 From Malaysian slaves, Dutch, English and French explorers to indigenous Khoisan people, the origins of Cape Town's inhabitants are extremely diverse. Together with South Africa's recent colorful and often painful history during the apartheid years, it's small wonder that the city has emerged as a vibrant, edgy and eclectic place with a rich and textured cultural heritage.
BEGINNINGS - FROM WAY BACK TO 1901
The history of the Western Cape is chequered and, like all of Africa, has a sorry colonial past, exacerbated by the inhuman folly of apartheid. Hunter-gatherers probably lived in the Western Cape for thousands of years before the Portuguese stopped off to climb Table Mountain in 1503. They didn’t stay. Already called the Cape of Storms, its position eventually led to the founding of a refreshment station by the Dutch in 1652. Subjugation and slavery followed - for the local Khoisan inhabitants and for Cape Malays shipped in from the East. And for nearly 200 years farms, the port and the city of Cape Town were built on their labor, while the colonial powers of Britain and Holland crossed swords at Muizenberg (1795) and Blaauwberg (1806)... until the Cape became a British colony in 1814. Thereafter slavery was abolished in 1839, the Cape Colony established and, elsewhere, the South African War won (1901).
  
FREEDOM - SITE OF STRUGGLE AND LIBERATION
20th century South Africa was a site of struggle for Afrikaner power and African subjugation, heroically resisted - the worst of times... By 1910 the Union of South Africa had been formed, but after two World Wars where South Africans served, another kind of government was voted in. In 1948 DF Malan’s Afrikaner government came to power and created apartheid, a new form of slavery of the most insidious kind - prescribing people’s movement, education, employment, opportunities, lives and dreams. One long, hard-won struggle later, with tragedies such as Sharpeville (1960) and Soweto (1976) and the student riots of the `80s marking its progress in blood, Nelson Mandela was finally released from Robben Island in 1990. Then negotiations with the incumbent National Party government began and on 27th April 1994 a new South Africa was born: the first democratic election heralded a South Africa for all who live in it.
  
HISTORY TODAY - EXPERIENCING CAPE TOWN NOW
So how can you learn a little more about this history while you are in Cape Town? Take a tour - discover a Trail of Two Cities (or maybe Three)... Cape Town Tourism (5 mins walk from Ansela´s Place) will guide you, via the Bo-Kaap, Slave Lodge and District 6 Museums (all 5 mins walk away), through the Struggle against colonial oppression to liberation. And it won’t be all shadows, despite the fact that the Group Areas act created the divided city that Cape Town remains. Know that a night in a shebeen in Gugulethu or the Galaxy club on the Cape Flats is never dull. Cape Flats and Township cuisine is colorful too - and sometimes challenging (`walkie talkie´ - chicken heads and feet - and sheep’s head are acquired tastes). And the ingenuity of local craftspeople can lift the soul - seek out the tin can flowers created by Golden Nongawuza after they came to him in a dream. Do the tour, hear the stories, have a perspective.
  
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