Bo Kaap Festival

The "coloured" community in Cape Town is in-part the descendants of slaves brought to the Cape from various regions in the middle-east. Historically, the only day they were allowed to take off of work was January 2. So they created a huge festival on this day. This year, the event was held on January 3rd because the second fell on a Friday, which is a day of prayer. Since we didn't know that, we went yesterday as well and were the better for it.

For this festival, big groups of minstrels -- singing, dancing, and brass band groups -- with very brightly colored costumes and painted faces perform and compete in the streets. They wear striped suits and top hats and carry matching frilly umbrellas. One smaller group in the team does choreographed dances and the bigger group that follows plays the music and sways to the beat. The less musically-skilled blow whistles to the bass-line. The teams were huge, age- and gender-inclusive, and very color-coordinated (pink, blue, orange...). There were probably ten big teams overall, parading through the streets one by one.

We ate some extraordinarily fatty and cheap Halaal sausages and candy and basked in the glow of the most festive and pride-filled of festivities. This is a snap-shot of the Bo-Kaap crowd. The umbrella is from one of the minstrel teams.