Is Guy Fawkes Ours to Celebrate?

You can tell when Guy Fawkes is coming. The pops and bangs start long before the fifth of November. You can hear them from blocks away. Even though fireworks are banned, every babbie seems to have a stash under the counter. The kids know exactly who to ask.

When I was a kid in the nineties, Guy Fawkes had a different feel. We were running or dancing the streets, dressed in old clothes or even cross-dressing, our faces hidden with boot polish or an old pantyhose pulled over our heads. The idea was to look funny. And we would sing songs at houses, asking for money.

We threw flour or perhaps a rotten egg at our friends. It was a harmless celebration. We were simply having a laugh. No property was damaged. Nobody got hurt.

Today’s version is scary. We see gangs of teens running riot. They are involved in assault, intimidation, and robbery. They pelt cars with bricks and paint. They fill socks with heavy objects or condoms with paint to throw at innocent people. Children now fear going to school because of the hooliganism that is unleashed on the streets.

This year’s Guy Fawkes came not long after that video of boys beating up another boy at school went viral. Everyone was talking about bullying, and then here comes this day that permits young boys to act like hooligans. The same behaviour, the same pack mentality. It’s like kids are being trained to enjoy intimidation. They laugh when they scare someone. They film it and post it online.

Worse still is the effect on families dealing with gun violence. The Cape Flats has too much of it. The bursts and booms of fireworks sound exactly like real gunshots. For families who lost loved ones to the violence, that noise is not a celebration.

The story behind Guy Fawkes has nothing to do with our streets, anyway. Many of these kids have no idea who Guy Fawkes even was. Ask them, and they’ll say “Guy” like they mean ghaai. They think it’s that local word we have for fooling around, not a name. They don’t know he was a real man from England.

Guy Fawkes was an English conspirator born in York, England, in 1570. He is the most famous member of the group of provincial Catholics who planned the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate the Protestant King James I and his ministers in retaliation for the persecution of Catholics.

Fawkes was discovered guarding the explosives beneath the House of Lords on the night of November 4-5, 1605, and was subsequently tortured and executed.

Bonfire Night’s tradition, commemorating the foiled Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in England, was imported to the Cape, as it was a British colony.

Over time, this commemoration, which typically involves bonfires, fireworks, and sometimes the burning of a Guy Fawkes effigy, was adopted and integrated into local customs, particularly within the Coloured and working-class communities of Cape Town.

Sometimes, I think of the old days when Guy Fawkes meant you could stand on your stoep and watch kids fool around. Now you close your curtains and hope no one targets your house. You pray your car makes it to the morning without a cracked window or a splash of paint.

Maybe it’s time we admit that Guy Fawkes has lost its place here. It no longer gives children joy. The Cape Flats doesn’t have many traditions left that bring our kids together. But what’s the point of keeping one if it teaches them that violence can be fun? In a city already bruised by violence, that’s the last lesson we need to pass down.

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