Dromedaris. Where he landed the city of Cape Town now stands, in the
shadow of beautiful, brooding Table Mountain.
Van Riebeeck and his men were of course not the first people in the area.
Indeed the area had been inhabited for more than 10 000 years already.
Evidence has been found at Peers Cave above Fishhook of human habitation.
In addition there is rock art dating back many centuries in the caves of the
Cape Peninsular.
The consequences of the landing of the Europeans have grown across the
centuries. At first Van Riebeeck was given strict instructions not to create a
permanent settlement at the Cape but only to start a garden and barter with the
local inhabitants for cattle and sheep, both for the purpose of re-victualling the
ships of the company as they rounded the Cape on their way to India and the
East Indies in search of spices and other luxuries for the European market.
Soon it became clear that such an undertaking could not be based on a
temporary presence but that a permanent settlement would have to be allowed
to grow there, that the people, no less than the crop plants, would have to be
allowed to put down roots.
This led inevitably to the disintegration of the social structures of the indigenous
Khoikhoi people with whom the Dutch settlers came into contact.
One of the first structures to be built was a fort to protect the settlers and the
garden that Van Riebeeck planted to supply the ships of the Company as they
came to anchor in Table Bay. And so began the expropriation of the indigenes\u2019

land, slowly, almost stealthily at first, but gathering speed until by the late 19th
Century they found themselves strangers in their own land, from the Cape to
the Limpopo River, far to the North, and beyond, the agricultural and mineral
wealth of what had been their land were now firmly in the hands of the settlers.
But all of that was far into the future and could not have been foreseen by the
relatively raggle-taggle band of settlers who put their feet, at first rather
tentatively, on the Southern African soil more than 300 years ago.
For them the struggle was to do what the VOC expected them to do \u2013 get
together enough fruit, fresh water, vegetables and meat to meet the nutritional
needs of sailors enduring long voyages under the most appalling conditions of
cramped quarters, constant dangers from sea and weather, and extremely
inadequate diet, not to mention the psychological effects of loneliness,
deprivation and the sheer terror of venturing into the unknown.
Portuguese national poet Luis de Camoes wrote, while in Mozambique for two
years, the famous epic poem Os Lus\u00edadas (The Lusiads), in which he
described the journey of Vasco da Gama in 1497, in dramatic and sometimes
fanciful terms. The poem was published in 1572:
\u201cIt is hard to tell you of all the dangers we experienced and the strange
happenings we saw in these lonely and faraway regions: the thunder, the
lightning and those dark rainstorms in deadly black nights. I saw with my own
eyes the incredible phenomena that are described by sailors but which more
learned men believe to be untrue and illusory; I actually saw St Elmo\u2019s fire
spouting during storms from the metal at the tips of our wooden masts, and
clouds drinking up the swells of the ocean, starting as a faint smear which
swirled up in the wind.\u201d (FromWriters\u2019 Territory , edited by Stephen Gray;
Cape Town: Longmans, 1973).

Fanciful depiction of the landing of Jan
van Riebeeck on 6 April 1652 by Charles
Bell. Painted in 1850 the work now is in
the possession of the South African
Library

Even the Cape was initially an object of fear, of the unknown. It was originally
called Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms) by the Portuguese sailors, and
was only renamed Cabo da Boa Esperan\u00e7a (Cape of Good Hope) by
Portuguese King John II as a result of the positive feelings engendered by the
realisation of the sea route to the riches of the East.
It did indeed become a place of hope for the sailors after months at sea, who
could look forward to fresh water and food there, and a place of surpassing
beauty: "The most stately thing and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole
circumference of the earth" as Sir Francis Drake had described it in 1580.
But in those early days of European exploration the Cape was an almost
mythical place of fear, of the unknown, to most of those braving those southern
seas, and was anthropomorphized into the prophesying giant Adamastor by
Camoes. In the poem Vasco da Gama asks the giant who he is, and
Adamastor replies:
\u201cI am that mighty hidden cape, whom you call the Cape of Storms. I was never
known to the ancient geographers, not to any other. Here the coast of Africa
ends, pointing to the Antarctic pole, and it is I whom your daring offends. I was
one of the Titans, giant sons of Earth and Sky. My name is Adamastor.\u201d
Artist Cyril Coetzee painted, on commission for the Cullen Library of the
University of the Witwatersrand, a new interpretation of the Adamastor myth,
called \u201cT\u2019Kama-Adamastor\u201d, which, as he explained,
\u201c...I had the idea of doing a computer search to see whether there was
anything useful in the recent Adamastor literature. To my surprise, I found
Andr\u00e9 Brink's short novel, The First Life of Adamastor. T\u2019kama, Brink's central
character, is a Khoi chief \u2013 and also a reincarnation of Adamastor. In a parody
of the "discovery", he retells the story of the original colonial encounter "from
the perspective of the 20th century". It was exactly the kind of contemporary
reworking of the story of Adamastor that I had been fumbling to invent!\u201d

