How Cape Town Was Founded

Welcome back to our YouTube channel. I'm Daniel. Part of what our main mission is here at Bright

Trip is to have informed travel, which is very different than the travel that we see

all over the internet and all over Instagram, which is just going somewhere for a photograph

If you go somewhere for a photograph, you're going to walk into an amazing place

look at one portion of it in one way and then leave and have a picture on your wall

We want to give you a way of having an informed travel experience

so that you show up to a place, you understand the culture, you understand the history

and you can see firsthand what is going on. Our South Africa course is a really good example

of one of these lessons. And so I'm gonna show you in this video today

one of our lessons of that South Africa course. And so I'm going to pass this off to Justin and let him explain to you a little bit about the history of Cape Town

The earliest record of human activity in Cape Town dates back more than 12,000 years

But since there was no written record, we know basically nothing about Cape Town until 1488

That's when a ship of Portuguese explorers were sailing down the west coast of Africa

and they came upon this unique looking bay and found local tribes that were trading with each

other throughout the region. And the original name that these Portuguese sailors gave to this place

was the Cape of Storms. As you can imagine, that name was a bit grim, so it was later changed to

Cape of Good Hope. To signify the optimism the Cape brought as ships finally got to the end of

the continent and then turned up into the Indian Ocean, where most of these European ships at the

were headed. Now Cape Town was eventually taken over by the Dutch which is a major part of their history and modern day culture And in the beginning the Dutch needed people to work on their farms as they grew this new settlement So in addition to importing slaves from Asia they also sent Dutch citizens to move to Cape

Town to work. And during this time, the Dutch brought tons of new plants to Cape Town, including grapes

for wine, citrus, potatoes, and wheat, a lot of which had massive effects on the local

economy and are still present today. After more than a hundred years of Dutch ruling this area, the British came in and captured

it all, and soon enforced anti-Dutch policies that were meant to rid this new area of the

Dutch language and culture. And despite having been there for generations, the Dutch ended up moving inland into South

Africa and forming their own new communities. These Dutch-speaking Africans are known as Boers, and they speak a language called Afrikaans

which is a mix between Dutch and the local dialects. And today, Afrikaans is still an official language of South Africa

And while these Dutch settlers lived in the same regions as other African tribes, they

immediately implemented laws that would keep them from mixing with Black natives

Once gold and diamonds were discovered, the British took major notice and increased their

control to places that previously they had kind of ignored. And this caused major conflicts with local tribes all over South Africa

And the British fought wars with both the Dutch descendants as well as other major tribes like the Zulus

By the 1900s, the British had won all the wars, yes, but it came at a very high cost

They decided to consolidate all the British colonies in South Africa into one South African republic

and to grant them a constitution preparing them for independence from Britain Now this transfer of power happened slowly over the course of decades and the power was transferred mainly to white Afrikaners as well as English whites who were left over

from the British era. Even though these white natives represented only about 20% of the

population, they were basically given all the power. Black South Africans had little participation

in the newly independent country, a country that was already highly divided. And not soon after

the country would begin writing laws that would divide the nation even further

By the 1950s, each citizen was placed into a ranking system based on their race and their color

According to this system, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Asians, colored, and then black Africans

The white minority implemented more and more laws each year that deepened their power over others

And soon, blacks and whites were separated in everything. Where they could live, what jobs they could get, what education they received, who they could marry, you name it

By the 1960s, nationwide laws had made it illegal for blacks and whites to live in the same towns

Over the next two decades, more than 3.5 million black South Africans were forcibly evicted from their homes

and relocated to segregated cities known as townships. It was one of the largest mass evictions

in history. In Cape Town specifically, over the course of one month in 1986

nearly 70,000 people were evicted. During these years, Black political parties did organize and

protest, but were highly suppressed, and many of their leaders fled or were thrown into prison

the most notable of which was Nelson Mandela who was arrested in 1962 and given a life sentence This brutal segregation continued and increased for decades But slowly and finally things began to change

Internal unrest and international condemnation led to dramatic changes beginning in 1989

The ruling government started by lifting the ban on political black parties and then instituted

freedom of the press and released all political prisoners. And on February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela, the symbol of black liberation, walked out

of prison after 27 years. For the first time, the government allowed real elections

And in 1994, Mandela was elected as the first black president of South Africa

Now, I want to be clear, this is a highly oversimplified version of the deep and controversial

past of Cape Town, especially in terms of the political and social oppression that was

happening during apartheid. We barely even scratched the surface. Even though the country has made huge strides in the last 30 years, undoing centuries of

legislation and segregation doesn't happen overnight. And in the next lesson, we'll go over what Cape Town and South Africa looks like today

I hope this video has been insightful, not only to the history of South Africa, but to show you

how we want to help you be a more informed traveler and also how to think about traveling

in an informed way on your own. If you want to learn more about various places or see more of

our courses, head over to brighttrip.com. The link is going to be in the description and we would love

to see you over there. So thanks for watching and we'll see you very soon. See ya