The Mother City Queer Project (MCQP) does not need to be introduced to the socially conscious. But for those who still don’t know about it, the MCQP is Cape Town’s annual bash where dress-up is compulsory, where acting ‘gay” is compulsory but being gay is not.
Now the history of the event, and the extraordinary lengths people have gone to in dressing up for it, has been chronicled in a new hard- cover book called FAB (Umuzi publishers). Devoted largely to photographs of revellers, this item for the coffee table illustrates the ethos of the MCQP — that of turning ‘politics into pleasure”. That is how its originators André Vorster and Andrew Putter put it in an interview in 1994 when the concept kicked off under the name the Locker Room Project.
In essence, like other gay pride parades, the MCQP is the chrysalis that emerged from the ugly old society and the tough days of activism that followed in the early Nineties. The book suggests that no open celebration of gayness is politics free. The act of dressing up and going out in teams and themes creates a sort of security barrier between participants and the hostile world gazing in from the outside.
To prove it, the book presents a single stock image of placard waving Christian protesters showing that the parties happen, not merely for their own sake but in opposition to those who would wish to curtail constitutional liberties.
In contrast to the vibrant photography, descriptions of how people went about deciding what characters to dress up as are quite banal.
The actual text compiled and, in places, written by Eric Miller and Karen Jeynes is not written particularly well. But the photography, by seven principal photographers including Miller, gives a good impression of the swirling surrealism of the event. In general the book has a sort of scrapbook feel, right down to reproducing a day-by-day internet blog by one time MCQP creative director and theatre personality Peter Hayes.
What one gleans from the lowbrow points of view of party revellers is the way in which people from all echelons have made the experience their own. This is not a party for the glamorous elite. An anonymous woman hopes her husband won’t find out she is there — and that she won’t see her kids. A drug dealer celebrates the party as a moment to make a quick buck and a suburban boy has to call up his mother the day after to explain why he is shown on the cover of a newspaper, in drag and drunk.
The book contains some known voices: Joan Hambidge, Sheryl Ozinsky, Peter Krummeck, Shaun de Waal and Graham Weir.