Cape Town - Kelly Eve Koopman and Sarah Summers from Muizenberg have been making waves on social media after posting a video on their Facebook page Coloured Mentality.
The video features celebrity guests like actress Denise Newman, singer Lloyd Jansen and rapper Jitsvinger weighing in on the debate of the use of the term coloured and what it means. Koopman and Summers believe they are on a quest to investigate their own coloured ancestry and identity. The six-part web series takes a critical look at the identity of coloured people and explores what coloured means.
Next month the pair will participate in a 1000km walk from Fort Beaufort in the Eastern Cape to Cape Town by a group of Khoisan activists to raise awareness about the plight of South Africa’s indigenous people.
“We met the group of Khoisan activists, and we found that this walk happens annually and it’s the main focus of this documentary,” Summers said. “When we started filming the documentary we realised that in all the conversations we were having there were so many areas that needed critical interrogation and conversation, where people were looking for a platform to discuss because there were so many facets to this.”
The walk starts on February 18.
Koopman said that whenever the conversation about coloured identity arose, it was always “awkward and uncomfortable”.
When the first episode of Coloured Mentality was published on the morning of January 12, it garnered 40000 views within 24 hours and had notched up more than 1200 shares. “I think what motivated the ethos behind it is that we were in conversation with a lot of people that I personally respect,” Koopman said.
The web series highlights many notable celebrities weighing in on the debate. “Our ideas of getting those figures was that they are well known and have an influence to engage in this conversation. A lot of the people that we’ve interviewed are people that are basically representing the coloured identity,” Summers said.
In 2013 the crime drama film Four Corners was released and in 2016 the critically acclaimed film Noem my Skollie was released, both of which feature portrayals of coloured people who are boxed in by gangsterism and violence. “I think its two-fold for me; we cannot ignore the fact of gangsters, we make coloured people synonymous with gang culture and it becomes a problem because it just becomes this playground where people just accept the stereotype given. So I do think these type of films limit the fact to see beyond these stories,” Summers said.
Koopman and Summers also reiterated the fact that the page Coloured Mentality offers a safe platform for coloured people by coloured people.