The Afterlives of Yemeni Coffee in South Africa: On Contributions to Postcolonial Racial Less/ness from the Annals of Oceanic Islamic Indigeneity

With the aim of advancing the study of Islam’s contributions to anticolonialism in southern Africa, this paper focuses on the legacies of ʿAlawiyyah Sufi thought and practice in diasporic engagements with the global coffee trade.  Bringing my fieldwork and archival research in South Africa’s Western Cape to literary analysis, I explore the ways in which the pleasures and perils of coffee have constituted and re-animated ʿAlawiyyah-centered strategies for building solidarity against the ravages of Euro-Asiatic slavery and mortgage capitalism.  In line with Africana studies, my paper considers insights made available through greater attention to global histories of food and the environmental humanities.