Cape Malay

Abstract The largely external formulation “Cape Malay” refers to the culture and members of a Muslim community that was consolidated under British rule at the Cape of Good Hope at the turn of the 18th century, having come into being due to the longer heritage of forced migration from Dutch-ruled insular Southeast Asia and the interrelated establishment of Cape Town in 1652. With the formal granting of freedom of religion at the end of the Dutch period, Cape Town saw the consolidation of numerous mosques in the streets of the Bo-Kaap (Cape Heights) and the further expansion of outposts in smaller coastal and rural towns, particularly with the move toward manumission of the enslaved in the 1830s. Rising wealth in some sections of the Muslim community also saw increasing connections to Arabia and its holy places by mid-century, which were under Ottoman rule until World War I. Although the use of Malay began to decline over the same period in favor of a distinct form of spoken and literary Afrikaans used to explicate key texts, the subsequent marginalization in the face of migration to the colony of Muslims from South Asia and the museumization of the streets of the Bo-Kaap under the apartheid regime saw greater community investment in a distinct identity that some had affirmed as Cape Malay. However, other prominent local figures advocated for that of the more expansive Cape Muslim.