Today, Shileen Naikedien, lifelong Bo Kaap resident and tour guide with Bo-Kaap Tours, led me on a very complete and interesting tour of the Cape Town up and coming neighborhood of Bo-Kaap as evidenced by the exponentially increasing property values. I can not begin to remember all of the knowledge that Ms. Naikedien imparted to me on the tour so I will try to hit the highlights that are relevant to the theme of this blog.
The tour started at the Bo-Kaap House, now a museum within the Iziko museum group as like the Slave Lodge and Groot Constancia. While the Slave Lodge, as discussed, is the last remaing slave lodge of the East India Trading Company, the Bo-Kaap House 91763) is the only remaining private slave lodge left in Bo-Kaap eventhough the area, under the Dutch and English, had been dominated by such premises in colonial times. Unlike in American slavery, when often slaves lived on their master's estate if not loaned out to others, in Cape Town, owners chose to lock up their slaves in rented houses, away from the owner's home, for further protection from slave uprisings. Today, the Bo-Kaap Museum is used to explore the history of Bo-Kaap and, in particular, it's colored and Malay past, both Christian and Muslim.
During Apartheid, as the area was designated only for coloreds in the 1930s, the population was 80% Muslim. Today, many of the local schools are still predominantly Muslim eventhough the Muslim population, now able to relocate throughout South Africa, has decreased slightly to 70% Muslim. The area was able to maintain it's religious connection to Islam as many of the first religious leaders and Imams, sent as prisoners to Robben Island from other parts of the Dutch Empire, notably Indonesia and India, still practiced their religion after release and still under threat of re-arrest. Today, there are some fifty shrines honoring these individuals throughout Bo-Kaap which currently has a population of 9 to 12,000 people and contains ten mosques. The mosques can be ascertained from the sighting of minerets and the direction from which the call to afternoon prayer can be heard.
It is interesting to note that, in large part, the area has become economically desireable due to the ingenuity of its residents over twenty years ago. Although civic organizations were technically banned, residents, at that time, pooled their resources to buy Bo-Kaap homes in disrepair and to upgrade them. This prevented slumlords from acquiring the property and/or the government from knocking down the building as it was believed locally that this was being done to force colored families to live further out from the center of the city in the colored townships of the Cape Flats. Today, the brightly painted homes are often used for fashion photography shoots as South Africa is a season ahead (i.e. winter in the Northern Hemisphere means summer in South Africa, etc) from that of the Northern nations. The area has also become popular as a backdrop on film sets.
The area has been largely declared historical and, therefore, building renovations need city approval. Homes, even modern ones, need to represent the Dutch Cape and/or English Georgian style. English style is appropriate since the British gained control of the Cape from the Dutch after Great Britain went to war with the Netherlands in the 1700s. In 1899, the British would again go to war with Dutch descendants in South Africa - the Afrikaaners to determine with finality whether South Africa would be part of the British Empire or a series of independent or "free" Afrikaaner states. The British were able to maintain control of the area, eventhough outnumbered by Dutch residents, by co-opting the local colored population with promises of land and family security.
No comments:
Post a Comment