The Tshwane Leadership Foundation (TLF) on Saturday successfully hosted its first massive Feast of the Clowns annual event in the Pretoria city centre since the lifting of the Covid-19 related restrictions.
With more than one thousand people from all over Pretoria in attendance, the event saw most attendees participating in its iconic Feast of the Clowns parade and other activities. The colourful parade began in Lilian Ngoyi Street near Burgers Park, proceeded to Johannes Ramokhoase Street then returned to Burgers Park, where all other activities took place for the rest of the day.
“The Feast of the Clowns festival was a major success,” TLF executive director Joel Mayephu told Rekord.
Mayephu said the main aim of the event was to raise sensitive issues affecting the community in a funny and memorable way.
“The issues I am talking about consist of homelessness, gender-based violence, children abuse, xenophobia, crime, people with mental health problems and youth and children development, among others,” he said.
He said the idea behind presenting the important issues through clowns was to make it easy to send important massages in a more relaxed and funny manner and without offending anyone.
“We learnt this approach from Europe, where people had their heads chopped off when raising serious issues of justice against the king. The clowns were however able to raise sensitive issues in a funny way and without the dangers of having their heads chopped off by the king,” he said.
He said the clowns used funny ways to tell the truth.
“We are therefore using that character to raise serious issues in a funny way,” he said.
He said the recent event was the first open public event after Covid-19 restrictions as the previous one was virtual in 2021.
One of the organisers of the event, Nombulelo Ndandani said they had hosted this year’s event under the theme Making Home because “we want the city to be home to everyone”.
“We want everyone to feel safe in our city because we believe a home is a place where we should be safe,” she said.
She added that besides conducting awareness and having fun activities, the event also provided small businesses an opportunity to raise money to sustain their businesses and support their families.
“We had more than 10 stalls of small businesses at the event,” she said.
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