History of Cape Town

1996,[3] 2001, and 2011 Census;[4] The area known today as Cape Town has no written history before it was first mentioned by Portuguese explorer Bartholomeu Dias in 1488.

The German anthropologist Theophilus Hahn recorded that the original name of the area was 'ǁHui ǃGais' – a toponym in the indigenous Khoe language meaning "where clouds gather.

The next recorded European sighting of the Cape was by Vasco da Gama in 1497 while he was searching for a route that would lead directly from Europe to Asia.

[9] A Portuguese force led by Francisco de Almeida was defeated in the Battle of Salt River by the indigenous Goringhaiqua Khoikhoi clan.

The area fell out of regular contact with Europeans until 1652, when Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or simply VOC) were sent to the Cape to establish a halfway station to provide fresh water, vegetables, and meat for passing ships travelling to and from Asia.

Forests in Hout Bay and the southern and eastern flanks of Table Mountain provided timber for ships and houses.

The first large territorial expansion occurred in 1657, when farms were granted by the VOC to a few servants in an attempt to increase food production.

The Huguenots had fled from anti-Protestant persecution in Catholic France to the Netherlands, where the VOC offered them free passage to the Cape as well as farmland.

The Huguenots brought important experience in wine production to the Cape, greatly bolstering the industry, as well as providing strong cultural roots.

Three years later, however, the war resumed and the British returned their garrison to the Cape after defeating Dutch forces at the Battle of Blaauwberg (1806).

The Dutch government was too impoverished and depleted to argue, and agreed with the condition that they be allowed to continue to use the Cape for repairs and refreshment.

A British proposal to make the Cape a penal colony was seen as detrimental to move to greater self government and sparked the Convict crisis of 1849.

After a long political struggle, this was followed by responsible government in 1872, when the Cape won the right to elect its own locally-accountable executive and Prime Minister.

In particular, the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist Cecil Rhodes, fueled by the new diamond industry, led to great instability.

After a series of bitter court and constitutional battles, the already limited voting rights of the Coloured community in Cape Province were revoked.

The government tried for decades to remove largely Xhosa squatter camps, such as Crossroads, which were the focal point for black resistance in the Cape area to the policies of apartheid.

Hours after being released from prison on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech in decades from the balcony of the Cape Town City Hall, heralding the beginning of a new era for South Africa.

In late August 1998, a terrorist explosion rocked the city's packed Planet Hollywood restaurant, killing one and injuring dozens.