Although early members of the community were from the Dutch colonies of Southeast Asia, by the 1800s, the term "Malay" encompassed all practising Muslims at the Cape regardless of origin.

[6] Islamic figures such as Sheikh Yusuf, a Makassarese noble and scholar from Sulawesi, who resisted the company's rule in Southeast Asia, were exiled to South Africa.

[7] There were also skilled Muslim labourers called Mardijkers from Southeast Asia who settled in the Bo-Kaap area of Cape Town.

[10] By the 19th century, the term was used to describe anyone at the Cape who was a practising Muslim,[11] despite Afrikaans having overtaken Malay as the group's lingua franca.

The community adopted Afrikaans as a lingua franca to ease communication between Asian and non-Asian Muslims (who had adopted the Dutch used by their masters), and because the utility of Malay and the Malayo-Portuguese language were diminished due to the British ban on slave imports in 1808, reducing the need to communicate with newcomers.

Asian and non-Asian Muslims interacted socially despite the initial linguistic differences and gradually blended into a single community.

The last fez-maker in Cape Town closed shop in March 2022; 76-year-old Gosain Samsodien had been making fezzes in his home factory in Kensington for 25 years.

[24][25] A dialect of Malay emerged among the enslaved community and later spread among colonial European residents of Cape Town between the 1780s and the 1930s.

A unique dialect formed during this period from a substrate of Betawi spoken in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), from which all major Dutch East India Company shipments took place, combined with Tamil, Hindustani, and Arabic influences.

The contest involves thousands of musicians and a wide variety of tunes,[30][31] with all-male choirs from the Malay community competing for the prize.

A 2009 documentary film directed by Lloyd Ross (founder of Shifty Records,[31]) called The Silver Fez, focuses on an underdog competing for the award.

[32] A barrel-shaped drum, called the ghoema (also spelled ghomma, or known as dhol), is also closely associated with Cape Malay music, along with other percussion instruments such as the rebanna (rebana) and tamarien (tambourine).

Non-governmental organisations, such as the Federation of Malaysia Writers' Associations, have since set on linking up with the diasporic Cape Malay community.