Queen of Queens

http://www.sactwu.org.za/events/55-spring-queen

This week as part of my Public Culture course, I visited the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre where they are running an exhibition of the Spring Queen pageant. The Spring Queen festival has  been organised annually by the women factory workers in the clothing industry since the 1970s. In June or July each factory chooses a Spring Queen who would then participate for the Queen of Queens title in November of that year.

My first reaction to the idea of a Spring Queen was of a demeaning beauty pageant, a cattle parade, objectifying women. It was an appeasement, a consolation, something to keep the “poor Coloured” workers happy. I grew up in the days when there was a white Miss SA and a coloured Miss Africa South.

I came away with a different perspective – one of unity among the workers, a diversion from the daily grind of working in an industry which is notorious for poor wages. Typically the women who work in the factories are single parents, often with a number of children. One of the workers who had worked at a factory which had recently closed down, related her experiences of the pageant.

“People see us as factory workers, and that is all you are worth,” she said. The pageant offered the young women an escape from reality, a fairy tale – “even for one day you can feel like Princess Diana”  - she told us. She used phrases like “very exciting and very beautiful”; “you feel like millionaires”; “an exciting and happy time”. There were opportunities to further a modelling career or a bursary to study further.

While she was talking, her colleague, an older woman, who had been sitting quietly observing, slipped me three photographs, slightly crumpled and dog-eared.  They were all of her in costumes, possibly ten or fifteen years previously. In one photo she wore an elaborate pink creation, looking indeed like a princess.

When I whispered my admiration to her, she smiled proudly as she put the photos back into her bag. In that moment I realised how much participating in the Spring Queen pageant must have meant to her. For a brief moment, someone had looked at her with different eyes.  She had felt special. She had been acknowledged.

The exhibition is on at 15 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, until the end of February. The centre is open form 10h00 to 16h00, Monday to Saturday.