Cape Town is a wonderfully cosmopolitan and modern city - it also occupies a very beautiful geographic location - sprawled around the incredible geography of Table Mountain, Lion's Head and the Cape of Good Hope located around the bottom of Africa (note the most southerly part of Africa is actually Cape Agulhas, about 4 hours drive south-east of Cape Town).
Prior to our July 2024 trip to Southern Africa, I thought I'd revisit some images taken on a previous visit back in 2015...
Llandudno beach, Cape Town, one of the city's most exclusive suburbs c/w with a pristine beach. That said, you can find a number of truly stunning beaches around the Cape Town area - Noordhoek, Kommetjie, Bloubergstrand, Fishoek, Muizenberg - and many more to the East and West.
The colours of Bo Kaap, in downtown Cape Town. This small suburb was originally established by the Cape Malays, an ethnic muslim group who originally came from the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia), although the group also now encompasses races from other countries including Malaysia and other South East Asian countries. As a mixed racial group, Cape Malays - who were classed as 'coloured' under the repressive Apartheid regime - have their own language, cuisine and music. Today it's a wonderfully colourful neighbourhood in Cape Town and an interesting place to wander through, take a cooking class, visit an art museum or just to stroll through.
Colourful beach huts at Muizenberg, a seaside suburb of the shores of False Bay, to the East of Cape Town. The locals here remind me of Aussies on Bondi Beach - fanatical surfers, irrespective of the weather. I'm not sure if the changing huts are still used as such or if they are just preserved as a very colourful asset for the locality.
Table Mountain - two ways down: cable car, or rope. Although this is possibly the most popular tourist attraction in Cape Town, the best views of Table Mountain can be had from Bloubergstrand, a beachside suburb some 10kms to the west of the city.
Some scenes from the V&A Waterfront, a renovated harbour front shopping 'extravaganza' similar to Darling Harbour in Sydney. It's a place most tourists visit because it features several piers, a renovated graving dock, multiple shopping centres, offices, cruise lines, pleasure craft and several hotels.
Rainbow over Table Mountain.
Overview of Hermanus, a coastal town around two hours drive from Cape Town. This part of the coast is popular for whale watching.
Views of Boschendal, a historic winery dating as far back as 1685. This winery homestead is a great example of Cape Dutch architecture - the interiors have been preserved as a museum. When I visited Cape Town 45 years ago Boschendal was one of the original wineries in the area. From memory there must have been around 20 or 30 separate wineries all told. Now you'll find more than 450, so making a decision about which ones to visit has become something of a challenge!
Views of Hout Bay a small fishing town (village?) south of Cape Town city centre. It's from here that you can take a 20 minute boat ride out to visit seal island (it's actually called Duiker Island). Once back on shore check out the local colour or maybe have snoek and chips at the region's most famous seafood restaurant Snoekies, on the quayside. There was even a performing seal on the quay when we visited!
Cape of Good Hope National Park - a few coastal views. The water here is very rough and as you can see, the shoreline is littered with swathes of tough seaweed that has been ripped off the rocks and strewn across the beaches. Not very enticing for a dip! The cheeky-looking furry chap is a Dassie or Rock Hyrax, a small mammal that lives among rocky cliffs and crevices. Rock Hyrax are common throughout most of Southern Africa.
A few colours seen in Kirstenbosch national gardens, one of the most spectacular gardens in the region (unfortunately we only had an hour there so never go to see many of its rare specimens.
It's almost impossible to visit south Africa without experiencing something of its troubled past - its Apartheid doctrine, essentially keeping the black and coloured population socially, legally and physically separate from the whites, the Africaaners and the European settlers (mostly from the UK). It was an inhumane political system designed to exploit the poor, less educated locals, the indigenous tribes that lived in the region.
Across South Africa, the Apartheid policy forced tens of thousands of 'locals' to live in ramshackle shanty towns at the edge of the country's cities, often splitting families up for years, forcing males to work in specific regions while their families had to live in extreme poverty, hundreds or thousands of kilometres from their natural homelands.
If you have had your head buried in the sand over the last 50 years, you may not know, or care, about the appalling treatment whites imposed on the native populations of South Africa, you at least should know the name Nelson Mandela. In my mind, Mandela, who was born into the Thembu Royal Family in Mveso, a small village in the Eastern Cape, was politically and physically involved with the fight against white supremacy. In 1962 he was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment (under Apartheid you basically had no chance of a fair trial). He server 27 years in several prisons, finishing up at the infamous Robben Island prison, located about 8 kms off the coast of Cape Town, a location that you can visit from the Victoria and Albert Waterfront. Visiting the island felt a bit creepy because of its history - it has been used as a prison since the 17th century.
Everyone knows this is the prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration, but it was also home to many other 'politicals', including Joseph Zuma, Michael Matsobane and Robert Sobukwe. Prisoners held in Robben Island during the Apartheid era were allowed visitors - usually two visits per year providing you applied at least 6 months ahead for permission. This was the room (above) where Robert Sabukwe's four kids were allowed to stay on the occasions they came to visit. White prisoners had their own cells while coloured or black prisoners were accommodated in cells with 4 or more inmates.
Sobukwe was imprisoned for 'incitement'. In 1960 he rallied against South Africa's much hated pass laws in Orlando, Soweto, and consequently spent nine years on Robben Island, mostly in isolation. It was at this time that similar demonstrations were held in the Transvaal resulting in the death of 69 unarmed protesters at Sharpeville - I remember reading about the Sharpville Massacre when I was at college - the student union at the time was doing its best to boycott any UK company that had business in South Africa (particularly Barclays Bank). Another name I recall reading about at that time was Steve Biko - a young black activist who was involved with creating a black student union, the Black People's Convention (BPC) among other anti-apartheid organisations. The all-white minority government put him under a banning order effectively restricting most of his activities - even so he continued to agitate for 'a fair go' and we'd say in Australia. 1n 1977, after multiple anonymous death threats, he was eventually arrested and severely beaten by the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) police. A BOSS doctor examined Biko stating that he was fine. Two other doctors examined him and agreed that he needed a hospital. Police loaded the manacled and naked Biko into a Land Rover and drove him 1200kms to a hospital in Pretoria. He died the next day - the 21st black African to die in custody that year. The student union at my college in Nottingham went into demonstration overdrive. Biko never got to serve a lawful sentence but his death generated more awareness about apartheid than his efforts when he was alive.
Matsobane was imprisoned on Robben Island twice, in 1964 for three years then again, in 1976 for 15 years for his involvement in the Soweto riots. Joseph Zuma - we all know him as a former president of South Africa, spent ten years on Robben Island for his involvement with the African National Congress (ANC). Zuma's middle name is Gedleyihlekisa which means, in Zulu, 'one who smiles while causing you harm'.
Some more scenes of Groot Constantia - on this visit it was raining quite heavily so, like the passing visit to Kirstenbosch, we did not have much quality time there. Next time we'll stop for lunch at one of its restaurants...
Another infra-red picture of the avenue running up to Groot Constantia.
We must have looked relatively harmless because we were allowed into the cellars!
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