South Africa: Cape Town – Bo-Kaap

South Africa: Cape Town – Bo-Kaap

🗺️ A Little Detour That Was Absolutely Worth It

During our wander around Cape Town, I took us on a detour to an area called Bo-Kaap, which was very near to where we were staying. Now, I’ll be honest — it was my idea, and Karen looked at me with that particular expression she reserves for when she thinks I’m about to drag her somewhere that’ll either be brilliant or a complete waste of shoe leather. She’s learned, over the years, that it’s usually the former. I had seen a good many photographs of brightly coloured houses and wanted to see them for myself, and I can tell you now, the pictures did not do the place justice. Not even close. Bo-Kaap is one of those places that stops you in your tracks the moment you turn the corner and see it properly for the first time — an entire hillside neighbourhood painted in shades of cobalt blue, buttercup yellow, bubblegum pink, lime green, and tangerine orange, all tumbling down cobblestoned streets that have been worn smooth by centuries of footfall. You genuinely feel as though someone has dialled up the saturation on your eyes.

🏛️ A History Written in Colour

In the 1700s, political exiles, slaves and convicts were sent to the Cape by the Dutch from India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the Indonesian Archipelago. Although not technically correct, these individuals and their descendants became known as Cape Malays. Many of them eventually settled in the Bo-Kaap, which became known as the ‘Malay’ Quarter. The Dutch Colonists built numerous “huurhuisjes” (rental houses) and leased them to the slaves. According to the lease agreement, all the houses had to be painted white. But when this rule was lifted and the slaves became able to purchase their houses, they decided to paint them in the brightest colours as a metaphor for freedom! Many of the families in the Bo-Kaap have been living there for generations. Today the Bo-Kaap Community is a significant part of Cape Town’s Cultural Heritage.

To flesh that out a bit, because frankly the history here deserves more than a quick paragraph — the Dutch East India Company, or VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, since we’re being precise), established a refreshment station at the Cape in 1652 under Jan van Riebeeck. Within a generation, the settlement had grown into a full colonial enterprise, and the demand for labour became acute. The VOC brought enslaved people from across its trading empire: from the Indonesian islands of Java, Bali, Sulawesi and Ternate; from Bengal, Malabar and Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka); from Madagascar and Mozambique; and political prisoners and exiles from across the Dutch colonial world, including Muslim leaders who had resisted Dutch authority in their home territories. One of the most notable was Sheikh Yusuf of Macassar, an Islamic scholar and nobleman from the Gowa Sultanate in Sulawesi, who arrived at the Cape in 1694 as a political exile after leading resistance against the VOC in Indonesia. He became a deeply significant spiritual and cultural figure, and his tomb near Macassar on the False Bay coast remains a place of pilgrimage for Cape Muslims to this day.

By the mid-18th century, this diverse community had begun to forge a shared identity — shaped by Islam, by the Afrikaans language that was developing around them, and by a culinary, musical and artistic heritage that blended South and Southeast Asian traditions with African and European influences. The area that would become Bo-Kaap — the name literally means “Above the Cape” in Afrikaans, a reference to its position on the lower slopes of Signal Hill — began to take shape as a distinct neighbourhood from around the 1760s. The Dutch colonial administration built the huurhuisjes as rental accommodation, and their strict regulation that all properties be painted white was a practical matter of uniformity, cost and, one suspects, a certain Dutch fondness for keeping things orderly. When the Cape Colony passed from Dutch to British control — first briefly in 1795, and then permanently from 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg — the social and legal landscape began to shift. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire on 1 August 1834, and formerly enslaved people at the Cape finally gained full freedom in December 1838 after a four-year apprenticeship period. For the community of Bo-Kaap, the right to purchase their own homes became, in time, a right to express their own identity — and that expression came in the form of colour. Vivid, joyful, defiant colour. The bright facades that now attract visitors from around the world are not merely decorative; they are a visual declaration of liberation, of survival, and of a cultural pride that has endured for nearly four centuries. Hard not to feel the weight of that as you’re standing there on a cobbled street in the Cape Town sunshine.

