A walk around Bo-Kaap

The forecast for yesterday was for non-stop rain, so we decided against going to the market as we’d planned. Instead, we took the washing to the laundry, picked up some groceries in Spar, and spent the day following the cricket and catching up with writing.

This morning, it was looking much brighter, so we walked🚶‍♂️to the City Sightseeing office in Long Street to join the 10am walking tour around the Bo Kaap district. There were 3 of us - Mark and I, and a girl from Uzbekistan 🇺🇿 who lives in Kent!

Bo Kaap (meaning ‘above the Cape’ in Afrikaans) is an area of Cape Town famous today for its brightly painted houses and cobblestoned streets, the subject of many an Instagram post.

The area was originally known as the Malay Quarter because it was settled by skilled craftsmen brought over from Malaysia and Indonesia as slaves by Jan de Waal in the 1760s. Most of these people were Muslim, and they established the first mosques in South Africa, including the very first one, Auwal Mosque, built in Dorp Street in 1794. Later, these settlers were joined by workers of different ethnicities, including Indians, non-Muslim Coloureds, Filipinos, Africans, Portuguese, and Italians. Everyone lived happily together in this multi-cultural neighbourhood.

During apartheid, Bo Kaap was designated a racially segregated district. Unlike nearby District Six, however, the area was not bulldozed. Non-Malay residents were forcibly removed, though, in accordance with the Group Areas Act. This was due to the actions of I D du Plessis, an apartheid government official who was sympathetic to the original inhabitants of Bo Kaap and wanted to preserve the Malay character of the area.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the area is once again home to many different nationalities. However, over half of the residents are still Muslim, and the district remains the centre of Malay culture in Cape Town. The brightly-coloured paints used on the houses are said to be the result of a spontaneous expression of freedom following the relaxation of apartheid laws, meaning that residents could own their own homes for the first time.Baca lagi