Clifton Beach Rain Dance: when cultural appropriation gets cancelled

The ongoing water crisis in Cape Town has incited a variety of metaphysical, pseudo-spiritual and opportunistic interventions.

Angus Buchan, the man behind Shalom Ministries, declared that God is intentionally punishing the parched populace because the Mother City is, in short, laden with sinners.

He called for a day of prayer to appease the powers that be. Unfortunately, Buchan failed to elucidate his no doubt nuanced understanding of God's plan, so it's hard for us irreligious laymen to perceive why, in rebuking Cape Town's hedonistic rich - as Buchan contends - God has failed to exempt Cape Town's poor from privation.

A rain dance was scheduled for Clifton 4th Beach on Friday, February 17. A Facebook page advertised the event. One might assume this was another iteration of spiritualism; an alternative to Buchan's evangelical approach.

But this wouldn't have been a rain dance in any traditionally numinous sense. It wasn't sanctioned by any cultural authorities, or planned under the auspices of South Africa's Rain Queen.

It was, in fact, destined from the start to be a parodic appropriation of a venerable tradition - an obtusely camp fusion of comic relief and performative solidarity.

The same administrative powers that elected to represent a rain dance in South Africa with a picture of a long-haired, water-soaked white woman mid-gyration, made only this (slightly petulant) apologia: "Due to complaints from various different cultures, unfortunately we have decided to cancel this event. It was first created in a fun, light-hearted manner but it has been decided [to cancel it so] as not to disrespect certain cultures. We do apologise for the inconvenience."

Rain dances in themselves are ingenious. Not, of course, because they are guaranteed to generate rainfall, but because they constitute an exercise in community-building - a ritualised consolidation of social unity - in times of trouble. So I find it patently ironic - albeit entirely fitting - that, in trying to stage an irreverent simulation of a rain dance, the organisers actually managed to invert its underlying purpose.

Clifton is one of the wealthiest suburbs in Cape Town, and, in Cape Town, the wealthy are predominantly white. So it's safe enough to assume that the rain dance on Clifton 4th Beach would have been populated by a cohort of comfortably affluent white participants: a demographic that can afford to behave "in a fun, light-hearted manner" in spite of the drought.

It's not only that it would've been a flagrant display of mindless cultural appropriation. It's not limited to the fact that I suspect "various different cultures" is an underhanded reference to anybody who isn't white. It's that events like this - and statements like Angus Buchan's - operate to disfigure the unpleasant reality that this drought is being experienced in spatially, racially and economically contingent ways.

So while the same rich people responsible for God's wrath fight over bottled water in the narrow alcoves of the nearest Woolworths, the residents of Khayelitsha are going to be reliant on water delivery services - at least, until our prayers take effect and the heavens open up again.