Qibla
Qibla leader Imam Achmad Cassiem in conversation with Khalid Shamis. “When the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Robert Sobukwe, came to Cape Town, specifically to Kensington and Ndabeni, he said at the launch of the branches in those areas, that Muslims are sitting on the blueprint but they’re not implementing it. Now, this is the first […]
The Pharaoh’s New Clothes
By Sophia Azeb Scene I. Arabité and its discontents The first issue of Cairo-based magazine Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings featured an extended excerpt from Léopold Sédar Senghor’s 1967 lecture at the University of Cairo, “Négritude and Arabism” (Arabité in subsequent publications). In it, Senghor asserts that Arabic-speaking Africans – the “Arab-Berber” – played an essential role […]
Archie Shepp’s Shirt Suggests
By Dominique Malaquais and Cédric Vincent The moment has stayed with every person who witnessed it. Archie Shepp improvising live on the street, surrounded by hundreds of onlookers in a trance induced by his otherworldly beats. The place: Algiers. The occasion: PANAF, the first Panafrican Cultural Festival, organised in 1969 by the Algerian government. Tens of […]
Writing the City in a Different Script
The Arabic-Afrikaans Tradition of the Cape By Saarah Jappie A hundred years ago, Mr A. Toffee, a resident of Hanover Street in Cape Town, wrote an impassioned letter to his religious congregation. The page-and-a-half-long document was an exposé of the deceptive behaviour of several imams, which he had been the victim of. He described in […]
Jihad as a Form of Struggle in the Resistance to Apartheid in South Africa
By Na’eem Jeenah Although Muslims form about 2 per cent of the South African population, the community and its individuals played significant roles in South African society for the past 350 years. By the middle of the 20th century, as resistance to apartheid intensified, a number of Muslims were in prominent positions in various resistance organisations. […]