Cape Town is known as the ‘Mother City’ because it was the first city to emerge in South Africa. It is no surprise then that its people and culture bear testimony to the fact that Cape Town has experienced the most influence from beyond the African continent.
- Cape Town's two biggest contributions to South African culture have probably been in the fine arts and in the unique Cape jazz style, epitomised by musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim and Basil 'Manenberg' Coetzee.
- Cape Town is home to highly regarded public universities, primarily University of Cape Town (UCT), Stellenbosch University, University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
- Cape Town is home to a number of well preserved historic buildings.
- A large number of newspapers, magazines and printing facilities have their offices in the city.
Whether attributed to the towering presence of Table Mountain as the heart of Cape Town or the fact that Cape Town has the most cultural diversity in the country, there is no denying the creative energy that abides and flourishes in this unusual city.Creative people, places and exhibitions are plenty. There is no shortage of live music from jazz to rock. Talented painters, sculptors, photographers and printmakers are continuously experimenting and offering new ideas and exhibitions. Suffice to say Cape Town is a city with a creative pulse!
'Cape Coloured' is a generic term used in South Africa which refers to a variety of peoples from different decent. While ethnicity is historically a painful issue in South Africa it is a generally accepted and widely used term. Coloured people account for almost 50% of the Cape Town population and are rarely found beyond the Western Cape provincial borders.
Some coloured ancestry can be traced back to the original Cape inhabitants namely the Khoi and San. Others are simply mixed race descendants who owe their genealogy to the meeting of the Dutch settlers with the local African cultures in colonial times. However, a large percentage of Coloured people have their roots in Malaysia and are also referred to as Cape Malays. Upon their arrival in the Cape, the Dutch required labour and skilled artisans to set-up the refreshment station for the sea route from Europe to the East. In those days the solution was slavery and hundreds of “slaves” were brought from Malaysia and Indonesia as well as Madagascar and Mozambique. In many cases slaves were imported to be concubines and wives to single male Dutch settlers.
Shortly after slavery was introduced in the Cape, political rebels and Muslim religious leaders who opposed Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia were also imprisoned or exiled to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company. It was this group that first introduced Islam to South Africa and the many Mosques’ in and around Cape Town bear testimony to this influence which remains strong in modern day Cape Town. A large group of Cape Malays remains in the Bo Kaap area of Cape Town. The area has retained its character despite the upmarket transformation of the area and properties due to its proximity to the popular city.
Ironically most of the coloured population speak Afrikaans (Dutch dialect which evolved in South Africa) with some from European and Asian decent speaking English.
The term 'coloured' therefore remains an extremely broad term that originates with the bureaucratic (and usually ridiculous) conditions of race classification that were used by the apartheid regime.
With roots in slavery, mixed race and more ancient inhabitants like the Khoi and the San a great many families have sadly lost their history due to slavery and the apartheid government actions. It’s no wonder then that there is no set “coloured” culture other than their joint classification under apartheid government. That said, the now famous Cape Jazz has its roots amongst this greater culture and more specifically from the Cape Malay influence. A street carnival parade (also called the Coon Carnival) is held each year peaking on the 2nd of January.
The majority of the District Six inhabitants who were forcibly removed from their homes by the apartheid government were also predominantly Coloured people. Suffice to say that the Cape Coloured story is not a simple story. It is definitely complicated, often sensitive, stooped in history and shrouded by a painful political past. But their story and collective culture are the soul of Cape Town that much is certain!
