Kelly-Eve Koopman & Sarah Summers
Filmmakers and activists
Although they are involved in different things individually, together Kelly-Eve Koopman and Sarah Summers, a lesbian couple in their twenties, have created a six-part web series and documentary project to explore their identities as coloured people in Cape Town.
As part of this, they are embarking on a 1 000km walk led by a group of Khoi activists from Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape to the Castle in Cape Town, documenting the footpaths, stories and convoluted histories of this mixed ancestral heritage.
Their web series, Coloured Mentality, has become an online oasis for a conversation that has largely been inadequate on public platforms.
Coloured identity, often misunderstood as a nebulous concept or denied altogether as a legitimate identity despite being lived by millions of people, is a subject that Summers and Koo pm an want to unpack by questioning its faculties from inside the lived experience of being coloured.
“We believe that because millions of people recognise themselves as coloured, this identity exists,” they say.
In addition to answering the question: “What is coloured?”, asked of actors and other prominent coloured individuals who feature in the first episode of the web series, the work seeks to deepen understanding by coating this search with questions that aren’t intended to provoke conclusive answers.
These include: “What does it mean to occupy this identity? How does this identity grow? Do we understand the implications of the history of the term? Do we understand that the people that occupy this term are descendants of ancient societies? How do we correlate all the information that hasn’t been popularised to
understand ourselves in empowering new ways?”
So far, the response on their 11 000-strong Facebook page and the internet in general has been “critical, celebratory, diverse and thoughtprovoking”, say the pair, who don’t want to be seen as the authorities on coloured or any type of identity but rather want to share their journey in the hope of inspiring and mobilising others — “because we are not alone in our search”.
Summers says she has never not thought of herself as coloured but has
struggled against the stereotypes. “I didn’t want to be considered uneducated and vulgar. I didn’t want to be considered as ‘gham’. I saw myself as better than other kinds of coloured people. I was young and unsure of myself. I wanted to be defined by qualities that I am proud of, and we haven’t been taught to associate positive qualities with colouredness. This has been a process of undoing and relearning for me.”
Koopman considers herself coloured and black in the Black Consciousness sense, but has also struggled with the
class differences that exist between those two socio-ideological strata. “I realise that there is a constant process of both decolonising our identities and fighting against the classism that stratifies black and brown communities,” she says, further emphasising the necessity of exploring identity in the aftermath of slave, colonial and apartheid South Africa.
The documentary, made in collaboration with Gambit Films, will begin production when they start the walk later this year. On February 4, Koopman and Summers will be hosting a fundraiser for Indigenous Liberation, an organisation of Khoi activists, as well as for the walk at Unknown Union in Cape Town. Many of the activists are artists who will be exhibiting their work at a silent auction. There will also be performances by artists Khoi Connexion and a live draw by graffiti artist Mak1.