Place:Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Watchers
NameCape Town
Alt namesCapetownsource: Canby, Historic Places (1984) I, 153; Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer (1961)
Ciudad del Cabosource: Rand McNally Atlas (1991) I-37
Kaapstadsource: Wikipedia
Kapstadsource: Cambridge World Gazetteer (1990) p 115
Kapstadtsource: Rand McNally Atlas (1991) I-84
Le Capsource: Rand McNally Atlas (1991) I-96
SaseKapasource: Wikipedia
TypeCity
Coordinates33.917°S 18.45°E
Located inWestern Cape, South Africa     (1652 - )
Also located inCape, South Africa    
Contained Places
Parish
Groote Kerk
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Cape Town is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the Mother City, it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located.

Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Located on the shore of Table Bay, the City Bowl area of Cape Town, is the oldest urban area in the Western Cape, with a significant cultural heritage. It was founded by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a supply station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the VOC Cape Colony, the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in southern Africa.

The city has a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, which includes False Bay, and extends to the Hottentots Holland mountains in the East. The Table Mountain National Park is within the city boundaries and there are several other nature reserves and marine protected areas within and adjacent to the city, protecting the diverse terrestrial and marine natural environment.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Early period

The earliest known remnants of human occupation in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek and date to between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago. Little is known of the history of the region's first residents, since there is no written history from the area before it was first mentioned by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 who was the first European to reach the area and named it "Cape of Storms". It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East. Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River, Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four of his men were killed and his party were defeated by the !Uriǁ’aekua ("Goringhaiqua" in Dutch approximate spelling) using specially trained cattle. The !Uriǁ’aekua were one of the so-called Khoekhoe clans of the area. In the late 16th century French, Danish, Dutch and English, but mainly Portuguese, ships regularly continued to stop over in Table Bay en route to the Indies. They traded tobacco, copper, and iron with the Khoekhoe clans of the region to exchange fresh meat and other provisions.

Dutch period

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the United East India Company (VOC) were sent to the Cape Town to establish a way-station for ships travelling to the Dutch East Indies, and the Fort de Goede Hoop (later replaced by the Castle of Good Hope). The settlement grew slowly during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour shortage prompted the authorities to import slaves from Indonesia and Madagascar. Many of these became ancestors of the first Cape Coloured communities. Under Van Riebeeck and his successors as VOC commanders and later governors at the Cape, an impressive range of useful plants were introduced to the Cape – in the process changing the natural environment forever. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had an important and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region.

British period

The Dutch Republic being transformed into Revolutionary France's vassal Batavian Republic, Great Britain moved to take control of its colonies. Britain captured Cape Town in 1795, but the Cape was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803. British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, Cape Town was permanently ceded to the United Kingdom. It became the capital of the newly formed Cape Colony, whose territory expanded very substantially through the 1800s. With expansion came calls for greater independence from the UK, with the Cape attaining its own parliament (1854) and a locally accountable Prime Minister (1872). Suffrage was established according to the non-racial Cape Qualified Franchise.

During the 1850s and 1860s additional plant species were introduced from Australia by the British authorities. Notably rooikrans to stabilise the sand of the Cape Flats to allow for a road connecting the peninsula with the rest of the African continent and eucalyptus to drain marshes. In 1859 the first railway line was built by the Cape Government Railways and a system of railways rapidly expanded in the 1870s. The discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1867, and the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886, prompted a flood of immigrants to South Africa. In 1895 the city's first public power station, the Graaff Electric Lighting Works, was opened. Conflicts between the Boer republics in the interior and the British colonial government resulted in the Second Boer War of 1899–1902, which Britain won. From 1891 to 1901, the city's population more than doubled from 67,000 to 171,000.

As the 19th century came to an end, the economic and political dominance of Cape Town in the Southern Africa region during the 19th century started to gave way to the dominance of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the 20th century.

South African period

In 1910, Britain established the Union of South Africa, which unified the Cape Colony with the two defeated Boer Republics and the British colony of Natal. Cape Town became the legislative capital of the Union, and later of the Republic of South Africa. By the time of the 1936 census Johannesburg had overtaken Cape Town as the largest city in the country.

Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Cape Town was one of the most racially integrated cities in the South Africa. In the 1948 national elections, the National Party won on a platform of apartheid (racial segregation) under the slogan of "swart gevaar" (Afrikaans for "black danger"). This led to the erosion and eventual abolition of the Cape's multiracial franchise, as well as to the Group Areas Act, which classified all areas according to race. Formerly multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of residents deemed unlawful by apartheid legislation or demolished. The most infamous example of this in Cape Town was District Six. After it was declared a whites-only region in 1965, all housing there was demolished and over 60,000 residents were forcibly removed. Many of these residents were relocated to the Cape Flats.

The earliest of the Cape Flats forced removals were to Langa particularly with the 1923 Native Urban Areas Act. Langa is the oldest township in Cape Town and the scene of much resistance against Apartheid. Its origins go back to the 19th century.

Under apartheid, the Cape was considered a "Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of "Bantus", i.e. Africans. The implementation of this policy was widely opposed by trade unions, civil society and opposition parties. It is notable that this policy was not advocated for by any coloured political group, and its implementation was a unilateral decision by the apartheid government.

School students from Langa, Gugulethu and Nyanga in Cape Town reacted to the news of protests against Bantu Education in Soweto in June 1976 and organised gatherings and marches, which were met with resistance from the police. A number of school buildings were burnt down.

Cape Town was home to many leaders of the anti-apartheid movement. On Robben Island, a former penitentiary island from the city, many famous political prisoners were held for years. In one of the most famous moments marking the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech since his imprisonment, from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall hours after being released on 11 February 1990. His speech heralded the beginning of a new era for the country, and the first democratic election, was held four years later, on 27 April 1994. Nobel Square in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront features statues of South Africa's four Nobel Peace Prize winners: Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

There was a severe water shortage from 2015 to 2018. Since the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century Cape Town and the Western Cape province have been home to a growing independence movement. In the 2021 municipal elections pro-independence parties garnered around 5% of the city's vote.

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