This great painting brings the Adamastor myth into the 21st Century and is a
good way to end this very brief overview of the origins of the modern,
cosmopolitan city of Cape Town. It is, almost as Camoes wrote, after the
darkness of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, the dawning of a new day:
\u201cAs the sun rose, we saw the land into which the giant had been transformed.
We made a proud swing round the Cape and sailed a short while further down
the coast, turning at last to face the East.\u201d

A distinguishing feature of Cape Town for me is its atmosphere, the culture of
the people which is so deep and unusual, a coming-together of strands from so
many different sources. Different peoples, languages and cultures have been
thrown together into a great cauldron out of which a culture is emerging, not
without pain and struggle.
One of the most devastating struggles for the indigenes was that between the
early Dutch settlers and the Khoikhoi. Denis-Constant Martin notes in his
fascinating book Coon Carnival (Cape Town: David Philip, 1999):
\u201cThe destruction of Khoikhoi societies and their integration into the colonial
order had important consequences for the development of an original culture in
the Cape Colony. Because Khoikhoi lived with Europeans and slaves, they
sometimes acted as cultural brokers and, in the end, they exercised a
considerable influence. Consequently, the \u2018cultures\u2019 of the Europeans, the
slaves and the Khoikhoi became inextricably enmeshed.\u201d
Cape Town embraces almost every human experience, symbolised by the
hugely differing lifestyles and life-circumstances, from the shanties of the
informal settlements on the Cape Flats to the stately homes of Constantia, from
the rough-hewn crags of the mountains to the super-sophisticated
technological wonders of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and
every conceivable stage in between.
This coming together of many cultures began to accelerate after the landing of
Van Riebeeck and his party. As Martin notes, slavery was a foundational factor
in the development of a South African culture. So an understanding of slavery

Old postcard of Cape Town from the
mountain with Robben Island in the
distance

and its reality in the Cape is essential to understanding the culture that is
emerging there.
Slavery started at the Cape with the arrival of the first official slave there in
1653, just a year after Van Riebeeck had landed. His \u201cslave\u201d name was
Abraham van Batavia, his real name not recorded. Martin describes slavery
thus:
\u201cIt was dehumanising in many ways: slaves were abducted, deprived of their
freedom, separated from their family and from all those who shared the same
conception of life. They were uprooted, relocated and given new names. They
had to serve foreign masters and had to live alongside other captives from
different parts of the world who did not speak the same language and who did
not have the same customs\u201d
Two symbols of this cultural flowering in Cape Town are the related cultural
forms of the Coon Carnival and the form of jazz known as \u201cCape Jazz\u201d. Both
of these cultural aspects are much debated, with many views being expressed
about them.

The carnival is the more visible, \u201ctouristy\u201d aspect of Cape culture with its
virtual \u201ctakeover\u201d of the city in late December and early January each year.
Troupes of what are known as \u201cKlopse\u201d (possibly a corruption of the word
\u201cclubs\u201d) invade the city dressed in colourful costumes and making music on all
kinds of portable instruments in marching bands which compete with each
other.
In the days of apartheid this tradition was almost exterminated by the dour
officialdom of \u201cseparate development\u201d and the application of the Group Areas
Act which led to the destruction of District Six, the cultural heart and home of
the \u201cKlopse\u201d.
A brief summary of the history of District Six is given on the homepage of the
District Six Museum (http://www.districtsix.co.za/frames.htm):
District Six was named the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town in 1867.
Originally established as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants,
artisans, labourers and immigrants, District Six was a vibrant centre with close
links to the city and the port. By the beginning of the twentieth century,
however, the history of removals and marginalisation had begun.
The first to be 'resettled' were black South Africans, forcibly displaced from the
District in 1901. As the more prosperous moved away to the suburbs, the area became the neglected ward of Cape Town.
In 1966, it was declared a white area under the Group areas Act of 1950, and by 1982, the life of the community was over.
60 000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats, and their houses in District Six
were flattened by bulldozers.
This happened in other parts of South Africa, of course, such as the destruction of that other cultural \u201chotspot\u201d, Sophiatown,
also known colloquially as \u201cKofifi\u201d and \u201cSoph\u2019town\u201d, in Johannesburg.
For the people of District Six, Martin writes,
\u201cForced removals were a tragedy. Even though some families eventually settled in dwellings of a better quality than those
they occupied in District Six, nothing could replace the sense of place and community that existed there. A social fabric was
torn to rags, a community was destroyed.\u201d
The years since then have been a struggle for the community and for the Coon tradition. The loss of community life for the
people of District Six has led to the horrors of life in the far-flung areas of Manenberg and Mitchell\u2019s Plain where they had to
contend with unfamiliar surroundings and neighbours, and long trips to and from work. In Manenberg in particular the
destruction of social cohesion led to violence fuelled by gangsterism, liquor and drugs.
The anger and hopelessness engendered by this destruction was eloquently captured by Tatamkhulu Afrika\u2019s poem
\u201cNothing\u2019s Changed\u201d:

District Six.
No board says it is:
but my feet know,
and my hands,
and the skin about my bones,
and the soft labouring of my lungs,
and the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.