Carnival brings “joy and fun” to Orange Farm
The theme was Revival of Ubuntu
Huge puppets watched over carnival goers as they made their way through the streets of Orange Farm in Gauteng.
On Sunday, the streets of Orange Farm were filled with music, bright colours and dancers as a carnival parade made its way through the township.
“We have many challenges in a township like Orange Farm and programs promoting the arts can assist with dealing with some of these challenges,” said Nkosana Ngobese, the brains behind the event which was presented by the Nkosana Ngobese Foundation.
“Even for organising a carnival like this, we created many opportunities for work as we needed designers, seamstresses, choreographers, welders and carpenters,” said Ngobese.
He hopes to make the carnival an annual event.
Local resident Nkosimphile Masiteng participating in the carnival.
The theme of this year’s event was “Revival Of Ubuntu” to foster unity within the community and cultivate a positive image of the township.
Located around 45km south of Johannesburg, Orange Farm has high unemployment, failing infrastructure, a lack of services and high levels of crime.
“We are really suffering here in Orange Farm. Things just seem to be getting worse and worse every year. At least things like this carnival can bring some joy and fun for the community, especially for the children,” said resident Themba Khoza.
Members of the Orange Farm Skateboarding Society joined in the carnival fun.
Hundreds of people participated in the carnival and it was well received by residents who congregated in large numbers.
“I am very happy that this carnival was a success and that everything, from the design of the costumes to the music to the organisation, was done by local township artists,” said Ngobese.
A young stilts walker waits patiently for the carnival to start.
Sifiso Zwane, a local resident, showing off his homemade toy car built around a bicycle frame.
Brass band AMC3 from the neighbouring township of Sebokeng came to support the carnival.
Various groups showed off their dance moves as they made their way through the township.
Next: Durban residents, dumped for 2010 world cup, protest
Previous: Kariega parents fight to save “beacon of hope” farm school
Letters
© 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.