Western Cape is a province in the southwestern part of South Africa. It was created in 1994. It was previously part of Cape Province, formerly called Cape Colony (see Cape Colony). Western Cape covers an area of 49,986 square miles (129,462 square kilometers). It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Indian Ocean to the south. It borders on the provinces of Northern Cape and Eastern Cape. Cape Town, on Table Bay, is the capital and largest city of Western Cape. It is also the legislative capital of South Africa and one of the country’s largest cities. About two-thirds of the province’s people live in Cape Town. About two-fifths of the people of Western Cape have mixed African, European, and Asian ancestry. Afrikaans is the most widely spoken language.
Economy.
Most of Western Cape is farmland. In the southwest, fruit, grapes, olives, wine, wheat, and dairy products are produced. In the west, citrus fruits are grown under irrigation. Rooibos (an indigenous shrub) is cultivated as a tea in the northwest. In the interior regions, farmers raise sheep and goats. Along the southern coast, hops and vegetables are grown. Forestry and fishing are also important.
Offshore gas is extracted and processed at Mossel Bay. Manufacturing is based chiefly in Cape Town. The chief industrial products are textiles, food, beverages, chemicals, metal goods, machinery, and petroleum products. The country’s only nuclear power station lies just north of Cape Town at Koeberg.
The Cape Town harbor lies on a major world shipping route. The harbor at Saldanha Bay is purpose-built to export huge quantities of iron ore.
Tourism is also important to the economy. Western Cape is South Africa’s most popular tourist destination. Visitors are attracted by the region’s famous natural beauty and many well-known landmarks.
Land.
Western Cape has an extensive coastline. Many ships have been wrecked along the coast of Western Cape, an area notorious for fierce storms. From the coastal plain, the land rises steeply to a series of spectacular mountain ranges, including the Swartberg range. Table Mountain, which rises to 3,563 feet (1,086 meters), overlooks the city of Cape Town.
The Little Karoo, a semidesert narrow plain, lies between the Langeberg and Swartberg mountain ranges. The larger and more arid Great Karoo lies north of the Swartberg range. Many rivers there flow only during the rainy winter months.
History.
Archaeological evidence suggests that early inhabitants of the region were farming sheep from about A.D. 300. By the 1500’s, the Khoikhoi possessed large herds of cattle and were grouped in a number of loose chiefdoms in the more fertile areas not far from the Atlantic and Indian oceans (see Khoikhoi). Hunter-gatherers, the original inhabitants, continued to live in the more remote and arid areas into the late 1700’s.
From the late 1400’s, Portuguese ships and ones from other countries called occasionally at Table Bay and other places along the coast. Cape Town was founded when Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) established a permanent settlement on the shores of Table Bay in 1652. Initially, the settlement was to provide fresh vegetables for passing ships, but it soon became the center of an extensive colony.
In 1657, nine employees of the DEIC, the first “free burghers,” were released from their duties and allowed to farm beyond Table Mountain. Enslaved people were first imported to the area in 1658. By 1800, the enslaved population, brought mainly from India, Indonesia, and Madagascar, was at 25,000, equal to the European population.
By 1700, the Dutch had settled the southwestern corner of what is now Western Cape, and the Khoisan (Khoikhoi and San) people had either retreated into the interior or become laborers on white-owned farms (see Khoisan). White trekboers (migrant farmers) then began to move mainly east, but also north, in search of new land to farm. Swellendam was established as a new administrative center in 1747. By the 1780’s, most of what is now Western Cape had been divided into trekboer farms.
In 1795, the British took over the Cape Colony from the Dutch. The colony reverted to Dutch rule in 1803. However, the British occupied it a second time in 1806, and a treaty in 1814 officially recognized it as a permanent British colony. The British abolished slavery in the 1830’s. The formerly enslaved people formed part of a class of people who became known in the 1800’s as Coloureds. Although the Cape authorities prided themselves on the colony’s nonracial tradition, power remained firmly in the hands of a small white elite.
Cape Town, the region’s capital, was the seat first of a Legislative Council then, from 1854, of an elected Legislative Assembly. In 1872, the Cape Colony was granted full self-government, and John Charles Molteno became its first prime minister. Following the mineral discoveries that began in the 1870’s, Cape Town boomed because it was the main port of entry to the interior. A railroad was built linking Cape Town with Kimberley and the Witwatersrand.
In 1910, Cape Town became the legislative capital of the new Union of South Africa, as well as the seat of the cape provincial legislature. Cape Town was the country’s leading center for insurance and banking, and much of its economy continued to depend on commerce.
After 1910, key decisions affecting the cape were increasingly taken in Pretoria, the administrative capital of first the Union and then, from 1961, of the Republic of South Africa. The area that is now called Western Cape formed part of Cape Province. Racial segregation had a long history in the Cape, and the first forced removal of nonwhite people in Cape Town took place in 1901. After the National Party (NP) won the 1948 election, the policy of enforced racial segregation known as apartheid came fully into force. This policy ended in the early 1990’s. In 1994, South Africa held its first elections that were open to all races. The new province of Western Cape was formed that year.
At first, Western Cape was the only province not to have an African National Congress (ANC) majority in its legislature, because many Coloureds voted for the white-led Democratic Party, later the Democratic Alliance (DA). After the breakup of the NP, former members of the NP formed an alliance with the ANC. This alliance took power from the DA in Cape Town in 2002 and in the province in 2004. In 2006, however, the DA returned to power in Cape Town, where Helen Zille of the DA became mayor.
See also Oudtshoorn; Robben Island; South Africa, History of; Stellenbosch University.
