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Introduction
Human communities had lived in the Cape Peninsula and Western
Cape long before the beginning of the Christian era, surviving
by hunting, fishing and gathering edible plants and roots. They
were the ancestors of the Khoisan peoples of modern times - the
Bushmen (San) and the Hottentot (Khoikhoi).
The Bushmen were hunter-gatherers who lived in small, loosely
knit groups of about 20 persons. They were highly mobile on account
of their dependence on game, and for the same reason widely dispersed
territorially. The Hottentot, in comparison, were mainly herders
along the Orange River, the boundary river between South Africa
and Namibia, and the coastal belt stretching from Namibia around
Cape Point to the Eastern Cape. Both groups were thought to have
migrated southward, ahead of the Bantu-speaking peoples whose
ancestral home lay well in the north.
Before the Dutch came to the Cape, the Hottentot conducted trade
with their Bantu-speaking neighbours in cattle and dagga (marijuana)
and, to a lesser extent, iron and copper. After the arrival of
men from Europe, they traded their cattle for tobacco and began
to act as brokers in developing trade between the Europeans and
the Xhosa tribes to the east.
The European advance eventually cost the Hottentot their land,
stock and trade. Twice defeated in battle in 1713 and 1755, and
decimated by smallpox, they ultimately lost their identity as
a distinct cultural group and intermarried with slaves and others
to form the Cape Coloured people.
The Portuguese
From the time of the first recorded discovery of the Cape, seafarers
looked forward to the sight of majestic Table Mountain, this
unmistakable beacon of promised hospitality along one of the
busiest arteries of world commerce. However, the sudden knowledge
that the Cape existed was not immediately followed by settlement.
In 1487, the Portuguese sailor Bartholomeus Dias set out to
find a sea route to the East. Sailing along the west coast of
Africa, his ships encountered a ferocious storm, which drove
them out to sea and away from the coast. Once the storm had passed
they resumed their journey in an easterly direction, expecting
to reach the coast, their guideline, again soon. After a number
of days' sailing without any sign of land, they changed direction
and headed north, eventually landing at the mouth of the Gouritz
River on the east coast of Africa on 3 February 1488. Dias and
his crew were the first Europeans on record to round the Cape,
albeit unwittingly.
It is widely believed that it was Dias who named the peninsula
Cabo Tormentosa (Cape of Storms). This name was later changed
to Cabo da Boa Esperanca (Cape of Good Hope) to signify that
the rounding of the Cape brought hope that a sea route to the
East was possible. Fully ten years later, Vasco Da Gama completed
the sea route from Portugal around the Cape to India, thus finally
opening up the trade route between Europe and the East.
Antonio de Saldanha was the first European to land in Table
Bay. He climbed the mighty mountain in 1503 and named it 'Table
Mountain'. The great cross that the Portuguese navigator carved
in the rock of Lion's Head is still traceable.
In 1580, Sir Francis Drake sailed around the Cape in The Golden
Hind and the ruggedness and breathtaking beauty of the peninsula
inspired him to write - "This Cape is a most stately thing,
and the fairest Cape in the whole circumference of the earth".
One hundred and sixty years after it was first discovered, the
Peninsula was still a part of primeval Africa, almost unaffected
by the tide of commerce that ebbed and flowed around its southern
shores. Outward bound from Europe, the early navigators were
too eager to reach the East. Homeward bound, they were too impatient
to reap the profits in the European ports. Passing ships would
leave postal matter under inscribed stones for other ships to
find and carry forward. These so-called post office stones are
still found in excavations and there is an interesting collection
of them in the South African Museum in the Company's Gardens
in Cape Town.
Jan van Riebeeck
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company, yielding to repeated petitions
and recommendations from their ships' officers, at last decided
to establish a post at Table Bay. They sent three small ships,
the Dromedaris, the Reijger and the Goede Hoop under the command
of 23-year-old Jan Antony van Riebeeck to establish a stronghold
on the shores of Table Bay. Their objective was to grow vegetables
and fruit, barter for livestock with the Hottentot tribes and
build a hospital and a sanctuary for the repair of ships. Jan
van Riebeeck's first fort, subsequently replaced by the existing
Castle of Good Hope, was Cape Town's first building.
The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic.
Its merchants were the most successful businessmen in Europe;
the Dutch East India Company was the world's greatest trading
corporation and had sovereign rights in the East and the Cape
of Good Hope, and by mid-century was the dominant European maritime
power in southeast Asia. Its fleet, numbering some six thousand
ships was manned by perhaps 48 000 sailors.
The Cape became an outstation of the Dutch East India Company's
eastern empire, based in Batavia in Java, and fell directly under
the Governor-General of the Indies. From 1672 the Cape had a
Governor of its own, but remained under eastern control until
the end of the Company period in 1795.
From Table Bay the Cape Peninsula extends southward, a long
narrow mass of highlands varying in width from three to seven
miles, until it tapers to the high narrow promontory of Cape
Point, nearly 48 kilometres away. Only in the neighbourhood of
Table Bay and along the eastern flank of the mountains as far
as False Bay were there large areas of relatively level lowland
favourable to early settlement. The Cape Flats, which links the
Peninsula to the mainland of Africa, was then covered by sand
dunes and dune vegetation. Hollows between the dunes were flooded
every winter by the rains. Some of the larger ones, such as Princess
Vlei, persisted as lakes throughout the year. These were the
haunt of the hippopotamus, as the name Zeekoevlei still reminds
us.
