JAWI DARI JAUH

Abstract

This article explores the jawi written tradition of the Muslim Community of Cape Town, South Africa, as both a legacy of Indonesians sent to the Cape of Good Hope from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and as a tool for the renewed expression of Malay-Indonesian identities in South Africa. It traces the origins and development of jawi literacy in Cape Town and discusses the contemporary use of remnant jawi texts in activities based around heritage, identity and genealogical projects. In focusing on jawi text, the article illuminates significant broader contextual issues, including the development of the so-called ‘Malay’ community of Cape Town, the historical presence of Indonesians in South Africa, and contemporary political and economic links between the Malay-Indonesian world and South Africa.

Notes

¹‘Jawi from afar,’ refers to the use of the jawi (Arabic-Malay) script in South Africa.

²‘Cape Malay’ is a highly contested term, as is explained later but I have kept it because it is used in the context I describe here. I also use the religious marker ‘Muslim’ when referring to the same community.

³See for instance De Kock (2005: 14).

⁴These observations and others that appear in this article are based on ethnographic research I carried out in Cape Town from 2008 – 2010, as part of my MA research at the University of Cape Town. My masters dissertation, entitled ‘From madrasah to museum: a biography of the Islamic manuscripts of Cape Town’ (Jappie 2011a, 2011b) traced the ‘biography’ of ‘ajami manuscripts at the Cape, from their creation and use at the early Cape, to their role as objects of heritage in contemporary Cape Town. A significant part of the research involved spending time with manuscript owners and heritage enthusiasts in the Muslim community of Cape Town, like Zainab Davidson. However, I first encountered these manuscripts as part of research carried out for the Tombouctou Mss Project at the University of Cape Town where, as a speaker of both Malay and Afrikaans, I was employed to carry out a pilot project on the ‘ajami manuscripts of Cape Town.

⁵See Bradlow & Cairns (1978: 103-105).

⁶As described by William Wilberforce Bird, former British MP and founder of the Cape Philanthropic Society, ‘they are usually engaged in every thing where what is called cleverness is required’ (Shell 1997: 54).

⁷For a discussion of this perceived ‘Circle of Islam’, see: Tayob (2004-5).

⁸It has become a tradition for Muslims in Cape Town to visit this kramat around Easter time with visitors camping overnight by the river (referred to as ‘die kali’) close to the kramat and engaging in festivities organised for this event.

⁹This was the Dorp Street Mosque established in 1794 in a section of Cape Town now referred to as the Bo Kaap. For more information see Davids (1980).

¹⁰Because of this imbalance in our knowledge, many contemporary imaginings of ‘Cape Malay’ origins are entangled in ideas of Javanese royalty and princes from Sumbawa. In fact, the embracing and exploring of slave origins is a very recent phenomenon amongst people of the ‘Cape Malay’ community.

¹¹See Jeppie (1987: 29) and Bickford-Smith (1995: 35).

¹²Such organisations included the Malay Cemetery Board (1886), the South African Moslem Association (1902) and the Cape Malay Association (1922).

¹³Just one example of this discrimination was the mass forced removal of a significant number of Muslims from their homes. Under the Group Areas Act (1950) many ‘Cape Malays’– except those living in the ‘Malay Area’ of the Bo-Kaap – were forcibly removed from their homes when the areas they lived in were declared ‘White’. They were moved out to areas on the Cape Flats, which had significantly detrimental effects on social, economic and personal levels. Today, most Cape Muslims still live in areas on the Cape Flats.

¹⁴As evidenced by extant texts written in these alphabets. For examples of Bugis script, see Worden & Groenewald (2005). For examples of Tamil script see Dick (2008).

¹⁵The term ‘Free Black’ or vrijzwarten refers to ex-slaves and ex-convicts.

¹⁶The use of the jawi script was probably caused by several interrelated factors: slaves and Free Blacks were generally not exposed to colonial education and thus rarely learned the roman script. Yet, many Muslims needed to be literate in the Arabic script to be able to read the Qur'an. Despite their Arabic script-literacy, they could not understand the Arabic language. Their literacy in Arabic script, combined with their familiarity with the Malay language, thus made jawi an appropriate system of written communication.

¹⁷For more on the development of Muslim education in Cape Town, see Ajam (1986). While most slaves were not exposed to ‘Western’ education, some slaves housed in the VOC's Slave Lodge received such education and learned to write in the Latin script. See Dick (2008).

¹⁸The Ma'rifatul Islam wal Iman (author unknown) is a theological tract commonly found as a chapter in religious compendiums. Examples of this text have also been found in Indonesia (see Witkam 1989: 471–2). The Umm al-Barahain was originally written by Mohammad Yusuf ibn Al-Sanusi, an Algerian Ash'arite scholar. It is a philosophical text, explaining the 20 attributes a believer must recognise in respect of God and 20 attributes impossible of Him, and was widely disseminated in Southeast Asia under the Malay title Dua puluh sifat (The twenty attributes). In Cape Town it was known under the Afrikaans title Die Twintig Siefaat (also meaning ‘The twenty attributes’).

