Leisure and Social Identity in Cape Town, British Cape Colony, 1838-1910

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Periodical article

Title:	Leisure and Social Identity in Cape Town, British Cape Colony, 1838-1910
Author:	Bickford-Smith, Vivian
Year:	1998-1999
Periodical:	Kronos: Journal of Cape History
Issue:	25
Pages:	103-128
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	South Africa The Cape Great Britain
Subjects:	colonialism leisure History and Exploration Urbanization and Migration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/41056430
Abstract:	This article provides a cross-racial study of a range of leisure activities in Cape Town, South Africa's oldest town. It covers the seven decades between slave emancipation and the Union of South Africa in 1910. It starts with the 15th of May 1863, when Cape Town celebrated the wedding of Britain's Prince Albert. It continues with a discussion of leisure activities such as British sports and games (horse-racing, cricket), the theatre, canteens and smuggling houses, street games, songs and gangs, and the New Year Carnival or Coon Carnival. The transition from preindustrial to industrial leisure activites - which included the emergence of 'rational' sports or the Coon Carnival and its connection to gangsterism - contained a number of notable developments. One was the apparent retreat by the city's elite from participation or spectating in some of the communal activities that had characterized Cape Town before the mineral revolution. Another, not entirely uncoincidental development was the growth of ethnic particularism and racial segregation. Ref.