The Ahmadis of Cape Town and the Spectre of Heresy: Polemics, Apostates and Boycotts

The principal issue which this paper addresses is the identity and status of the minority Ahmadi community within the larger majoritarian Sunni Muslim community in Cape Town (itself a minority in the country), which was characterised by hostility, violence and exclusion perpetrated against the Ahmadi community. By examining archival material, local Muslim publications and interviews regarding events that transpired during the 1960s, I will argue that the tools of public avowal and socio-economic boycotts were wielded as weapons to buttress the authority of a Sunni clerical leadership as custodians of an orthodox Islamic heritage and a Sunni iteration of Islamic theology and Muslim life against what was considered to be a heretical manifestation in the form of Ahmadiyyat.