Hundreds of people gathered along Bree Street on Sunday, March 1, to share in a historic open-air boeka — reclaiming a space once home to one of the city’s most diverse communities.
Host archival researcher Abdud-Daiyaan Petersen said it was a historical occasion of "breaking bread" together as a community, "regardless of your faith, regardless of background".
He said Bree Street was the widest road in the city, and the occasion was about taking up a space that "belongs to all of us".
"Realising that non-whites or Muslims do not just belong on the Cape Flats, in the Southern Suburbs, tucked away in Bo-Kaap, but throughout the city.
"It was taken away from us violently during the days of apartheid, through the Group Areas Act," he said.
Mr Petersen said: "This street - Bree Street - it hosted the most cosmopolitan community that existed in the city of Cape Town, from the upper echelons, as they describe in British records of Cape society, some of the ministers of the time."
Fishermen, musicians, churches, and, more specifically, five imams lived in the street.
"There was also a number of churches but more specific to us as Muslims. There were about five imams that had been living in Bree Street alone, many of them having salaah ghanas (prayer rooms), and also a number of them having Muslim schools in the street of Bree Street," he said.
Mr Petersen mentioned Abu Bakr Effendi, a renowned Ottoman scholar, jurist, and theologian, who was sent to Cape Town by the Sultan with the aid of Queen Victoria in the 19th century to educate the Muslim community and resolve religious disputes.
"On the corner of Wales and Bree Street stands his madrassa, the exact building, stands till today," he said.
Mr Petersen said that in the 1850s - the Jamia Masjid, also known as the Queen Victoria Mosque, in Bo-Kaap, located at the corner of Chiappini and Castle Streets, was just up the road from where Imam Abdol Bassier lived, in Bree street.
Attendee Nadia Agherdien, from Salt River, said it was great being able to break fast in the open air.
"I like to be free in Bree," she said.
The boeka was an extension of Open Streets, in that Bree Street is shut to traffic and open for pedestrians only every Sunday from 10am until 5pm.
The doors of the Community Chest of the Western Cape, the 98-year-old non-profit organisation, were open, where they served soup to attendees.
Organisation chief executive officer Peter Heeger, said they were honoured to be part of the programme.
"Our mission is the alleviation of poverty, and we continue to make our funds and offices available for that purpose. We use this as a base. We were delighted to join in and give our support," he said.
"We want to be part of this vibrant city, the Muslim community is an integral part of the CBD, the Bo-Kaap and District Six. My dad was born in District Six and lived there for a long time. So, it was nice to see some of the old folks," he said.
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