The Cape Malay community is an ethnic group

Ethnic group

An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

 or community in South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. It derives its name from the present-day Western Cape

Western Cape

The Western Cape is a province in the south west of South Africa. The capital is Cape Town. Prior to 1994, the region that now forms the Western Cape was part of the much larger Cape Province...

 of South Africa and the people originally from Maritime Southeast Asia

Maritime Southeast Asia

Maritime Southeast Asia refers to the maritime region of Southeast Asia as opposed to mainland Southeast Asia and includes the modern countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, East Timor and Singapore....

, mostly Javanese from modern-day Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, a Dutch colony for several centuries, and Dutch Malacca

Dutch Malacca

Dutch Malacca was the longest period of Malacca under foreign control. The Dutch ruled for almost 183 years with intermittent British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars . This era saw relative peace with little serious interruption from the Malay kingdoms due to the understanding earlier on...

, which the Dutch held from 1641 - 1824. The community's earliest members were enslaved

Slavery

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 Javanese transported by the Dutch East India Company

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

. They were followed by slaves from various other Southeast Asian regions, and political dissidents and Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 religious leaders who opposed the Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia and were sent into exile.