Then I walked back into town with the idea to visit the Bo-Kaap Museum of the history of the early Muslim settlers. I took an unexpected detour in my walk and ended up in an amazing neighborhood of Muslim people known as the Cape Malay.
What Ms Wiki has to say, abridged:
The Cape Malay community derives its name from the Western Cape of South Africa and the people originally from Maritime Southeast Asia. The community’s earliest members were enslaved Javanese transported by the Dutch East India Company followed by slaves from other Southeast Asian regions. Starting in 1654 those who opposed the Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia were exiled in South Africa by the Dutch East India Company that had founded and used what is now Cape Town as a resupply station for ships traveling between Europe and Asia. They were the group that first introduced Islam to South Africa.”