Bo-Kaap

This vibrant-blue Ford Cortina has been parked in the exact same place for several years on the streets of Cape Town’s historic suburb of Bo-Kaap. It so perfectly serves as a well-matched exclamation to the surrounding bright-colored buildings that many a passerby has presumed it is some sort of quirky installation embodying the neighborhood.

In reality, the car—nicknamed “Cortie”—has sat out front of its owner Mikyle Abrahams’s home taking in the sun for about six years, or (more precisely) for as long as Mikyle has lived there.

Trained in panel beating, more gently known as car restoration, Mikyle’s father bought Cortie (who was initially green) so his son could practice his skills. Father and son fixed it together, using the steering wheel of Mikyle’s mother’s car and the rims from his dad’s. Giving it a fabulous, well-blended makeover was a bonding exercise and a passion project, not something they undertook with the intention of it becoming so visually representative of Bo-Kaap’s aesthetic.

There are conflicting explanations for why the facades of Bo-Kaap (formerly known as the Malay Quarter, the Slamse Buurt, or Schotcheskloof) are so distinct. Some claim that when apartheid ended, residents painted their homes as a demonstration of freedom, as members of a multicultural, rainbow nation. Others insist it was to celebrate the festival of Eid, given that the majority of the residents are Muslim. Still others credit the wave of artisans and formerly enslaved people who moved there after emancipation (though the tradition of the blindingly colored houses began several decades later).

In a fraught, albeit fascinating, neighborhood, city, and country, with a deeply divided history, consensus on the source of traditions can be hard to reach. Which is why Cortie—with its sweet, unalloyed origins—feels like a perfectly fresh, freewheeling mascot for the ever-improving cobblestone ways of Bo-Kaap.

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