Kewpie

Kewpie (1942–2012) was a South African drag queen and hairdresser. She was a gender fluid individual who preferred she/her pronouns. Kewpie worked as a hairdresser in District Six and her salon became the center of the queer and drag community. She performed under the stage name of Capucine. Kewpie's large collection of photos is owned by the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) and documents queer life during apartheid.

Biography Kewpie was born Eugene Fritz in District Six in 1942. She was one of six siblings, but only herself and her brother, Trevor and sister Ursula, lived to become adults. She started taking ballet lessons at the University of Cape Town when she was 14. Kewpie had throat cancer and had her trachea removed. Kewpie had first given her well-documented and labeled pictures to GALA in 1999. In 2018, an exhibition of the photos in context with the history of her life opened at the District Six Museum.