🏠 The Bo-Kaap Museum

The oldest building in the Bo-Kaap is on Wale Street and currently houses the Bo-Kaap Museum. This is the best place to discover the real history of the area and to get a glimpse into the life of a typical Malay family.

The building itself dates from around 1763, making it not just the oldest structure in Bo-Kaap but one of the oldest domestic buildings in Cape Town still standing. It was managed for many years by the Cape Town Heritage Trust before coming under the administration of Iziko Museums of South Africa, which operates a network of fifteen museums across the Western Cape. The museum was established in 1978 and was the first in the country dedicated specifically to the history and culture of the Cape Malay community. Inside, the rooms have been faithfully restored and furnished to represent a middle-class Cape Malay household of the late 19th century, and they give a genuine and rather moving insight into the domestic rhythms of the community — the kitchen where koesisters (a syrup-soaked spiced doughnut that is absolutely nothing like the Afrikaner version and which we shall be returning to discuss in the food section) and bobotie were prepared; the sitting room with its careful arrangement of imported fabrics and ornaments; and the bedroom with its high wooden bedstead. Photographs, documents and objects throughout tell the broader story of the Cape Malay people, from the era of enslavement through emancipation, the indignities of the apartheid era — during which many families were forcibly removed from Bo-Kaap under the Group Areas Act of 1950 — and through to the community’s determined efforts to preserve their heritage in the democratic South Africa that emerged after 1994. We didn’t actually go in on this particular visit, which I’ll admit was a mild oversight on my part, but if you have even a passing interest in history — and if you’re reading this blog, you probably do — it’s absolutely worth an hour of your time.

🚶 Walking the Streets on Our Own Terms

There are walking tours of Bo-Kaap, but we decided to walk the streets under our own steam. This is a residential neighbourhood, not a museum, so as we wandered, we got to see a lot of the daily activities of this mostly Muslim community. Many artisans live in this vibrant area, and among the houses were several shops selling local crafts. We were particularly captivated by one man who was making 3-D art from recycled materials.

The organised walking tours are, by all accounts, very good — several operators offer guided walks with commentary covering the history, architecture and culinary traditions of the area, and some include a cooking demonstration or a meal in a local home. But we’ve always preferred to wander under our own steam, and Bo-Kaap is very well suited to that approach. The neighbourhood is compact — it covers a relatively small hillside area — and the streets are laid out in a way that makes it almost impossible to get properly lost. The cobbled streets of Chiappini Street, Rose Street and Wale Street are the main arteries, and the houses along them are so extravagantly colourful and architecturally varied that you find yourself stopping every few metres to look at something. The buildings are a fascinating architectural jumble: Cape Dutch, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian styles sit cheek by jowl, many of them flat-fronted in the Dutch tradition, with ornate plasterwork details, shuttered windows, and painted stoeps (verandahs) in contrasting colours. Several of the original 18th-century huurhuisjes are still standing, and they sit alongside later additions without any apparent incongruity — it all somehow works.

Because Bo-Kaap is genuinely lived in — families have been here for generations, many tracing their lineage back to the original enslaved community — there is a texture and authenticity to wandering its streets that a purpose-built tourist quarter simply cannot replicate. We passed women calling to each other across the street, small children playing on the stoeps, and elderly gentlemen sitting in doorways with the particular air of people who have seen a great deal of the world and have decided they are perfectly happy right where they are. Several mosques are embedded in the fabric of the neighbourhood — the Nurul Islam Mosque on Chiappini Street, founded in 1844, and the Shafee Mosque on Dorp Street, which dates from 1807 and is believed to be the oldest mosque in South Africa still in use — and their minarets give the skyline of Bo-Kaap a distinctly different character from the rest of Cape Town. The Call to Prayer drifted across the rooftops during our visit, which added a rather lovely layer of atmosphere to the whole experience.

And then, of course, there was the man making 3-D art from recycled materials. He had a little workshop-cum-shop front and was utterly absorbed in what he was doing, piecing together intricate sculptures from scraps of wire, bottle tops, tin cans and miscellaneous bits of urban detritus into things of genuine beauty. We spent a good while watching him work. That sort of improvisational creativity, turning the cast-offs of the modern world into art, felt entirely in keeping with the spirit of a community that has always made something remarkable from whatever circumstances threw at it.