It’s the day of thousands of smiles and memories. The 2nd of January – or Tweede Nuwejaar – in Cape Town was back yesterday with all its glorious colour and sound. Our minstrel carnival is like no other festival in the world, writes Gasant Abarder.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
And the best thing about the klopse carnival, as it is also known, is that it is free! It will be a far richer experience than any New Year’s Party (or political party) could ever deliver – even if that party costs R1 million a table.
(I’m interested to know if anyone personally knows anyone who bought into that ridiculous Saints New Year’s Eve R1-million table or the ANC’s gala dinner to sit with the president?).
Last Friday, my Woodstock Wanderers Football Club had an end-of-year braai in a parking lot next to the field on Shelley Road, Salt River. It was a stark, windy setting with the only entertainment of our own conversation. One of the players, Igshaan Higgins, brought the most delicious smoked chicken tagine which we devoured with garlic bread. Our entertainment? A klopse troupe practising for Tweede Nuwejaar. As Higgins pointed out, you don’t need a fancy venue. It is about experiences and this was one we’ll never forget.
Yesterday was such an experience for Cape Town’s klopse since it was the first time it ran following the COVID-19 lockdowns. It is an important day for so many people who make it happen and it creates not only thousands of smiles but thousands of jobs too.
There are the tailors and thousands of seamstresses that make the satin tuxedos. The singing, marching and band coaches. And the vendors who benefit from the staging of the carnival.
Yesterday morning, Ardiel Adams and his two sons Zubair and Eesaa of Kewtown in Athlone would have been up from sunrise to prepare for the big day. Not only are they members of a klopse troupe but they deliver the finishing touch to every minstrel walking the streets.
They have taken the simple act of white-facing (the mocking of white slave owners on the 2nd of January by slaves on this traditional day off, which is how the carnival came about) into an art form.
Ardiel and Sons spray paint thousands of faces for the carnival. They will block out time slots to spray the colours of troupes. The production line is key. They start with Zubair using his compressor to paint a white base colour and then the troupe colour. Ardiel then paints intricate squiggles and patterns. And youngest son Eesaa finishes off with glitter.
It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the trio paints up to 10 000 faces on a Tweede Nuwejaar morning. They’ve been doing it for almost 20 years.
When I participated in the minstrel carnival, around 2014, Eesaa told me while painting my face: “It started out as just a little hobby we used to do over New Year’s. We used to paint each other’s faces for the fun of it. Then, as the years progressed, we blew up and it became big.
“We brought the airbrush in and since then it boomed and the word spread. We work as a team – my father, me, my brother and my cousin. We all need each other here and we have to work together.”
Ardiel’s Tweede Nuwejaar business has created a captive market for the neighbour too. The aunty next door sells koesisters, boerewors rolls, coffee and tea and soft drinks to the minstrel troupe members waiting to have their faces painted.
“It has brought us very close together,” said Ardiel when I asked him about the family hustle. “We do everything together, 24/7. Not many fathers and sons have the kind of connection we have with a bond that you can’t break. Whatever we face, we do it together. The face painting has just made that bond tighter.”
A number of fathers and sons participate together in the klopse carnival too. And the talents the klopse have produced have been passed on from generation to generation. Top artists like Loukmaan and Emo Adams and the late Taliep Petersen were all influenced by their dads in the klopse and went on to become legendary performers.
Doctor, lawyer and engineer will jol side-by-side with street sweeper on a day that really is a gift to our beautiful city. The day of a thousand smiles, memories and jobs. We must jealously safeguard this treasure. Long may it live!
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Picture: Gasant Abarder
