Cape Town: A South African historically significant city

TThe Houses of Parliament is also the place where, in 1966, the crafter of apartheid, South African prime minister Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, was stabbed to death by parliamentary messenger Dimitri Tsafendas. Today the House is still shaping the history of South Africa.

You can’t visit Cape Town and not go to Robben Island in Table Bay, which represents the country’s dark days, and is now a World Heritage site. The apartheid government created Robben Island prison, which kept one of the world’s most famous political prisoners, Nelson Mandela, locked away for 27 years. In 1994, a freed Mandela delivered his first speech as the first president of the democratic South Africa in Parliament.

Moreover, to experience the dream of Capetonians you have to visit the District Six Museum, which was founded in 1994. Through the memory cloth at the museum, you can find out about the District Six suburb that stood in sharp contrast to the government’s policy of racial segregation. The creation of a racially mixed suburb came to a grinding halt as the area was declared a whites only neighbourhood in 1950. Thousands of people of colour were forcibly moved to the Cape Flats.

AAt the museum, which sits among the colourful houses and cobbled streets of historical Bo-Kaap, one can find out how the area turned out to be home to Muslims and freed slaves, many of whom came from South East Asia, and are sometimes referred to as Cape Malays. A visitor can digest some of the customs and beliefs of the Cape Malays, and how they shape the rich history of Cape Town.  

Some of the city’s history can also be found in posh suburbs like Bishopscourt, which is snuggled against the hills of the Table Mountain and the famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. The suburb started out as Jan van Riebeeck’s farm, known as Boscheuvel or Bush Hill in 1652. Nearly 200 years later in 1849, the farm was bought by the Anglican Church, and renamed it Bishopscourt where it housed Anglican bishops and archbishops of Cape Town. The area is also home to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, and in 1990 it housed Nelson Mandela for his first night of freedom after his long incarceration.

Other historical places of interest for visitors include the Castle of Good Hope, the Cape Town Diamond Museum, the South African Jewish Museum and Zeitz MOCAA.