Cape Town South Africa

Description: Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. It is the country’s oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the country’s second-largest city, after Johannesburg, and the largest in the Western Cape.

The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The city is known for its harbor, its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point.

In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by The New York Times and similarly by The Daily Telegraph in 2016.

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.

Population: 4,890,452

Demographics: According to the 2016 City of Cape Town community survey, there were 4,004,793 people in the City of Cape Town metro. Out of this population, 45.7% identified as Black African, 35.1% identified as Coloured, 16.2% identified as White and 1.6% identified as Asian.

History: The earliest known remnants of human occupation in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek and have been dated to between 15,000 and 12,000 years old.

 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. Dias, the first European to reach the area, arrived in 1488 and named it “Cape of Storms” (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as “Cape of Good Hope” (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to the Indian subcontinent and East Indies.

In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River, the Portuguese admiral Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four of his men were killed and his party was 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 who inhabited 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 in exchange for fresh meat and other essential travelling provisions.

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the United East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, VOC) were sent to the Cape Colony 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.

Britain captured Cape Town in 1795, but it was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803. British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 after the Battle of Blaauwberg when the Batavian Republic allied with Britain’s rival, France, during the Napoleonic Wars. Following the conclusion of the war Cape Town was permanently ceded to the United Kingdom in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. The city 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). Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Cape Town was one of the most racially integrated cities in 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. In 1950, the apartheid government first introduced the Group Areas Act, which classified and segregated urban areas according to race. Formerly multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of residents deemed unlawful by apartheid legislation, or demolished.

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.

Elevation: 42 m

Climate: Warm Mediterranean climate. Average annual temperature in Cape Town is 16 C (61 F), the average for July is 13 C (55 F), the average for January is 22 C (72 F).

Attractions: Lion’s Head, Victoria And Alfred Waterfront, Cape Point Natural Reserve, Signal Hill, Robben Island Museum, Clifton Beaches, Bo Kaap, Hout Bay

Airports: Cape Town International Airport CPT

Distance To City Centre: 20 km

Commute Length: 35 min

Average Transportation Cost: 35 USD

Traffic Hours: 7 am – 9 am, 5 pm – 7 pm