In Cape Town’s historic Bo-Kaap, homes under siege from rich foreign buyers

Amid digital nomads, a tourism boom and a housing crisis, can the people who built the city still afford to live in it?

Cape Town, South Africa – Just after sunrise, the call to prayer drifts across a community at the foot of Cape Town’s Table Mountain.

From the minaret of the Auwal Masjid – South Africa’s oldest mosque, built in 1794 – the adhan echoes through the narrow streets and brightly coloured houses of Bo-Kaap, a historically Muslim community.

But beneath that familiar call that has rung out for more than two centuries, a quieter shift is unfolding.

Across Bo-Kaap – and much of Cape Town’s inner-city – rising property prices, growing investor demand, and the rapid spread of short-term rentals are fuelling fears that one of the city’s oldest-living neighbourhoods could slowly disappear.

For local photographer Yasser Booley, the change has been gradual, but impossible to ignore.