Sometimes an interesting question is asked. ‘Which Cemetery is the most venerable in South Africa?’ Not so easy to answer as one may think. There are some strong contenders but the Tana Baru in the Bo-Kaap, the oldest Muslim Cemetery in Cape Town, can certainly stake a very credible claim. This is the only historical cemetery in South Africa of which an informative book has been written, The History of the Tana Baru, by Achmat Davids. This book was partly written to promote the preservation of the Tana Baru, the resting place of some of the pioneers of Islam in Cape Town, but more of this later.
The Tana Baru Cemetery has its origins in the involuntary migration of slaves from India, East Indies, Africa, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Malaya and Mauritius to the Cape. It is thought that between 1652 and 1818 close to 70% of immigrant slaves to the Cape came from India and the East Indies, followed by about 27% from Africa with the remainder from Sri Lanka, Malaya, and Mauritius. Some slaves were already adherents of Islam upon their arrival at the Cape and were very effective in proselytising other slaves and the free Blacks because of the shared bondage of racial oppression and social background.
The name Tana Baru is derived from Malay or Melayu, as it is sometimes called. Melayu was the eighteenth century trading language of a vast geographical area stretching from Madagascar to China and commonly spoken by the Cape Muslims during...
