarship. The research of Denis-Constant Martin, the historical work published by South African History Online, and academic studies such as Francesca Inglese’s research on the Kaapse Klopse seldom receive the prominence afforded to American discussions of blackface. As a result, the public hears far more about Thomas Dartmouth Rice and Jim Crow than about District Six, Tweede Nuwe Jaar, or the centuries-old Creole culture that gave birth to the carnival.
The consequence is a distorted public understanding.
A tradition that began in the seventeenth century is too often judged primarily through a nineteenth-century American framework. Three centuries of Cape history are compressed into a debate about imported costumes and terminology, while slavery at the Cape, forced removals, cultural resilience and the carnival’s uniquely South African evolution become secondary considerations.
Good journalism should challenge fashionable assumptions, not simply repeat them. It should place events in historical context, seek out primary sources and ensure that local scholarship is heard alongside international commentary.
The Kaapse Klopse deserve more than headlines about painted faces and court cases.
They deserve reporting that tells the whole story.
Finally, there is the role played by image management.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the official shift away from the name “Coon Carnival” was promoted largely to avoid negative reactions from international tourists rather than emerging solely from an internal cultural consensus. Reputation management took precedence over historical education. Instead of explaining why the carnival had evolved differently from American minstrelsy, authorities largely opted to rename it.
Renaming may solve a marketing problem.
It does not solve a history problem.
The 5th of January has never been in the history of the Cape, 2de Nuwe Jaar, putting the bet back on the “American Dream” and the “money racket” of Cape Town Tourism, who was all too proud to announce the Rename 3.0 to the Hollywoodbets Cape Town Street Parade.
The tragedy is that none of these institutional failures has diminished the determination of the carnival participants themselves. Despite slavery, apartheid, forced removals, bureaucratic obstacles and organisational division, the Kaapse Klopse remain one of Cape Town’s greatest expressions of resilience.
Perhaps it is time the institutions surrounding the carnival displayed the same resilience.
For more than 350 years, the people have carried this tradition.
- It is governments that banned it.
- It is bureaucracies that delayed it.
- It is organisations that divided it.
- It is marketers who repackaged it.
And it is outsiders who too often misunderstand it.
The Kaapse Klopse do not need another lesson in their own history.
The institutions that claim to protect them probably do.
Editor: The Cape Argus reported the outcome of the legal dispute on 24 June 2026, well after the 2de Nuwe Jaar festivities.
