Bo-Kaap

There’s a 20-minute video that plays in the Museum of Bo-Kaap. It features a series of interviews with current and ex-residents of Bo-Kaap, an iconic colorful neighborhood and former township in Cape Town.

Bo-Kaap is deeply influenced by Islamic culture, and its history is as rich and colorful as the houses themselves. When describing the area, one of the interviews said something that really sparked something that I have been trying to process. He notes how he remembers standing on the street corners of his home with his friends as tourist buses and foreigners constantly came into his residential neighborhood. He would jokingly point to his friends and exclaim, “and on your left you see a young Malay in his local habitat,” which I thought was a brilliant way to use humor to illustrate a deep issue.

Though the tourists likely did not have poor intentions, the sort of commercialization that was taking place all over the streets of their homes was ultimately turning the people into spectacles. When you think about it, it would be strange for people to walk around your home and snap photographs of your every day life in curiosity and amazement. Especially when you and your culture are the subject of the photograph, it creates a sense of discomfort for those being gazed at.

Within the museum, I was introduced by the following passage:

"Bo-Kaap and its residents have traditionally been gazed at through a lens of difference. Under apartheid between 1948 and 1994, those living in the area were characterized by the National Party state as exotic. They were classified as 'Malays,' and their cuisine and dress were treated as objects of marvel, including in spaces such as this museum. To help challenge these perceptions, we must view the residents of Bo-Kaap not in terms of a static community bounded by tradition, but as a diverse and constantly evolving group of people. Whilst photographs can sometimes encourage a gaze of 'otherness', we encourage you to consider the people in these images as individuals who live and work in the cosmopolitan space that is modern day Cape Town..." -Gunwant Jaga, 2015.

At first, I was worried that I should not snap photos of the houses or walk around the area, but I realized that was not the intention or message of the museum at all. Rather, the story about Bo-Kaap is only superficially seen. In a sense, we are taking photos without context, which can be quite dangerous. So I guess this is my 5-paragraph caption for a beautiful image that would otherwise have just been an image. Hopefully you found something interesting and might see some parallel situations that happen back home.

"I live in Bo-Kaap, I grew up in the Bo-Kaap area, I'm here all the time, all the years here... In the neighborhood, everybody knew everybody, and when there were weddings and deaths, everybody used to get together and help each other. The neighborhood has changed after apartheid, there's a lot of people -- outsiders -- coming to buy property here. I don't have a problem with that. Culture is still there, but it's slowly changing, as the children are getting more educated and they go out. The old culture that we used to have -- intermingling -- that is basically changing, and there's nothing anyone can do about it even if we tried to bring it back, I doubt it very much." - Wahab Ahmed