¹⁹The ‘Malays’ of Cape Town have historically been famous for their ‘Malay tricks’ and magical activities, for both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ purposes, or black magic. See Du Plessis (1944) and Deacon (2004).

²⁰For example, see PaEni (2008).

²¹Although claims of texts such as personal diaries in Malay have been made, these claims have not been substantiated.

²²The term Arabic-Afrikaans was first used by Dutch semiticist Adrianus van Selms (1951) in his work Arabies-Afrikaanse Studies I: ‘n Tweetalige [Arabiese en Afrikaanse) kategismus (Arabic-Afrikaans Studies I: A Bilingual (Arabic and Afrikaans) Catechism]. The shift from jawi to Arabic-Afrikaans would have been a gradual one, and linguist Achmat Davids (2011) notes several cases of manuscripts demonstrating the transition between the two scripts. Furthermore, he notes that the earliest examples of what can be referred to as ‘Arabic-Afrikaans’ texts are manuscripts dating to the 1840s.

²³The first printed document was the Bayanuddin, written by Abu Bakr Effendi, a Kurdish scholar sent to the Cape in the 1860s (see Brandel-Syrier 1960). For more information on early Arabic-Afrikaans printing, see Davids (1993).

²⁴With people no longer able to read jawi and the subsequent lack of practical use of the manuscripts, they were often burnt or buried, following Islamic customs regarding proper discarding of texts containing Allah's name and/or Qur'anic passages. These methods are encouraged so as to prevent such documents being misused or disrespected.

²⁵This highly debated term comes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In 1994, at the swearing in of the National Assembly of South Africa, he famously referred to South Africans as being ‘the Rainbow people of God’ (cited in Alexander 2002: 81).

²⁶In terms of identity re-articulation, rather than the restructuring of a unified ‘coloured’ identity, subgroupings based on religious and ethnic differences emerged. This is reflected in the remark of Ebrahim Rasool (1996: 56), former Premier of the Western Cape, that ‘the Malays revel in their reawakened connection with Malaysia; the Griqua chiefs demand recognition and compensation; the Khoi and the San trace their history and lineages; and others identify their traditional lands’.

²⁷While this term was once rejected due to its political and social divisiveness, in the post-apartheid period it was reclaimed by certain groups for the purposes of identity refashioning.

²⁸For a detailed overview and evaluation of this event, see Ward (1995).

²⁹For example, the ‘Cape Malay Consultants’ consulting company, the ‘South African Melayu Cultural Society’, the ‘Malaysian Welcoming Committee’ and so on.

³⁰See Milner (2011) and Kessler (1999).

³¹See Milner (2011: 183-85) and Kessler (1999: 32).

³²The renewed ties with Malaysia held the promise of lucrative business opportunities for locally owned, ‘Cape Malay’ businesses. However, those who benefitted from Malaysian investment were most often large-scale companies such as Engen, a petrol giant, and Telkom.

³³Mohamed Haron cited in Milner (2011: 184).

³⁴Literally ‘Malay descendants’. This term has been used to refer to Indonesian ‘diasporas’ overseas, such as those in South Africa and Suriname, see PaEni (2008).

³⁵The ‘Khoisan Revivalist Movement’ is the key example of this (see Besten 2009).

³⁶Similar racial politics are seen in the case of the Khoi and San groups, such as the National San Council, which sought to distance themselves from the majority African population of South Africa (Worden 2009: 27).

³⁷Related to this issue, Worden (2009: 28) discusses the politics of acknowledging ‘outsider’ origins in the context of Cape slave heritage.

³⁸Or, put another way ‘being depends upon having’. UNESCO 1970 Convention on ownership of cultural property, cited in Rowlands (2005: 272).

³⁹This was manifested in the emergence of amateur genealogical societies such as the Cape Family Research Forum and university-run initiatives to assist citizens in conducting archival research (Worden 2009; Cornell 2005).

⁴⁰For a discussion of archival challenges faced by people researching their slave ancestry, see Worden (2009).

⁴¹Such cultural activists included community historian Achmat Davids (d.1998), seen as the ‘Father of Cape Muslim history’ and heritage activist, and columnist Cassiem D'arcy.

⁴²As told to me by Mr Salie in a discussion in early 2010. Mr Salie passed away in June 2010.

⁴³For other examples, see Campbell (1997) and Malan (2007).

⁴⁴As a researcher I encountered such guardedness on several occasions and found that gaining access to both individuals and their manuscripts involved a great deal of rapport-building and community consultation. Having links to the community (being both Muslim and of ‘Cape Malay’ origin) was also helpful in gaining peoples' trust.

⁴⁵Malan (2007); Worden (2009).

⁴⁶Aside from Manuel's story, I came across other intra-family struggles over manuscripts and also other heritage objects during my research. Peoples' guardedness around their manuscripts was in part due to such contested claims over ownership rights of the manuscripts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saarah Jappie

I would like to thank Dr Julia Martínez and Professor Adrian Vickers for allowing me the opportunity to present this paper at the ‘Indonesians Overseas’ conference, held at the University of Wollongong in December 2010. I would also like to thank the University of Cape Town for their generous funding which enabled me to attend the conference.