The headcount on the 2010 festivities hit 46,000 participants, with over 100 000 spectators lining the route. Each troupe practices throughout the year; preparing a routine and raising funds to make the brightly-coloured uniforms and accessories that identify their group. Competition is fierce.

The Kaapse Klopse festival is a Cape custom that harks back to the mid-Nineteenth Century but its origins are unclear. It is said that a group of visiting African-American slaves, and minstrels, who docked in Cape Town entertained sailors and passersby with their spontaneous musical performances. Another story goes that the travelling minstrels were actually white and painted their faces black – hence the painted faces that are part of the costumes we see today. Either way, at the time, Cape Town’s own ‘coloured’ and Malay slave communities identified with their songs and style and began their own tradition in order to celebrate the one and only day in the year that they had off work. This tradition has been carried on for almost two hundred years.

In modern day Cape Town, the festival attracts residents and visitors from all over the world. Over the past five years the Western Cape Province and the City of Cape Town have each spent a total of R30 million on supporting minstrel events. This is more than the funding for any other cultural event in the Western Cape.

The Kaapse Klopse festival has been compared to that of Carnivale in Rio de Janeiro, and the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a spectacular and colourful event that should not be missed. The route for the 2011 road march is the same as in 2009 and 2010; spanning Kaizergracht, Darling Street, Adderley Street and Wale as far as Bree Street.