Religious and secular Cape Malay Afrikaans: Literary varieties used by Shaykh Hanif Edwards (1906-1958)

Abstract

In the context of the White and Christian-dominated Afrikaans language movements, followed by apartheid, little attention has been paid to an Afrikaans literary variety used among Muslim Cape Coloureds, a group often referred to as ‘Cape Malays’. Descending mainly from Asian slaves brought by the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company), and bearing the marks of cohabitation with non-Asian populations at the Cape, the Cape Malays at an early stage developed a distinct religious culture through their adherence to Islam, as well as a distinct Cape Dutch linguistic identity through their connections with the Dutch East Indies and the Islamic world. These cultural idiosyncrasies found expression in a local literature, religious and (more rarely) secular, using as a medium a variety of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans written either in the Arabic alphabet or in the Roman alphabet.