Glenda Kemp

Glenda Kemp (born 1949) is a South African stripper, activist, and teacher, best known for her exotic dancing sometimes featuring a succession of pythons called Oupa ("grandpa" in Afrikaans) during the 1970s. Kemp faced frequent public criticism from the conservative Apartheid government and was frequently arrested for public indecency even though she attempted to circumvent the law by offering private, invite-only dances. Kemp was named Rapport's Newsmaker of the Year in 1975. The 1976 film Snake Dancer was a semi-biographical story about her life, in which she featured.

Early life Glenda Kemp was born in the Cape Province on 13 May 1949. As a young girl, she lived in the working class suburb of La Rochelle with her mother, stepfather, and younger brother. Her two older siblings were in an orphanage in Potchefstroom; and she would later be sent to there too. Kemp was fostered from the orphanage by the religious Baumbach family in the small farming town of Swartruggens.

In 1969, she enrolled into the Teachers' Training College in Potchefstroom. It was while studying that she discovered dancing; a skill which would be appreciated and detested by many in the future.

Kemp later transferred to the Goudstad Teachers' Training College in Johannesburg to continue dancing in go-go dancing clubs. This is also where he met her first husband, Karl Koczwara. They met at the President Hotel when she asked him for a lift back to her student housing to meet a 8pm curfew.

Exotic dancing It was during the conservative 1970s, that Kemp began stripping with "Oupa", her pet python. Her scandalous actions and her provocative moves caused the Vice Squad to do their best to stop her, without success. She was arrested on numerous occasions and charged with public indecency. Faced with barricades of Christian wives on one side and loyal fans and liberals on the other, she never gave up, but continued to provoke the attention of the public. The newspaper Rapport named her "Newsmaker of the Year".

Dancing itself was not the only way Kemp provoked the conservative public. She used various costumes, including her serpent, a devil hand puppet and stripping off a costume of bloomers, braces and a hat worn by Voortrekker women in a subversive jab towards Afrikaner nationalism. In 1973, she painted herself black, wore an afro wig and danced to drumbeats in the small, conservative Afrikaans town of Volksrust which had protested her visit.

In court, Kemp attempted to argue that her performances were artistic with testimony from renowned South African artist Walter Battiss. and to convince her to participate in the project, he showed her a scrapbook of articles about her that he had collected. Bladsy 3 (Page 3), a play in Afrikaans had a run at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in January 2014 Dances with Snakes, a half-hour TV documentary of her life was made in 1996 and shown on the SABC 3 TV channel. Glenda Kemp, a single by Spoegwolf, was released on 21 March 2014.