History, identity and meaning: Cape Town's Coon Carnival in the 1960s and 1970s, Town Lisa Baxter, Cape of Thesis submitted for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of History University of Cape Town, South Africa Univesity September 1996. Town The copyright of this thesis rests with the University of Cape Town. No quotation from it or information derivedCape from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of theof source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non-commercial research purposes only. University Abstract Little has been written about the Coon Carnival since its inception in th~ late nineteenth­ century. This thesis helps remedy the general neglect of popular, "Coloured", working­ class history during the apartheid years. It attemptsattempt to situate Cape Town's New Year Carnival within the international debate surrounding popular festival and identity. Following a broadly historical line of inquiry, this thesis straddles different disciplines, borrowing from a range of interpretative fields to assess the form and significance of the event during the 1960s and 1970s, a critical period in the Carnival's history. During these years, District Six - the event's symbolic and spiritual home - was declared for "White" Town residence only under the Group Areas Act. Coloured residents'"'"."''"'''''' were forcibly removed from this central city suburb to disparate areas on the Cape Flats - the townships surrounding the metropolis. A year later, in 1967,1 the carnival paradeCape was effectively banned from the city centre's streets; banishedoaIllSIleo to remote and enclosedof stadium"'.... ' ...UH venues,venues. Thus, in a relatively short space of time the Carnival came under sustained attack. Due to the relative dearth of critical engagement with, or historical commentary on, the Carnival, this thesis reliesUniversity heavily on oral sources and on journalistic, visual and tourist­ oriented representations. Focussing particularly on the oral testimonies of twenty-four people involved in the event, it explores the notion of continuity and change in the Carnival during this period, through a thorough interrogation of the narratives. My interviewing technique fell somewhere between the set, chronological, life-history, questions advocated by the English oral historian Paul Thompson! and the free-flow of the "open interview" used principally in the fields.of clinical psychiatry. As far as possible I let the interviewee speak and direct the agenda yet I had a set of concerns I wanted addressed and if they were not volunteered I would attempt to bring them up. Interviewees insist that forced removals broke the back of carnival organisation; destroying its spontaneous festive spirit, changing the essence of the event from a joyous celebration of emancipation to a muted lament, mourning dispossession. From a bonding ritual of inner­ city community, they relate, it transformed into little more than an opportunity for entrepreneurs and gangsters to make personal profit. Town From the late 1960s the event came under attack from many sides of Cape Town's Coloured population; its religious, political and socialCape elite. In particular, liberation leaders denounced the Coon Carnival as playing up ofto negative racial stereotypes, so aiding the Nationalist Government in its assertion of innate cultural difference and ultimately assisting its implementation of "separate development". This thesis looks at whatUniversity the Carnival meant to both its champions and antagonists during the 1960s and 1970s, exploring the different discourses influencing participation and power in the event, from gender to religious and occupational identity. It looks also at its wider significance, investigating official, political and establishment attitudes toward the annual festivities. 1 P. Thompson, The Voice of the Past. (OPUS, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988). The argument questions the extent to, }Nhich the Coon Carnival was the expression of a specifically local, urban, spatial identity, and looks at the impact of legislated spatial manipulation on the construction and expression of such an identity. Simultaneously, it serves to test the value of contemporary Carnival theories by applying it them a specific social, geographical and historical context. Town Cape of University CONTENTS Diagrams and Illustrations. 11 Acknowledgments III Preface IV Abbreviations ••• '" ••••••••• ", ., •• , •••• , ••• ,. : •••••••••••• 00 •••• ,' •••• ,' •••••••• x Terminology Xl Chapter One: Introduction The "Coon Carnival": history, space and context 1 Chapter Two Representing the Coon Carnvival 29 Chapter Three Contesting carnival: an historical discussion of the critical debate surrounding carnival worldwideTown 61 Chapter Four Continuity and Change: The 1960s1 and 1970s. 97 Chapter Five Women and Participation in Cape Town's Coon Carnival. Cape 143 Chapter Six: of Conclusion Carnival's community and social identities. 