The wagon road used by the woodcutters to the tree-covered mountain
slopes of Newlands and Kirstenbosch was the first road to be
opened by the European settlers. The patches of forest in Orange
Kloof were preserved a little longer by their inaccessibility,
but the woodcutters were soon at work in the moist valley bottom
below. From the nearby anchorage near Orange Kloof, which was
named Hout Bay (Wood Bay), the wood was shipped around the Mountain
to Table Bay. The forests of the peninsula, never extensive,
lasted barely a generation. Though trees now cover large areas
of the mountain slopes once again, they are mostly exotic species.
Trial crops of wheat, oats and barley succeeded admirably on
the deep, loamy soils of the Liesbeek River valley, and this
led to the Company's grain-farming enterprise being transferred
there in 1657. A large granary, De Schuur, was built near a round
grove of thorn trees known at first as Rondedoornbosjen (modern
Rondebosch). The residence Groote Schuur, reconstructed in 1896
on this site, is a beautiful example of old Cape architecture.
It was formerly the residence of Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes
and was bequeathed by him as the official residence of the Prime
Minister of South Africa.
To supplement the Company's crops, a number of its servants
were given their discharge and settled as independent farmers
along the valley in the area now known as Rondebosch and Rosebank.
Van Riebeeck himself acquired an estate further upstream, a wooded
hillside known as Bosheuvel (now the Bishopscourt Estate) where,
in 1658, he established the first extensive wynberg or vineyard
in South Africa. Van Riebeeck handed over the government of the
Colony in 1662 to Zacharias Wagenaar and returned home to his
native land.
During Wagenaar's term of office a site was chosen for a stronger
fortress. In 1666, the foundation stones of the Castle of Good
Hope were laid. Its plan was pentagonal and the Company garrisoned
its soldiers there from 1674 onwards. In about 1667 the Company
established a new cattle-post on the other side of Table Mountain,
in the Hout Bay valley.
Simon van der Stel
Simon van der Stel, who arrived as Governor in 1679, was destined
to exercise marked influence on the Colony for the next 20 years.
He enlarged and beautified van Riebeeck's garden and built a
slave lodge (today the Cultural History Museum) at the entrance.
It was during Simon van der Stel's governorship that the Huguenots,
who had been driven from France by the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, arrived from Holland. There were some 200 of them,
so small a number that they were quickly absorbed in the Dutch
population. The lands given to Simon van der Stel by the Dutch
East India Company, stretched from Muizenberg to the Steenberg
Mountains, right across to Wynberg. He turned this vast region
into rich farmland, planted some eight thousand trees and designed
and built the stateliest of the Cape's historic mansions, Groot
Constantia (named after his wife, Constance) in 1685, where he
lived until his death in 1712. Groot Constantia remains one of
the most favoured destinations for visiting tourists to the Cape.
The Estate gave its name to the Constantia area, and its wines
won the praise of even such connoisseurs as Kings of France.
Simon van der Stel is also the founder of Stellenbosch, Drakenstein
and Franschhoek, and is responsible for the construction of many
of the famous homesteads in the Cape. More farmers soon settled
in the Constantia area, along the little streams pretentiously
named the Spaanschemat and Diep Rivers and on the soils so well
suited to the vine. West of the mountains, Kronendal in the Hout
Bay valley was granted to another enterprising settler in 1681
and a wagon road into the valley was opened over Constantia Nek
twelve years later.
Simon van der Stel's eldest son, Willem Adriaan van der Stel,
who succeeded him as Governor, added a museum to the gardens,
and erected a lodge (now Government House) for the reception
of visitors. He built Nieuweland (on a site now occupied by Newlands
House) where he started a new garden. Later it replaced Rustenburg
as the country residence of successive Governors and its pleasure
gardens became almost legendary in the writings of eighteenth
century visitors to the Cape. Willem Adriaan van der Stel also
developed the Vergelegen Estate, where he built a house and planted
over 500 000 vines, large orchards and corn lands. He stocked
the farm with 800 cattle and 10 000 sheep. The fact that the
Governor traded his products with ships in the port brought him
into conflict with other farmers and eventually led to his recall
to Holland and confiscation of his estate. The Dutch East India
Company, which had reached the high point of its power during
the governorships of the van der Stels, began to decline, chiefly
because of English and French competition in the eastern markets.
In 1737 eight ships were wrecked in a single storm in Table
Bay, with a loss of over 200 lives. In 1773, the Dutch East Indiaman
The Jonge Thomas drifted into the breakers during a violent gale.
Although 200 men were aboard, no effort was made by the Company's
officials to rescue them. Enraged by this callousness, an old
man, Wolraad Woltemade, borrowed a horse and rode into the pounding
surf towards the doomed vessel. Eight times he made the journey
and saved 14 men. He drowned during his last attempt. Ultimately
the Company was driven to establish another winter port at Simon's
Bay (modern Simon's Town). Named after Simon van der Stel, who
surveyed the bay in 1657, ships were safe here under the lee
of the Peninsula highlands.
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