
1. Contemporary Pastoral
Don’t open the door to strangers.
Never take the path through the woods or fields.
Always walk in groups.
Don’t talk to strangers.
Don’t touch animals you don’t know.
Don’t drink from streams or eat berries growing
by the side of the path.

2. A home is a place to die
My grandmother was blind
and made pastry, softness
in her hands and face.
My grandmother was deaf
My grandmother was deaf
and this made the laughter
of her daughters louder,
as you drove toward
the house, you could hear
their voices down the street.
My grandmother died in the cool shadows
of her room, water dripped into her lips
with a feather dipped in a cup.
At six, I did not know the word cancer
but heard the sound pour out of the room,
my father’s eyes bright with death.
I did not know the word
so I lay under my grandmother’s bed,
close to her.
After her death,
my grandfather sold the house
and went to live with his daughter.
Home is the bricks and the voices.
I think now a family house must not be sold
while one of the parents is alive.
A house should have mistakes
one has lived with for years,
like the angle of the washing lines missing
the sun, mistakes one has borne so long
their bitterness fades.
One must be able to forget things
in this house, and find them again,
years later.
The house must be able to face death
or leaving with hard words,
so one can return, forgiven.

3. The Geography of Spice
Incense –
taste and fury.
Burn cinnamon
to release its sweetness.
The geography of spice
traces the sea lanes from Java to Holland,
islands of cardamom, ginger, saffron, vanilla
like peppers on a string.
On the Spice Island of Banda
fifteen thousand heads keep guard
over the nutmeg groves.
Nutmeg, hard heart of myristica
and its red netting of mace, worth
an island, emptied
of all except one pitiless thing.
Halfway between Banda and Rotterdam,
the ships come to harbour in Cape Town,
and you know by smell what cargo they hold –
nutmeg or slaves.
In the stone houses of Europe the kitchens
smell of sugar and cloves.
Dutch coffee and English tea
claim their new names.

Gabeba Baderoon is an Associate Professor in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Department and African Studies. She holds numerous positions including being a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. Her recent publication, Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-apartheid was the winner of the 2017 National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Best Non-Fiction Monograph Prize and won the Book of 2014 Africasacountry. It was also long-listed for the 2015 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Non-fiction and the 2016 Academy of Science in South Africa Humanities Book Award.
How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid? South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa. Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa?s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging. In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the post-apartheid period.