The Kaapse Klopse (or simply Klopse), officially named the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival, is a traditionally Cape Coloured minstrel festival that takes place annually on 2 January in Cape Town, South Africa.

The festival is also referred to as Tweede Nuwe Jaar (Afrikaans for Second New Year). As many as 13,000 minstrels^{[citation needed]} take to the streets, garbed in bright colours, carrying colourful umbrellas and playing an array of musical instruments. The minstrels are self-organised into klopse ("clubs" in Kaapse Afrikaans, but more accurately translated as troupes in English). The custom has been preserved since the mid-19th century.^{[citation needed]}

Under apartheid, the period of government-enforced racial segregation and stratification in South Africa, the festival was known as the Coon Carnival, but local authorities have since renamed the festival the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival as the term coon is widely considered an ethnic slur.

There is contention around the continued use of blackface by festival performers.

On the eve of 30 December, people gather in the Bo-Kaap (Malay Quarter in Signal Hill) to await the Tweede Nuwe Jaar (2 January) with the songs of Malay choirs and ghoema drums ushering in the dawn of a New Year. During the 19th century, the New Year was celebrated by the Dutch and was considered to be the biggest annual feast. Slaves would get a day off on 2 January and were allowed to celebrate in their own manner. Slavery was officially abolished in the Cape on 1 December 1834. The Tweede Nuwe Jaar became a celebration that united the "creole culture" in Cape Town. It is estimated that the first carnival troupe was organised in 1887. In the apartheid years, the Cape Minstrels sang songs like "Dis'n nuwe jaar" ("It's a new year"), and many local songs, which were more true to the Cape Province and the local milieu.

Modern Cape Minstrel tradition was influenced by the visit to the Cape by American minstrels. Old Cape minstrels, such as "The Ethiopians", had their own collection of Dutch and American songs. These minstrels used to parade the streets of Cape Town and serenade the locals with their songs. An etching by Heinrich Egersdorfer in 1884 depicted those regular marches by the local chapter of the Salvation Army, which included many of the locals, could have contributed to the style of the marching that the Klopse displays today. In 1862, the then-internationally renowned Christy's Minstrels visited the Cape from the United States and in 1890 Orpheus McAdoo's Virginia Jubilee Singers performed in Cape Town. The Christy's Minstrels were white men and women who had blackened their faces with burnt cork to impersonate the African-American slaves. Between July 1890 and June 1898 they staged many minstrel shows in Cape Town and it is believed that this contributed to the birth of the Cape Minstrels and the Coon Carnival. The visitors' influence on the Coon Carnival included the tradition of painting their faces black and whited out their eyes to look like "racoons". In the 1900s, the celebrations took place at various locations. In 1907 Green Point Cricket Club organised the first formal Carnival and moved it to the Green Point Track which later became a tradition. The events continued in 1908 and 1909, but discontinued thereafter until 26 January 1920, when the leader of the African People Organization, Abdullah Abdurahman, re-instated the "Grand Carnival on Green Point Track". In 1921, the Cape Town Cricket Club held a rival carnival in Newlands and this was the start of minstrel competitions in various venues and by various organising boards. New Year Carnivals of the 1920s and 1930s brought Minstrels, Privates, Brass Bands, Choirs and Malay Choirs together.

The Group Areas Act of 1966 declared District Six a whites only area resulting in approximately 60 000 residents being evicted and moved to parts of the Cape Flats, such as Manenberg and Mitchells Plain. The implementation of the Group Areas Act resulted in communities losing their sense of belonging to the communities they grew up in because of the forced removals. The Minstrel performances were spread across the Cape Peninsula to various areas. In 1967, the Carnival was banned from its home at the Green Point stadium. In 1968 there were no Minstrels parading in the Cape Town CBD. Transportation to attend rehearsals became an additional challenge and expense for the different competing minstrel groups. During the 1970s, the traffic by laws and the "Illegal Gathering Act" were used to place additional challenges on the minstrel festival organizers. From 1971, Athlone Stadium was used for the 'non-white' spectators. In 1977, all Minstrel marches were forbidden in any part of Cape Town and as a result people lost interest in watching the parade. The event was moved between various stadiums in order to keep it alive until 1989, when the event returned to its original route: from District Six to the Green Point stadium.

Tweede Nuwe Jaar ("Second New Year") is a day that is unique to Cape Town and stems from practices associated with slavery, and its history is linked with the Coon Carnival. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Cape slaves were given a day off from their duties on 2 January every year. During this alternative New Year celebration, the slaves would dress up as minstrels and dance rhythmically to the sounds of banjos, guitars, ghoema drums, whistles, trombones and tubas. Tweede Nuwe Jaar is a celebration of a community's survival. It illustrates the continuity between its past, present and future. The now deceased iconic musician Taliep Petersen, is claimed to have said of Tweede Nuwe Jaar celebrations, "Dis onse dag" ("It is our day"). It is a day when the local working class community which survived slavery, segregation and Apartheid celebrates its existence and perseverance.