More Than a Parade: The Kaapse Klopse as Living Resistance
Original D6 Hanover Minstrels marching during the Cape Town Street Parade in 2024. The iconic Cape Town Minstrel Carnival, historically known as Kaapse Klopse, is under threat of commodification, says the writer.
Image: Ayanda Ndamane / Independent Newspaper
The Kaapse Klopse – once proudly known as the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival and rooted in our ancestors’ defiant celebration of Tweede Nuwe Jaar (Second New Year) – stands as a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the enslaved and oppressed. This tradition was forged in the brutality of the colonial era, when Africans, Asians, and Indigenous peoples, forcibly brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company, were granted only one fleeting day of respite each year: January 2, following the colonizers’ New Year’s revelry.
On that day, our forebears seized the streets, singing, dancing, and making music in a bold act of resistance and communal solidarity. By the late 1800s, these spontaneous expressions evolved into organized klopse (troupes), with the first formal minstrel groups emerging around 1887. They fused African rhythms, European brass and harmonies, and Asian influences into the powerful ghoema beat and style that pulses through our veins today. What began as a raw cry for freedom has become a structured cultural fortress, honouring our survival, identity, and Creole heritage within Cape Town’s diverse and resilient communities.
What the Carnival Means Today
In today’s Kaapse Klopse, we do not merely parade – we reclaim our narrative of history, resilience, and multicultural power. Thousands of us, from elders to youth, don vibrant costumes and painted faces, marching through Cape Town with banjos, trumpets, drums, and brass sections that echo our infectious rhythms and unyielding culture. This is not a spectacle for outsiders; it is a living memorial to slavery’s scars and our communities’ triumph. It fosters pride, builds skills, and strengthens intergenerational unity.
The carnival empowers our young people through music, dance, and teamwork, knitting families and neighbourhoods into a collective voice of belonging and defiance. Comparable to global carnivals, the Klopse stands apart by amplifying stories of origin, struggle, and joyful resistance – reminding the world that our joy is hard-won and our culture is unbreakable.
'We must fight to keep it this way, against any force that seeks to dilute or commodify it.'
The Route and Its Importance
The traditional parade route of the Kaapse Klopse – winding through District Six, central streets like Darling, Adderley, and Wale, and culminating in the historic Bo-Kaap – is no arbitrary path. It is a sacred thread binding us to our past.
These streets pulse with the echoes of community life, forced removals, and creative resistance, linking today’s celebrations to the very sites where our Creole heritage was forged amid colonial, imperial, and apartheid horrors. We line the sidewalks hours in advance, transforming the city centre into a people’s stage where music, memory, and solidarity collide.
But let us be clear: any attempt to alter this route – as seen in recent actions by some authorising officials of the City of Cape Town, gambling entities, and a few businessmen parading as custodians of our culture – sparks rightful outrage. Such moves threaten to sever the carnival from its roots in slavery, dispossession, and cultural rebellion.
We cannot allow our history to be rerouted for convenience or profit. We demand the route’s preservation as a vital act of justice, ensuring our stories remain front and centre in the spaces we built and bled for.
The Ghoema
A hidden powerhouse in Kaapse Klopse history is ghoema music, which safeguarded our cultural memory and resistance long before the festival’s formalisation. This signature rhythm was never mere entertainment – it was a creolised language of survival, blending African drumming, Malay and Indonesian beats, European melodies, and even limited influences from American minstrels in the late 1800s.
Beneath its vibrant surface, ghoema served as coded defiance under oppression. Our enslaved ancestors from East and West Africa, Madagascar, and Southeast Asia wove their homelands’ rhythms into ghoemaliedjies (ghoema songs) laden with stories, satire, spiritual essence, and subtle rebellion.
Historical accounts reveal enslaved people facing punishment for songs mixing Malay and Dutch, lyrics that likely critiqued their masters’ cruelty. In truth, this music was our underground archive, enabling displaced communities to preserve their identities and histories despite bans on speech and gathering.
Today, it fuels the Klopse and Cape Town’s very musical soul. We, as activists, vow to protect this legacy, amplifying it against erasure and ensuring it inspires future generations to resist and thrive.
* The Curator, Cape Heritage Museum
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.