Tracing the Indian Ocean through Performance and Writing Practices of the Cape Muslim Community

What is it about?

This article traces some contours of Indian ocean influence in southern Africa. We suggest that by troubling usage of the word ‘Malay’ we might enable new enquiries into the relationships between the Cape and the Indian Ocean World. While much of that history predates the colonial period, this article considers a genealogy of Islam’s influences of thought and practice through discourse about its sonic trace. In southern Africa, it is unavoidable that the production of race in and through literary and musical lens is an important given.

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Why is it important?

This article has considered Indian Oceanic cultural traits in South Africa as having been produced in social and cultural processes that involve inscription, sonic, performative, and textual mediation. It has sought to be alert to ways in which the making of identities leaves archival traces. We set out to show that the concept ‘Muslim’ in South Africa is not a stable category of its own making. This, we argued, had special bearing on the inherited category of the Cape Malay, an artifact of southern Africa’s historical relationship to the Indian Ocean World.