Photographer and filmmaker Melani Ismail presents a new public exhibition at Company’s Garden dedicated to the people, rituals, and everyday moments that sustain the living culture of Cape Flats in Cape Town. Through her intimate shots, she raises an important question about whose cultural stories are recognized and preserved in South Africa.
The exhibition, 'Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory,' runs at Company’s Garden from September 5th to 27th as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival during Heritage Month. Based on Ismail's archive, the exposition views Goema and Cape Flats as a living culture, not just an annual performance. It emphasizes that the culture of Cape Town's coloured residents has long been underrepresented in official cultural narratives and visual documentation of South Africa.
Most people are familiar with the vibrant version of Cape Flats: a spectacular, colourful event featuring satin costumes, painted faces, feathers, brass instruments, and thousands of participants filling the streets of Cape Town on Tweede Nuwe Jaar. However, the exhibition focuses on the periods leading up to this grand event.
Music and Preparation
Before the crowded streets, there are months of general rehearsals held on concrete grounds. During this period, costumes are prepared, friendships are strengthened, and the older generation passes traditions to the younger. These quiet moments of interaction, fatigue, preparation, and a sense of belonging rarely make it into the public perception of the Klopse.
Ismail documents precisely these moments, moving between rehearsals, preparations, streets, and celebrations to capture the community that sustains its cultural memory through music, movement, ritual, and collective experience. For Ismail herself, this work is deeply personal.
She states that she is a documentary photographer and filmmaker from South Africa, born in Manenberg, Cape Town. Her work aims to capture the lived experience of Cape Town's coloured communities through an honest and intimate lens. Working within her own community, she creates images that celebrate humanity while enriching the visual archive of a culture that has long been ignored in South Africa and beyond.
Her connection to Cape Flats began through the group Playaz Inc., a minstrel group from Mitchells Plain. Initially, Ismail worked with this group, shooting a music video for Boskasi's song 'Goema!'. It was during her first visit to one of their rehearsal spaces that the project began to take shape.
Ismail explains that she did not initially plan to photograph this subject specifically. Working with Playaz Inc. for the 'Goema!' clip led her to a rehearsal at a school in Mitchells Plain. Seeing them in their own space, she realized there was something deeper she wanted to explore and convey. She strives to document the daily lives of people, and this seemed like part of that story. She wanted to capture the people outside of the performance—their relationships, sense of community, joy, and tradition.
Klopse are usually photographed in their most spectacular form. However, one of the exhibition panels calls the rehearsal spaces the 'foundation of our heritage,' while another highlights the 'quieter moments' where identity is lived rather than displayed, at tables, in neighborhoods, and within communities.
Ismail's practice stems from this perspective. Born in Manenberg and working closely with Playaz Inc. in neighboring Mitchells Plain, she describes her photography as an extension of lived experience. Both communities have histories shaped by forced removals during the apartheid era, but they are also marked by creativity, resilience, and enduring cultural traditions.
Instead of presenting her subjects as observers of their own culture, Ismail photographs from within it. She asserts that her work with Playaz is based on a desire to preserve and honor the living culture of Cape Flats. Rather than focusing solely on the spectacle of carnival performances, she is drawn to the quieter moments of rehearsals, preparations, and interactions—moments when traditions are nurtured, community is strengthened, and culture is passed down through generations. These moments reveal the heartbeat of their people and the immense role of music and collective memory in sustaining cultural identity.
The idea of memory permeates the entire exhibition. The photographs show people relaxing together in the street after a march, performers moving through familiar neighborhoods, and crowds where the line between performer and spectator blurs.
One accompanying text states: 'We march to remember who we are,' which is a profoundly significant statement in a country where cultural memory is still shaped by what is recorded, taught, and officially recognized.
Historical Context and Recognition
The exhibition curator, Heidi Erdman, places Goema within a much longer history of cultural exchange. This genre emerged in the Cape Colony due to the encounters of slaves from various ethnic backgrounds, evolving into a distinctly Cape sound closely linked to New Year celebrations, which became the Cape Minstrels Carnival, or Klopse. During apartheid, it was also associated with counter-cultural resistance against the regime.
According to Erdman, Goema shares similarities with other Creole musical traditions, including Mauritian Sega and Réunion Maloya. All originated from histories of migration, slavery, cultural interaction, and creolization, and all are ways communities express their identity, resilience, and sense of belonging.
However, there is a critical difference. Sega and Maloya have been recognized as forms of intangible cultural heritage. Goema, despite being equally tied to the history and identity of a cultural minority in Cape Town, does not hold such status in South Africa.
This gives the 'Cape Rhythm' exhibition a purpose that goes beyond simple documentation: it is an invitation to reflect on how culture survives, how it carries memory, whose stories are recognized and preserved, and a call for authorities to finally recognize Goema and Klopse as part of South Africa's intangible cultural heritage.
For Ismail, photography is one way to contribute to this recognition. She states that through film and photography, she creates a living visual archive that preserves their stories and celebrates the richness of coloured culture. Her practice is a direct response to the underrepresentation of their communities in the media, both in South Africa and abroad. Every shot is an act of preservation for her people, their history, traditions, and the enduring dignity, beauty, and resilience of their culture.
A special power lies in seeing these photographs displayed in Company’s Garden—one of Cape Town's most historically significant public spaces. As Erdman notes, placing the photographs in a historic public space allows the work to reach an audience beyond the gallery, turning the public into art critics.
One of the exhibition texts reads: 'The street belongs to us all.' This sense of belonging is palpable in these images. The streets become spaces of memory and celebration, but also places where the community sees its reflection: families, friendship, rehearsals, rituals, and relationships that allow tradition to continue.
For Ismail, the relationship with the troupe became something she could not have planned when she first came to shoot the music video. She recalls that what started as a music video shoot ended with her and Nicole (Boskasi) marching with them as part of the troupe during Tweede Nuwe Jaar. To this day, they say it was the best day of their lives, for reasons she cannot put into words.
Ultimately, 'Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory' is a small contribution to a much larger and ongoing story belonging to the communities that keep this culture alive. The question remains: what does it say about South Africa when a living tradition still has to prove its right to be remembered as part of its own heritage?