Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
City ready to feel proud
Marchers to gather in Green Point
THE CITY will become a kaleidoscope with floats, music and dancing as revellers celebrate this year’s Cape Town Pride Festival today with the main event taking place at Green Point Urban Park.
Matthew van As, director of Cape Town Pride, said today was the main day of the festival with a parade and Mardi Gras leaving from Reddam Field at Green Point Urban Park.
“The parade leaves from Gallows Hill Traffic Department in Green Point at noon and the Mardi Gras starts at 1pm from the park. Cape Town Pride has a jam-packed (programme).”
Pride opened last Friday with a Pink Party and will close with a church service tomorrow. Van As, who has been at the helm of the organisation for three years, said the festival was in its 15th year but the community still faced challenges and prejudice.
“The public still has many misconceptions about the community which, in extreme cases, could end in rape and murder,” he said.
Pride has also been dogged by issues of racism and exclusion being levelled at organisers. Free Gender, a black lesbian organisation based in Khayelitsha, has been lobbying for the event to be more inclusive of people of colour.
Van As has fired back that “the only person that can exclude you is yourself ”.
“Cape Town Pride does not exclude anyone and we hold workshops and a pre- pride party in various areas for free. We give free entrance and transport to people that can’t pay,” he said.
In her blog, co-ordinator of Free Gender Funeka Soldaat said: “In 2014 Free Gender suspended its participation in Cape Town Pride because it continues to exclude lesbians and black LGBTI in decisionmaking when planning for the festival. When we attended or participated in the events, it was through invitation by a few white gay men who are gatekeepers in Cape Town Pride.”
In her post, Soldaat said last year Free Gender joined all the LGBTI organisations under the umbrella of Alternative Inclusive Pride to picket at the event to express their unhappiness about the exclusion of marginalised LGBTI individuals within the festival.
Zethu Matebeni of Alternative Inclusive Pride said there was a silence on the most recent brutal murders of members in the community. “There’s an assumption that Cape Town is the gay capital, but the question should be asked for whom?”
At the same time transgendered people in the province face challenges of accessing ID documents because of delays at the Department of Home Affairs. This impedes their access to a full life as citizens as they cannot access basic services or jobs without an ID.
She said: “We’ve also seen how LGBTIQA refugees struggle. All these challenges and many others fly in the face of the gay capital of the continent.”
Matebeni said seven organisations united to form the umbrella body.
“Our mission is to work towards an inclusive Cape Town Pride by providing an alternative, free, inclusive and accessible programme,” she said.
mika.williams@inl.co.za