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Carnival 2011

eMzantsi Goes BOS!

'eMzantsi' means 'in the South' in isiXhosa and the 7th annual eMzantsi Carnival celebrating the diverse culture of the south peninsula takes place on Saturday 3rd December.

This year, thanks to funding from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, all eMzantsi community-building programmes have been going green in a big way. Children and youth across the valley have been having lots of fun together while learning about environmental issues around the theme eMzantsi Goes BOS!



There will be no carbon-emitting floats in the parade, but skateboarders, cyclists, stiltwalkers, clowns and live music plus five giant puppets. Biodiversity champion BOS-BABY will frolic with our pre-primary participants. The mermaid Princess MAMLAMBO will be accompanied by eMzantsi’s primary schools twinning programme kids who have been learning how important it is to conserve water. High school participants will be sun warriors following SOLAR, the alternative energy champion, and intercultural music project participants will support the climate change puppet FATHER TIME, torn between technology and nature. And finally mothers from all over the peninsula will escort STOF MAMA, the recycled queen of our mapiko art-from-waste project, who will be demonstrating how Mother Earth has had quite enough of being dumped on.

Spectators can park at the Sun Valley Mall and walk up Ou Kaapse Weg to the fourway junction to watch the eMzantsi Carnival parade on the Kommetjie Road from 10am. The stageshow takes place from 12-3pm on the Sun Valley green afterwards and will feature the finals of our eMzantsi’s Got Talent competition hosted by SA's Got Talent TV presenter Rob van Vuuren, Fish Hoek’s favourite son! Bring your family and enjoy the food and craft market, and free entertainment. See www.facebook.com/eMzantsi or call the eMzantsi office 021 785 1515 for more info.


PLEASE NOTE: TRAFFIC DELAYS DUE TO TEMPORARY ROAD CLOSURES

There will be travel delays in Sun Valley on Saturday 3rd December between 10am and 12 noon due to the annual eMzantsi Carnival. Kommetjie Road (M65) will be partially closed between the Sunnyacres Shopping Centre (next to Masiphumelele) and the fourway intersection with Ou Kaapse Weg (M6), with a stop / go system in effect. Ou Kaapse Weg (M64) will have one lane closed from the M65/M6 intersection to the Longbeach and Sun Valley malls (Buller Louw Drive).

Drivers wishing to travel to and from Ocean View and Kommetjie are advised to go via Scarborough and use Red Hill (M66). For people travelling from Fish Hoek to Longbeach Mall, Sun Valley mall and Noordhoek please use Corsair Road and Frigate Road through Sun Valley to access Buller Louw Drive.



Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, the eMzantsi project is empowering young people of the south peninsula to engage with environmental issues and create a climate for change while having fun. We have focussed on designing integrated and sustainable green themes across all our programmes in 2011.

eMzantsi Green Charter

At a two-day training in April, the eMzantsi team brainstormed their responses to the theme. The resultant five messages of the eMzantsi Green Charter are all about leading by example, focussing on our responsibility to educate and empower ourselves, but can be summed up as: Look after the environment and it will look after us.

1. Water – Primary Schools: WATER IS LIFE: Do not pollute our waterways, clean up your mess, water is precious - don’t waste it.
2. Waste – Mapiko: REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE: Recycle your mind! Get into new habits and rethink your impact on the environment.
3. Biodiversity – Pre-Schools: PROTECT OUR WILDERNESS: We are the guardians of our precious Cape peninsula natural habitat and its unique plants and animals.
4. Energy – High Schools: FIND NEW ENERGIES: Seek alternative energy sources, fossil fuels are for old farts, it’s time to embrace change and get creative, investigate wind, waves, solar ...
5. Climate Change – Music Project: Get nature wise, as the oceans rise, don’t believe the lies...THE POWER IS YOURS: to be the positive change in your home, in your community, in your world, in a changing climate.

