Chiara Carter
Achmat ”Boeta” Davids, Cape Town community worker, writer and academic, was the first cultural historian to reclaim Afrikaans as a language of the slaves rather than the colonisers.
Davids died of a heart attack at the Muslim radio station Voice of the Cape earlier this week and was buried from Cape Town’s Long Street mosque on Wednesday.
At the time of his death, Davids (59) was acting station manager of the radio station, but the former social worker is best known for his extensive research and writings on the history of Islam in South Africa.
He was particularly respected for his research into the resistance of slaves and political exiles taken captive by the Dutch in Batavia and elsewhere in South-East Asia and brought to the Cape. A major interest was the resistance by Cape slaves to an attempt by the Dutch to outlaw their practising Islam in the 18th century.
Davids discovered the first written Afrikaans words were penned by slaves, not their Dutch masters. His work is widely acknowledged as laying the foundation for revisionist history, which examines the leading role of slaves and colonised peoples in Cape culture.
Davids won international recognition for his work, including research on conditions in Cape Town’s townships.
His best-known book was a history of Cape mosques called The Mosques of the Bo-Kaap.