“The culture is born from a dark and heavy past, burdened by displacement, slavery and slave owners nonetheless, but it has and continues to grow into one of the liveliest, loving and most definitive and indeed one of the oldest cultures exclusive to South Africa. 

Originally, the Cape Malay people came from Indonesia (at that time known as the Dutch East Indies), among other South East Asian countries, and they were transported here as slaves by the Dutch East India Company.  

The Cape of Good Hope also became an “island” of exiles. It’s where the Dutch sent the outcasts, the banished and the rebellious from the other countries they colonised in the world. Cape Town was literally the Robben Island of the Dutch colonial rule during the 1600s and 1700s. 

The Cape Malay language is unique to the ear and can be identified as Afrikaaps, an authentic Afrikaans/English dialect born and bred in Cape Town by the Cape Malay and coloured communities over centuries. “

ABOVE EXCERPTS from an article by Haji Mohamed Dawjee