eMzantsi Untamed at Kirstenbosch

eMzantsi team at Kirstenbosch l to r in front of the wall of plants inside 13 000 recycled Coca-Cola bottles:
Janis Merand (high schools), Yandiswa Mazwana (primary schools), Luke De Villiers (music), Lorraine Tanner (environment), Cindy Carelse (operations manager),Monique Fagan (mapiko), Khanyiselo Silo (music), Earl Mentor (music)

At the beginning of 2011, when the eMzantsi team decided that this was the year to go green, managing director Sam Pearce took them on a Magical Mystery tour to Kirstenbosch. This inspiring destination was chosen by Sam to counteract the depressing facts of a lecture on the realities of climate change given by environmental educator Lorraine Tanner to the staff in the eMzantsi bus on the way there!

Did you know that 9 out of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record?
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and traps heat in the atmosphere. Each year, five and a half billion tons of carbon is released by burning fossil fuels to power factories, power plants, cars and trucks. That’s the weight of 100 million adult African elephants! Humans have burned so much fuel that there is about 30% more carbon dioxide in the air today than there was about 150 years ago. Around the world people are noticing glaciers melting, oceans rising, more violent and frequent storms, rivers running dry, mosquitoes moving and frogs disappearing ...

While the staff arrived feeling 'nauseous' 'hopeless' and 'overwhelmed', the stunning exhibition ‘UNTAMED’ in the heart of the gardens pulled their spirits round. This was a vision of how a 'Green' Carnival could look: wild and alluring – as opposed to the rather dull and worthy 'you-really-should-recycle-and-plant-trees' aura, which turns youth right off.

The eMzantsi team was entranced by the bronze sculptures of Dylan Lewis and the poems of south peninsula's own Ian McCallum, housed in a recycled structure built by architect Daffonchio, and nestled throughout the Kirstenbosch gardens.



The scale of the sculptures was impressive and the impact on the team very powerful. They were inspired to rearticulate the theme as ‘eMzantsi goes BOS!’, which better sums up the wild, crazy and creative attitude to green issues that eMzantsi seeks to spread.

Did you know that only 2.5% of all the world’s water is fresh water and only 1% of the world’s fresh water is available for human consumption? With its increasing population, Cape Town is a water scarce city. Did you know that it takes 500 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of potatoes but 35000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of chicken?

Their primary school twinning programme will be addressing the challenge of water and teaching children to value this precious resource. Alongside the usual eMzantsi activities of learning drama and drumming in preparation for the annual eMzantsi Carnival in December, Grade 4-6s across the peninsula will be going on outings together to eco-parks to view wetlands and coastal land fill sites.

Did you know that 70% of the Cape’s 9000 odd plants are found nowhere else? The Cape Floristic Kingdom stretches 78555 square kms but only 20% of that vegetation remains.

Pre-primaries involved in eMzantsi will be invited to learn about the unique nature of the Cape’s biodiversity while making costumes to appear as fynbos fairies in the Carnival! High schools will be examining renewable energy sources through a creative arts winter school including a BOS-can sculpture-building competition and recycled fashion show.

Did you know that most of our energy sources for heat, light and power come from fossil fuels which are non-renewable – coal, gas and oil. Oil, of which SA has no natural reserves, has become the single most critical resource on the planet. We should be looking at renewable energy sources such as the sun for solar power, wind and waves – Cape Town is blessed with all three!

The mapiko crew – our dynamic team of costume and float builders – will be tackling the challenge of waste, making giant creatures from recycled materials for each of eMzantsi’s 4WAY LIVE events this year, culminating in the eMzantsi Carnival at the Sun Valley Mall in December.

Did you know that waste in Cape Town is increasing by 6% every year compared to an annual population growth of 2%? Reducing, reusing and recycling stop items going to landfill. It’s time to look after our environment, so it can look after us.

The umbrella issue that impacts all the others is of course climate change – the eMzantsi intercultural music and dance project will be getting creative to get this message across to the youth of Fish Hoek, Masiphumelele and Ocean View.
Don’t forget: eMzantsi means having fun together, and this year we'll be going BOS at all our green events!

For more information, call the eMzantsi office 021 785 1515.