Cape Town - During its centenary celebration, the Spaanschemat River Road Muslim Cemetery in Constantia officially launched its research project, aiming to collect and document the rich history and heritage of the Muslim community in the area.
Hundreds of people gathered at the cemetery yesterday, to say a prayer for their loved ones departed, clear and clean the graves of their family members, and filled Masjid Monier, located adjacent to the cemetery, for the formal centenary programme, which included a dhikr (Islamic prayers) and the announcement of the research project.
Many of those in attendance were forcibly removed from Constantia as a result of the Group Areas Act.
Dr Natheem Hendricks, chair of the committee, said the cemetery or maqbara has a number of members, but its original members were the 105 families who had purchased the land.
“The original members were 105 families that bought the place and each family had to pay an equal portion to gain access to the grounds.
“Now, one of the issues of importance was that this allowed the community to be autonomous from government interference.
“And so throughout those years, we maintained and looked after this, even though there was a lot of pressure on us to give in to the laws of apartheid.”
The mosque was established in 1883 and there was a small portion that was a maqbara at the time.
Vice-chairperson Ahmad Solomon said: “We know that history books do not speak about the story of the people of Constantia. It’s really just that the oppressor tells the story of the oppressed and so when it comes to how do we capture the history, one of the sources is oral history.”
Solomon said they were requesting family members with links to Constantia to appoint a “champion” who would be the point person to be able to gather information from their family.
“We’ve spoken to the Cape Family Research Forum that is in support of what we are doing. They are going to assist and guide us in terms of how we collect lineage and do that type of research and workshops. So it’s really about building capacity so that families can tell their own stories and just add to the richness of heritage and culture.”
Solomon said Constantia was a functional, vibrant, healthy, established community which was ripped from its roots.
“And with that comes trauma. We speak about mental health and while we speak about it now, it wasn’t something really much spoken about then.
“And so what happens is that there were levels of shame attached to this, where people’s livelihood was the very ground that they lived on.”
Solomon said he had spoken to an 80-year-old former Strawberry Lane resident who had been a neighbour of the maqbara, who shared that they ate what they had planted.
Their displacement from Constantia resulted in them having to move to Manenberg, to a first floor flat, and with no ground to cultivate.
“And so we did not have the courage, or the pride, or the attachment to where we came from and that is because of how colonial history is being told, and these structures of hegemony and intersectionality and so there is a need for us to tell our story.”
People are invited to write via WhatsApp, Facebook and email.
For more information, call 074 152 7502 or 084 487 4299, or email constantia.makbara@gmail.com
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za
Cape Argus