Cape Town, South Africa – Just after sunrise, the call to prayer drifts across a community at the foot of Cape Town’s Table Mountain.From the minaret of the Auwal Masjid – South Africa’s oldest mosque, built in 1794 – the adhan echoes through the narrow streets and brightly coloured houses of Bo-Kaap, a historically Muslim community.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listBut beneath that familiar call that has rung out for more than two centuries, a quieter shift is unfolding.Across Bo-Kaap – and much of Cape Town’s inner-city – rising property prices, growing investor demand, and the rapid spread of short-term rentals are fuelling fears that one of the city’s oldest-living neighbourhoods could slowly disappear.Heritage under siegeFor local photographer Yasser Booley, the change has been gradual, but impossible to ignore.“The biggest changes I have seen are the slow choking of my living culture through the accelerated sale of homes to high net worth individuals, the majority of whom have no connection to the place or the culture,” he says.Booley, 50, an eighth-generation Bo-Kaap resident, grew up in a neighbourhood where extended families often lived within a few streets of one another – bound by mosques, schools, and a shared history shaped by culture, colonial rule, and apartheid.Today, Booley says, that social fabric is under strain, as the neighbourhood’s growing popularity with tourists and investors begins to reshape everyday life – from …
