Time Out magazine is calling Cape Town “The Best City in the World” this year, and countless similar accolades have been showered on the city by the likes of Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler and others. But it seems that for most Americans, the words “Cape Town” still draw a blank. It is, after all, on the other side of the world, down in the southern hemisphere where the winter is our summer and hurricanes spin in the opposite direction.
During my recent trip to Cape Town, I posted some video clips I took from a moving car – and I was taken aback by the flood of expressions of surprise and delight they engendered.
“I didn’t know it was so beautiful!” gushed one of them. “The city views remind me of San Francisco,” said another. From many such reactions, I gathered that for most Americans, South Africa is what it was for me before I went there, pretty much an unknown.
Those who know a little about Cape Town have probably heard about the colossal Table Mountain overlooking the city, the festive Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for many years, and the wine districts. But there is so much more to this grand old city that lies near the southern tip of the African continent.
With its unique geographical features, the Cape has been drawing people for half a millennium, and who knows how far back into the pre-historical mist? So, when you go to Cape Town, you encounter a rich multicultural tapestry that has been brewing for 500 years.
For Europeans, the discovery of the Cape by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 opened access to a sea route from Europe to Asia.
It gave European traders a direct route, without having to travel the land routes through Middle Eastern territories controlled by Arab and Ottoman powers, who would shake them down with heavy taxes as they passed through.
To grasp the importance of this trade route, we must try to comprehend the importance of spices at that time. They were among the most prized commodities in global trade.
It wasn’t just about spicing up your food. Spices were used to preserve food, as medicines, and for perfumes and incenses used in religious rituals, and they were status symbols for European elites. Black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom came from India, China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka (“Ceylon” in those days). Europe took silver, textiles, firearms and wool to Asia, and brought back spices, tea, porcelain and silk.
The sea route to India opened a new world. And the Cape was central to that activity.
The Dutch East India Company established a strategic resupply station there in 1652, which grew into the city of Cape Town. It was just a few years after the Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam in 1625, which later became New York City. Cape Town’s historical arc is strikingly parallel to America’s. It’s a little like looking in a mirror, or discovering a twin separated at birth.
In 1886 gold was discovered further north in South Africa at an escarpment called the Witwatersrand, setting off a gold rush so furious that a miner’s camp established that year grew into Johannesburg, a giant city of 6 million within a century. Until the rise of international jet travel, that traffic virtually all went through Cape Town, known as the Mother City. South Africa has produced roughly 40 percent of all the gold ever mined on earth.
Diamonds were also discovered, and South Africa remains one of the world’s leading diamond producers. The country is rich in other precious minerals as well.
All these things, and many more, including the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, have drawn people from all over the world, building the great cultural diversity of South Africa.
One of the highlights of my trip was visiting Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap neighborhood. It’s well known from photographs of its brightly colored homes on the slopes of Signal Hill.
It was established in the 1760s when a Dutch landowner built houses and rented them to freed Muslim laborers.
It was called the Malay Quarter because it was where Malay Muslims who had been enslaved could live when they gained their freedom. They became the Cape Malay people, a distinct cultural group.
They were brought in the 1690s from the Malay Archipelago, a broad region encompassing what is now Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, and parts of Papua New Guinea.
Many of those who were enslaved were educated and skilled masons, tailors, cooks, scholars of Islamic teachings, languages or skilled trades. Some were political prisoners exiled from Malay by the Dutch for their resistance to Dutch rule.
The neighborhood retains that cultural richness in an unbroken line since those early days. The people are remarkably cultivated and sophisticated, reflecting the culture they retain going back centuries.
A local guide in Bo-Kaap gave a fascinating summary of the development of Afrikaans, considered one of the world’s youngest languages
Afrikaans is usually written off as just a bastardization of Dutch. But it’s much more complex and richer, developed by centuries of linguistic blending.
The development of Afrikaans reflects in microcosm the lively cultural cross-fertilization that resulted from people of different languages struggling to communicate with each other for the purposes of trade.
“Let me explain how it all fits together,” said the guide. “To start with, who discovered the sea routes around Africa? In the 1400s, the Portuguese began exploring these passages. But even earlier, in the 1100s, the Chinese navigated parts of the ocean. And even earlier than that, the Arabs.
“Wherever the Portuguese went, they left behind a kind of trading language — a pidgin, or creole, mixing local tongues. By the time they arrived at the southern tip of Africa, they had to barter with indigenous groups. This is how they began to pick up local terms and expressions.
“Then came the Dutch. But the people we call ‘the Dutch’ at the Cape were not solely from the Netherlands. They were part of the Dutch East India Company — a multinational crew made up of Dutch, German, and other European settlers. When they arrived, they needed to trade and communicate with indigenous people, often relying on a simplified form of Dutch. Over time, as enslaved people were brought from across Africa and Asia, a shared contact language began to take shape among colonists, enslaved communities, and local populations. Words and structures were borrowed, adapted, and reshaped on all sides. That evolving language became the foundation of what we now know as Afrikaans.
“Later, French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France sought refuge in the Netherlands, before some went on to settle in South Africa.
“Many of the French settlers were winemakers. Initially, the Dutch made terrible wine, but the French improved the industry. They brought vines, skills, and knowledge. Though South Africa was already producing wine, the French refined the craft.
“South Africa’s wine industry goes back to 1659, when the Dutch colonial administrator planted the first vineyards. Today, there are six major wine districts within an hour’s drive from Cape Town.
“Later, more Germans arrived, adding to the cultural and linguistic mix. After the Napoleonic Wars, the British took control of the Cape, and English began to influence the language.”
So, you see, Afrikaans didn’t come from one source. It’s a patchwork — a living language born from colonial trade, migration, slavery and survival.
Not many visitors will learn much Afrikaans, but this same rich cultural mixing is reflected in the arts, music, cuisine and architecture, every aspect of Cape Town. And it’s delicious.
Your humble reporter,
A. Colin Treadwell
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