My Saturday was spent in pretty much the same way as the previous Saturday: by going to a museum and attending some performances.
I started off the day at the District Six Museum. This museum details the history of the District Six neighborhood during Apartheid. District Six was originally a mixed and vibrant neighborhood, but was declared a ‘whites-only’ area by the Apartheid regime in 1966. To maintain a pretense of legality District Six was declared a slum and unfit to live in, which seemed to be partly true as the museum mentions that some of the inhabitants were unfairly exploited by slumlords. However, the proximity of District Six to the Cape Town city center and the harbor also made this a valuable piece of land that the government wanted to reserve for the white population.
The District Six Museum contains various artifacts from the historical District Six.
Over the subsequent two decades the residents of District Six were forcibly relocated to townships outside of the Cape Town city center, destroying the old community ties that were an essential part of the identity of the inhabitants and effectively blocking their access to convenient employment. Whereas a few existing houses in District Six were repurposed and some white families moved in, large parts of the neighborhood were fully razed with even the street plan being redesigned. Of course the reconstruction of District Six proved far more expensive than initially projected, due to which the area remained underdeveloped for a long time. (Sounds pretty similar to business as usual in Belgian politics.)
Whereas the events in District Six are indubitably a major tragedy that transpired during a dark period of South African (and by extension, global) history, I felt that sometimes the museum represented the initial state of affairs in an overly cheerful fashion. For example, one of the information plaques literally stated that before the forced relocation “even the gangsters acted as true gentlemen.” Such exaggerations notwithstanding, the District Six Museum paints a sad picture of a deplorable part of history, and it does not hurt to be reminded to the fact that I have enjoyed a very sheltered and privileged life. It is important to remember these dark times, especially as our current society is becoming increasingly polarized, on a worldwide scale.
My afternoon appointment was at City Hall to catch some more shows from the Fringe Festival. First up was Police Cops, and these guys were absolutely amazing! While the audience was taking their seats before the start of the show I could see someone vigorously doing jumping jacks as warming-up through a gap in the side curtain, and that same energy and enthusiasm was delivered during their entire performance. The play is a spoof on buddy cop films, and they had me laughing from the beginning to the end. Wholeheartedly recommended!
I 'borrowed' the posters of the Fringe Festival shows I attended.
Next up was Mind Over Magic by Brendon Peel. This young man styles himself as a mentalist and is reportedly becoming an established name in the South African magic scene, but I was less than impressed. His show disappointed me as his mentalism ‘skills’ often only amounted to simple, trivial even, math tricks, and during the single ‘real’ magic trick he did, the sleight of hand flipping the cards, so the card chosen by a member of the audience would stand out, was rather plainly visible.
The final show of the day was The Finkelsteins are Coming to Dinner. It was a step up from the mentalism performance, although definitely not as great as Police Cops. Prior to the show the audience was abuzz with anticipation, as some earlier reviews had been unanimously positive. The main character is a gay painter who lives with his mother (although it turned out to be the ghost of his dead mother to who he still talked; surprise surprise… not) and starts a relationship with his young and capricious model. By the way, the model/boyfriend rebelled against society by preferring to not wear pants throughout the performance, including during a dance where he was jumping up and down. Artistic expression, social critique, shock value? I do not know, but to me it seemed mostly like a cheap trick to distract from the clichéd script. Mind you, the piece was not bad, it just was not very great either.
After all that running around on Saturday and the previous weekend, I had a more leisurely Sunday. I settled down in the garden to enjoy the sunshine and spent the day with a good book, some thesis work, and an ice cream.