1178 Postscript 198 Appendix I ........ 199 Appendix II 200 Appendix III University.·..:::Hi::::· 206 Appendix IV ,.0 ••• 0" '" 'dO ••••• , 209 Bibliography 2213 ii Diagrams and Illustrations. " ... F2.1F2.I Group photograph of young coons, 1963 ................ , ................ Between pp.35-36 F2.2 Group photograph of coons, 1977 ......................................... Between pp.35-36 F2.3 'Eerste Nuwe Jaar', painting of Coon Carnival by James yates ....... Between pp.38-39 F2.4 'Black and White Faces, linocut of Coon Carnival by Roderick Sauls ......................... , ..................... , ........................... Between pp.38-39 F3.1F3.I Diagram illustrating routes of the Carnival road march prior and Opposite p. 90 subsequent to 1967 .......................................... '" ........ , .. F4.1 Photograph of coon troupe in Darling street, 1996 .................... Between pp.124-5124-5 F4.2 Photograph revealing troupe hierarchy and costumes, 1996 ............ Between pppp, .124-5 124-5 F4.3 Maps showing residence of interviewees prior to Group Areas removals and at time of interview (1995) in relation to theTown city centre .............................................................. , .... , ..... , .. '" .. , .......................... OppositeUPtJOsltep. p. 138 F5.1F5,l Photograph of women sewing troupe uniforms, 1950 ....................... ,., ..'" Between pp.154-5 F5.2 Photograph of moffie, 1996 ............................................................. ' ........ Cape, ................ Between pp.154-5 F5.3 Photograph of female coon, 1996 .........................................of . Between pp.154-5154-5 F6.11 Photograph of coon troupe dressed in colours of the national flag, 1996. .. BetweenH..tu,,:.. ," pp. 197-8 F6.2 Photograph of coon troupe dressed in colours of the national flag, 1996......... .................................................................. Between pp. 197-8 University iii Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Vivian Bickford-Smith, for guiding my research and disciplinary transition - forcing me to historicise, alerting me to the irrelevance of my diversions, and asserting the superiority of Chelsea over Arsenal. I am grateful to the Western Cape Oral History Project for providing the facilities and support to conduct my interviews, as well as valuable comment and criticism. Without the patience and generosity Cape Town's Coon Carnival community; troupe captains, their memberships, families and friends, my research would have amounted to little more than academic speculation. I received inestimable assistance and direction from a vast array of people eager to tell and show me as much about the Carnival as they could. These people are not limited to those listed as interviewees but include the many people I spoke to in the rehearsal venues and at the Coon Carnival in the months preceding the January 1996 celebrations - far too numerous to list individually. I must express my greatest thanks, however, to Melvin Matthews who repeatedly went out of his way to help me, showing me the Carnival sites of the Peninsula, introducing me to all dimensions of the event; practical, historical and interpretative, and also to Vincent Kolbe. I am particularly grateful for the considerable assistance of the LeverhulmeTown Trust which has provided me with the time and money to indulge the luxury of study. In the context of increasing cuts to the British education system and the near impossibility of securing funds for research in the Arts, I am extremely fortunate to have been sponsored by them for two years. Cape I am indebted to Sarah for editing when she hadof much more important things on her mind, Elena, Olive (for 3 pages!), David (for his graphic eye), Maureen and Amy (for their technological support), Catriona (for her impressive secretarial skills), and as always, to Con for painstakingly reading reams of minuscule print. University iv Preface. Standing before a fractious crowd of thousands eager for the competition to begin, Nelson Mandela delivered his lengthy New Year's speech to Cape Town. "Wreathed in smiles and wearing a sequined minstrel style outfit in the colours of the ANC"l he addressed the almost exclusively Coloured audience at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Coon Carnival at Green Point Stadium. Hailing the rebirth of Carnival in a new form he declared that "for the first time... the Carnival is organised not by people who want to make money from the Coloureds but by people who want to plough it back into musical development,,2. Appealing