De Waterkant is South Africa’s gay village, and it is walkable end to end in about ten minutes. This is a guide to it, written from the corner bar that opened here in 1994 and never left.
Cape Town has a reputation as one of the most welcoming cities on the African continent for LGBTQI+ visitors, and most of that reputation is concentrated into a very small area. De Waterkant — the old neighbourhood on the slope of Signal Hill between the Bo-Kaap and the harbour — is the village, and it is genuinely small. You can walk from one end to the other in ten minutes.
That compactness is the point. It means an evening does not require a plan or a car: you eat somewhere, walk fifty metres, have a drink somewhere else, and end up wherever the night takes you. It also means the area has a real community rather than a single venue with a rainbow flag outside.
South Africa’s constitution was the first in the world to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, adopted in interim form in 1994. Cafe Manhattan opened the same year, at 74 Waterkant Street, as Africa’s first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen. The village grew up around that corner.
Happy hour across the village tends to run late afternoon, and ours is 4pm to 6pm every day, 2-for-1. Arriving at four rather than nine changes both the cost of the evening and the kind of evening it is: the room is talkative rather than loud, and you will actually meet people. See what is on the list.
Most kitchens in the area close around nine. Ours runs to 10pm, seven days a week — eight burgers, grills, and platters built to share. Eating properly at the start of the night is the single biggest difference between a good evening here and a story you have to apologise for.
Cape Town Pride falls in late summer and the village is the centre of it. We run warm-up parties and the room is at its best across that week. Dates move year to year — Instagram is where we post them.
Thirty-two years of doing this has taught us that the best nights in De Waterkant start earlier than people expect, involve food, and do not require a plan. Come at four.
Cafe Manhattan has traded continuously at 74 Waterkant Street since 1994. It opened as the first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen on the continent and it is still here, still open every night. Read the story.
De Waterkant, on the slope of Signal Hill between the Bo-Kaap and the harbour. It is South Africa's gay village and it is small enough to walk end to end in about ten minutes.
Cafe Manhattan, at 74 Waterkant Street, has traded continuously since 1994 and opened as Africa's first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen.
Cape Town is regarded as one of the most welcoming cities on the continent, and South Africa's constitution was the first in the world to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Ordinary city precautions apply, especially late at night — use a ride app rather than walking long distances after midnight.
Yes. It is a queer bar and the community comes first, but everyone is welcome on the understanding that this is the community's room.
Wednesday for drag, Thursday for karaoke and cheap shots, Friday and Saturday for DJs, Monday for 2-for-1 burgers. Happy hour runs 4pm to 6pm every day of the week.
Happy hour at four, kitchen till ten, bar till eleven. Whatever else the night becomes, it starts well here.