Cape Malays

Cape Malays (Afrikaans: Kaapse Maleiers, Malay: Melayu Cape) are an ethnic group or community in South Africa. The name is derived from the former Province of the Cape of Good Hope of South Africa and the people originally from Maritime Southeast Asia, mostly Javanese from modern-day Indonesia (largely speakers of Malayu, hence the name Malay), a Dutch colony for several centuries, and Dutch Malacca, which the Dutch held from 1641 – 1824. The community's earliest members were enslaved Javanese transported by the Dutch East India Company. They were followed by slaves from various other Southeast Asian regions, and political dissidents and Muslim religious leaders who opposed the Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia and were sent into exile. Malays also have significant South Asian (Indian) slave ancestry. Starting in 1654, these resistors were imprisoned or exiled in South Africa by the Dutch East India Company, which founded and used what is now Cape Town as a resupply station for ships travelling between Europe and Asia. They were the group that first introduced Islam to South Africa.