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Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the reconfiguration of Ottoman genealogies in the curation of Cape Town's Islamic heritage through an anthropological study of the Effendi Room exhibition within the Bo-Kaap Museum.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on the Effendi Room exhibition within the Bo-Kaap Museum that was curated under the supervision of a Turkish heritage entrepreneur in the late 2010s. A product of the apartheid’s racialized cultural policies, the Bo-Kaap Museum was established in 1978 on the house of an evicted Cape Muslim family. Based on the vision of Izak David du Plessis for preserving the racial purity, authenticity and uniqueness of the Malay community, the museum has historically reinforced the exotic image of the Cape Malay. After the end of the apartheid regime, Iziko developed a new framework for collaborating with the communities that experts previously objectified in the museums. This paved the way to the collaboration between the Turkish heritage entrepreneur, the evicted family and the Iziko which resulted in the curation of the Effendi Room exhibition. While commemorating the evicted family through the display of photographs and objects from the family archive, the exhibition reconstructs the Islamic heritage in Cape Town by foregrounding the Ottoman genealogy of the community leaders. Studying the representation of the Ottoman imperial past in the museum space, this presentation analyses the reconfiguration of Muslim genealogies, rewriting of Islamic history and reconstruction of Islamic heritage in post-apartheid South Africa.