The Emancipation Centenary Pageant

The Emancipation Centenary Pageant was an historical pageant, commemorating the emancipation of slaves in the Cape Colony.

The pageant

On 1 August 1834, Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act which outlawed the ownership, purchase and sale of human beings as property throughout its Empire. However, the legal end of Slavery at the Cape Colony came only on 1 December 1834, with the actual date of emancipation (after a period of compulsory, unpaid "apprenticeship"), only occurring on 1 December 1838. An Historical Pageant, commemorating the emancipation date of 1 December 1834, was held at the Green Point Athletic Track [1] in Cape Town on 10 – 11 January 1935.

The event was organised by the Emancipation Pageant Committee, headed by the Rev Dr Francis Gow of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Pageant, which was attended by large crowds, took the form of 14 "episodes" in the history of Coloured people at the Cape, including the period of slavery and eventual emancipation, and culminated in the ascension of a "ladder of progress".

The political conservatism underpinning the event was quite evident from the Souvenir Brochure, as well as from the accommodating and non-confrontational tone of the event itself, as the Committee took pains not to antagonise whites by refraining from making comments about historical events which could be considered critical or controversial, including on slavery itself.