Ishaan Vakeer leads the District 6 Hanover Mynstrils in Cape Town's 2011 Klopse Carnival. Photo: Sam Clark Ishaan Vakeer leads the District 6 Hanover Mynstrils in Cape Town's 2011 Klopse Carnival. Photo: Sam Clark
Once friends in prison, two men are engaged in a bitter fight over who should control of one of Cape Town’s landmark cultural events.
Richard “Pot” Stemmet, who heads the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival Association (CTMCA), accuses his opposite number, Melvyn Matthews, of the Kaapse Klopse Karnaval Association (KKKA), of being a “sell-out”. This follows an agreement the KKKA made with the city council and the provincial government that the annual Tweede Nuwejaar march through the city would take place on Saturday, January 1 and skip a route through the Bo-Kaap.
Both groups earlier agreed that the march could not take place on the usual date of January 2 because they considered Sunday a “Sabbath”.
Stemmet’s group insisted, and threatened legal action to have the march held on Monday, but instead the CTMCA was given permission to have a two-hour “protest” march through the city.
Matthews, of Kensington, and Stemmet, of Hanover Park, became friends in prison when each served a sentence in the 1980’s at the then Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. Both insist that they have since abandoned their criminal ways.
Matthews insists his decision, along with that of 10 others, to break away from the umbrella KKKA was because of Stemmet’s dictatorial manner.
Matthews said: “He wanted to control the carnival. He wants to control a cultural event that doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to the people.
“I’ve been a carnival person all my life, since I was two years old in the 1950’s. My family has been involved with the minstrels for four generations.”
He said suggestions made by the KKKA to provincial and city authorities that the carnival be “legislated” had fallen on deaf ears. “We want this carnival to be legislated, but they (CTMCA) don’t want legislation because they thrive amid the chaos.”
Matthews, according to Stemmet, was expelled from the KKKA after he stabbed someone at a meeting.
“Matthews sold us out to the white people. Last year he told city officials that the march would not go into Bo-Kaap.”
Stemmet said the CTMCA would boycott a meeting in March, called by Cultural Affairs and Sport MEC Ivan Meyer to discuss a five-year plan for the minstrel festival. - Cape Times