Ice Cream Maker Tapiwa Guhza’s Guide to Black-Owned Cape Town

For travelers who want an immersive experience of Cape Town’s black culture, Curiocity, a guesthouse in the Green Point neighborhood, in central Cape Town, offers hotel suites as well as shared rooms and long-term accommodations. The space’s founder, Bheki Dube, created the space specifically to encourage collaboration and curiosity among Black people. “We use curiosity to shift perspective and shift the narrative,” says Dube. “We create Black destinations where people can find a certain sense of belonging, we employ youth and let them be storytellers in the cities we are in, and through this we’re unlocking entrepreneurial collaboration.”

Curiocity also offers a number of design-led curated experiences, including Black history and street art walking tours, wine tours, and hiking outings. Dube, who started his career by doing inner city walking tours of Johannesburg, now operates accommodations and experiential spaces across the country.

But if you don’t want to stay in the city center while you’re in Cape Town, Guzha recommends Observatory, Gardens, Woodstock, or Walmer Estate. These areas put you close to town while also allowing you to experience local neighborhood dynamics.

Cape Town boasts a variety of great food from all across the globe and the continent. In addition to visiting Tapi Tapi for ice cream (or for cocktails or deli products), Guzha recommends visiting Pitso’s, on the V&A Waterfront, for traditional South African food. Pitso’s makes everything from kotas (hollowed out bread filled with ingredients including meats and sausages, cheeses, and chips) to braai (barbecue) platters.

He also recommends a variety of spots for foods from all across Africa. If you're interested in Tanzanian food, he recommends the Meeting Point, located in the Central Business District; for Moroccan, he suggests Andalousse, which has branches in both Woodstock and Sea Point; for traditional Zimbabwean food, he suggests Pahari, located in the suburb of Salt River; and for West African food, he recommends two spots: Aaron’s Place and Fatima’s, both in City Centre.

If you’re a coffee drinker, stop by Pang Specialty Coffee; the shop is inside a bicycle rental space, and the drinks are served with care and attention to detail. For a beer, head to Ukhamba Beerworx, a Black-owned brewery with a taproom in a neighborhood called Claremont, located just 25 minutes from town.

Cape Town offers quite a lot to see and do, including opportunities to both make and see art, learn about history and the local environment, and tour the nearby wine country.

For those interested in art, Guzha recommends the Koena Art Institute, located in Observatory, which celebrates the heritage of the Khoi and San people, Indigenous South African hunter-gatherer communities. While not Black-owned, galleries including Zeitz MOCAA, Stevenson Gallery, and Goodman Gallery also exhibit a lot of Black African work. The team at Zeitz MOCAA, for instance, is primarily made up of Black women and offers shows such as “When We See Us,” an exhibition of over 200 works—from more than 100 artists from the continent and the African diaspora—all celebrating the Black body and the Black image.

If you want to try out a hands-on activity such as pottery, Guzha suggests hitting up potter Lungiswa Joe for pinch clay workshops, arranged by appointment. Joe says, “The biggest thing that has allowed me to be vulnerable and see my clay business beyond a class business is building community … I want to see more people of color, young girls who know how to work with the material, who fall in love with the material.”

For music and other cultural offerings, head to the offices of Chimurenga, a pan-African “platform” founded by writer Ntone Edjabe in 2002. Chimurenga creates a variety of cultural offerings, including conceptual art pop-ups, publications, and a web-based radio station, and the organization also hosts jazz performances at its Woodstock space. Another good option is Clarke’s BookShop, in City Centre, which, while not Black-owned, specializes in African and specifically Southern African Literature and has a great selection at good prices. And for a drink soundtracked by young (and often Black and POC) DJs, check out Old Biscuit Mill—a complex with a mix of different kinds of businesses, including Black brands—for a great market vibe.

There are also numerous historical sites in Cape Town that you can visit to learn about the city’s history of slavery and apartheid—and how this history impacts the city’s present structure and racial tensions. The bigger museums include the Castle of Good Hope, the Iziko Slave Lodge, and, of course, Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was jailed for 27 years.

For an immersive experience, visit the District Six Museum, which is dedicated to the memory of those who were forcibly removed from Cape Town. The museum often hosts community talks and social events and recently worked with the GALA Queer Archives, a local culture and education center, to host an exhibition and ball remembering the area’s LBGTQ+ legacy.

Cape Town boasts a variety of Black-owned businesses that visitors can support. If you’re looking to do some shopping, you can explore a variety of Black-owned clothing companies ranging from higher-end brands such as Rich Mnisi and Thebe Magugu to mid-range brands including Fuata Moyo. You can also do some thrifting at Black-owned shops like ShosomeTimes, based out of CBD town, and WelcomeBlack, based out of the southern suburbs. Additionally, Guzha recommends Mukanya Creations in Hout Bay for great quality leather goods. You can also check out the stunning brass jewelry from Tendai Mahlengwe of Kasimbi Metal Works; his wares can be found at vendors’ markets around the city, including Fridays at Blue Bird Garage in Muizenberg.

For Black travelers looking for some self care, Asana Beauty in Woodstock specializes in high-end dreadlocks and natural hair care. Head 2 Toes Beauty, a Black woman–owned business, has a brand-new salon in Sea Point (and will also send their staff to treat customers in their homes or hotels across Cape Town). Guzha recommends two other Black women–owned brands, Kafui Naturals and Kuzvida Self-Care (based in CBD town), as they offer natural body care products crafted with a lot of care. Kafui Awoonor, founder of Kafui Naturals, shared that she began her business after leaving a corporate job and that as a Black Ghanaian woman, she found it important to be a business owner, providing an example for others like her who are not seen as business leaders. After launching officially in 2016, Kafui has said she’s “enjoying learning the community [in and around her business] and watching it unfold, seeing people reclaim the space and practices that are ours.”

And if you want to pick up some alcohol, Guzha recommends Khayelitsha's Finest Wines and Magna Carta Wines—which are both Black- and South African–owned brands. He stocks both at Tapi Tapi, and you can also find them in shops across town.

Cape Town, though a renowned tourist hotspot, is one of the country’s most exclusionary cities, especially for Black South Africans and African nationals. The city was one of the first sites of settlement by Dutch and English settlers in South Africa, and practices like slavery, auction, and forced removals were routine. Apartheid—which legalized and nationalized segregation along the lines of schooling, housing, and public life—was implemented in 1948 by the National Party. This system codified racial castes, placing white people at the top of society, followed, in succeeding order of rights and accessibility, by Indian, Colored, and Black citizens. Non-white people were mostly locked out of many types of housing, education, and employment opportunities and were relegated to manual labor and other less-desirable types of employment.

This system transformed South Africa geographically, physiologically, and culturally, and its effects live on today in very real ways. According to the World Bank, South Africa is the most unequal country on Earth. In Cape Town, one of the most obvious results of the system is the ongoing spatial segregation. Suburbs are still primarily populated by white people and white foreign nationals, and townships, which are home to most non-white residents, still lack regular access to electricity, sanitation, and water and are overly (and brutally) policed.

Black businesses also face a market and an economy that have been dominated and regulated by a white minority for generations. Needless to say, this creates an excessively high barrier to entry to doing business in Cape Town. Supporting Black-owned businesses in South Africa offers a way to contribute to the communities and networks that are actively being built here, every day, in an effort to right some of these massive and historical imbalances.