HISTORY OF CAPE TOWN

The Cape Peninsula is not only a beautiful area but is in fact one of the most historical places in Africa. What makes Cape Town so does not just extend to the Dutch and British colonization, but goes a lot deeper into the dark recesses of history. A lot of what we as humans know about ourselves in an evolutionary sense seems to have originated from South African archaeological finds. Many tools and other remains lay scattered around the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve in huge refuse heaps called middens. Some of these finds are of the earliest ever discovered on the planet. Later finds indicate that there were bushmen tribes living in Cape Town before any Europeans arrived. Stone-age tribes migrated to the Cape tens of thousands of years ago. Cape Town was then mostly inhabited by what Europeans called the Strandlopers and small pockets of nomadic tribes called the San. About 2000 years ago, these people were displaced by a herding tribe called the Khoikhoi which came from the area of what is today Northern Botswana. The Khoikhoi were the dominant tribe in the Cape when the Europeans sailed into Table Bay.  

On 14 February 1488, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias made landfall at the Gouritz river mouth on the South coast east of Cape Point. In their search for precious spices, he and his crew had drifted too far South, so in frustration at having not spotted land, he ordered them to head North. He somehow managed to steer his vessel clear of Table Bay where so many other explorers later lost their ships and made landfall. Unwittingly he had become the first European to round Cape Point. He also landed at Hout Bay where he sent out a reconnaissance party led by his daring friend Sir Chapman. When he returned to Portugal he brought fresh news to the King of the possibility that a route could be opened to the East. This was the point in history when The Cape of Storms (Cabo Tormentosa) became the Cape of Good Hope (Cabo de Boa Esperança). Ten years later Vasco de Gama successfully reached the East via Dias's route. Commemorative crosses have been placed at Bordjierief and near Platboom in The Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve to pay homage to the courage of Dias and Da Gama.

Since then Table Bay has become an important landmark for mariners all over the world. On 6 April 1652 the Dutchman Jan van Riebeek was commissioned with the task of setting up a re-supply station for the Dutch East India Company, to stock ships with fresh fruit and vegetables and avoid scurvy. The Castle of Good Hope, one of Cape Town's first buildings was then constructed, the Huguenots started up their wine farms, rights of trade were designated which ultimately culminated in the European settlement of the Cape Peninsula

HISTORY OF STILLNESS MANOR

Initially built by the Noakes family in 1952 as a family home, the Manor was transformed into a hotel in 1995. A spa was added in 1996. The manor house is built in the classic Cape Dutch style. Known as the Swaanswyk area, this part of Tokai is next to a mountain forest of pines that were imported from Australia and planted at the end of the 19th century.

This forest is successfully harvested to this day on a self-sustaining basis. Swaanswyk was initially part of the larger Steenberg estate.

Tryn was then in desperate straits, reduced to keeping her family on a monthly rice ration supplied by the Company: an early version of social security. After squatting in Constantia, her energy and luck turned for the better when she was generously granted a freehold property in that vicinity in her own name by Simon van der Stel. This later became known as the great Steenberg Estate, on which she prospered. By 1692 the estate had developed significantly. It then supported 8,000 vines, 600 sheep, 140 other livestock, and grew wheat, rye and barley amongst other vegetables - Tryns' fresh cabbages, freshly baked bread and radishes won high praise. So did Tryn herself, though the Commissioner who had earlier enjoyed her meals according to his diary for 30th May 1685, described her determined horse riding to and from the settlement, astride and quite alone, as "terrifying", and her children as wild. One of these, a teenage daughter Maria Ras = 23 Jun 1669 who "could easily have passed for an Egyptian fortune teller" went on to marry Joost Strydom soon thereafter, so becoming the Strydom family stamouer. Little Anna Elizabeth, the future Lourens stamouer, was also amongst these "wild Indians from Brazil" then four years old.

Extract from the excellent history of the SA Stamouers at http://www.stamouers.com/ras.htm