Cafe Manhattan opened in 1994, the year South Africa held its first democratic election, and became Africa’s first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen. We are still on the same corner, still open every night.
In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic election and adopted an interim constitution that was the first in the world to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. That same year, Cafe Manhattan opened its doors at 74 Waterkant Street.
The timing was not a coincidence, but it was not a marketing plan either. De Waterkant was still finding itself — an old neighbourhood on the slope of Signal Hill that had been through a great deal and had not yet become the precinct it is now. A bar opened on the corner. It made a point, quietly and then loudly, of being a place where the queer community could gather openly, in a country that had spent decades making that difficult.
That made it Africa’s first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen. Not the first place gay people drank — there had always been those, and many of them were careful, unmarked and unsafe. The first one that said so on the door.
Cafe Manhattan opens at 74 Waterkant Street, in the same year South Africa’s interim constitution becomes the first in the world to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
The precinct around Waterkant Street fills in through the late nineties. The bar becomes a fixed point in a neighbourhood that is changing quickly around it.
What started as a bar with food becomes a bar and kitchen in equal measure. The burger arrives and refuses to leave the menu.
The drag show becomes a weekly fixture rather than an occasional event, and Thursday karaoke follows it. Both are still running.
Open every day, 11am to 11pm. Happy hour still at four. The oldest continuously operating LGBTQI+ bar and kitchen on the continent, as far as anyone has been able to tell us otherwise.
Bars in Cape Town do not usually last thirty-two years. They last three or four, get written about, get expensive, get replaced by something with better lighting. Waterkant Street has seen a great deal of that.
We have stayed for boring reasons, mostly. The happy hour never moved. It has run from 4pm to 6pm for as long as anyone can remember, and it runs on public holidays and over Christmas when other venues quietly withdraw their specials because the city is full anyway. The kitchen stayed open late, until 10pm, seven days a week, which matters more than it sounds when everything around you closes at nine.
And the door policy never needed revising. It was everyone in 1994 and it is everyone now — the queer community first and always, and anyone else who understands whose room they are walking into.
74 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town, 8001. Open every day, 11am to 11pm. Kitchen until 10pm. Happy hour four until six.
Call 021 002 8867 or book on WhatsApp. Locals know us. Visitors find us and then do not leave.
1994, at 74 Waterkant Street in De Waterkant, Cape Town — the same year South Africa held its first democratic election. We have been on the same corner for thirty-two years.
It opened as Africa's first LGBTQI+ owned and operated bar and kitchen. There were gay venues on the continent before 1994, but they largely operated without saying so. Cafe Manhattan opened as one openly.
It is a queer bar, and that comes first — it always has. Everyone is welcome, on the understanding that this is the community's room and you are a guest in it.
Open every day of the year, 11am to 11pm. The kitchen runs until 10pm and happy hour is 4pm to 6pm daily.
Thirty-two years of the same corner, the same doors and the same policy on who is welcome. Come see it.