Dookoom Cape Town - South Africa's Controversial Hip-Hop Group

Dookoom Cape Town emerged in the early 2010s as one of the most confrontational and politically charged musical acts to come out of the Western Cape. Fronted by Isaac Mutant, Dookoom Cape Town takes its name from the figure of the doekoem, a powerful and feared character from Cape Muslim mysticism.

The Politics Behind Dookoom Cape Town

Dookoom Cape Town arrived at a moment when the promise of 1994 had visibly stalled. Land reform remained largely unimplemented. Farm workers in the Western Cape continued to labour on land they would never own. The farm worker strikes of 2012 and 2013 in the De Doorns area brought national attention to conditions in the agricultural sector, but little changed structurally. Dookoom Cape Town took that reality and turned it into noise, channelling the anger, absurdity and unresolved contradictions of post-apartheid South Africa into music that was impossible to ignore.

Early Days of Dookoom Cape Town

The working relationship with Dookoom Cape Town began in 2013 at their first performance at a small venue called Blitzkrug, later known as Lefties. A few photographs were taken of frontman Isaac Mutant. The collaboration grew into band portraits and press shots, some of which were featured by Noisey US, Noisey France and numerous other media. The most controversial work from Dookoom Cape Town was the music video for “Larney Jou Poes,” in which farm workers ride a tractor across fields before burning the word DOOKOOM into a hillside. According to academic Adam Haupt, the imagery invoked the doekoem figure to signify revolt.

Dookoom Cape Town Isaac Mutant live performance

The Impact of Dookoom Cape Town

The video from Dookoom Cape Town provoked outrage in Afrikaner farming communities and was pulled from YouTube after threats and complaints. But it had already made its point. Dookoom Cape Town named, without qualification, a rage that had been building for generations among the working class on the farms of the Western Cape. These photographs are from the early days of Dookoom Cape Town, before the controversy and the headlines: a band in a small venue, making music that had not yet found its audience but already carried the weight of everything it would come to represent.