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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Continuity and change in Cape Town's Coon Carnival: the 1960s and 1970s
Author:Baxter, LisaISNI
Year:2001
Periodical:African Studies
Volume:60
Issue:1
Period:July
Pages:87-105
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:apartheid
property rights
traditional festivals
oral history
Urbanization and Migration
Ethnic and Race Relations
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180120063638
Abstract:The Coon Carnival in Cape Town, South Africa, takes place on 1 and 2 January and consists of a street procession through the city centre to a variety of out-of-town competition venues. The stage competition is the culmination of months of practice in halls and back-yards across the Cape Flats and in the city centre. The 1950 Group Areas Act began to be implemented in earnest in inner-city Cape Town from 1966, instigating the removal of coloureds from the city centre to disparate new neighbourhoods in the Cape Flats. Group Areas removals are repeatedly cited as initiating the change and demise of the Carnival from a carefree, but respectable and disciplined expression of community harmony, to an anarchic display of gangsterism and commercial greed. Interrogating the testimonies of those who make this claim, however, reveals that much of what they cite as new phenomena within the event, a close relation of troupe and gang for example, existed well before the implementation of the Act in Cape Town. Interviews were held by the author between May and October 1995 with a random selection of people who participated in the Carnival in the 1960s and 1970s. Bibliogr., notes.
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