ABSTRACT
South Africa’s Table Mountain is Cape Town’s signature – the distinctive profile of a world tourist destination, and a contender for hosting the Olympic Games in the coming millennium. But the mountain also has a more ambiguous history. For the Portuguese, the flat slab of sandstone and the adjacent jutting pinnacle of Devil’s Peak was Adamastor recumbent, a giant who was the glowering force of nature. For the Dutch, these barren rocks were home to runaway slaves who constantly threatened firebrands and the desperate revenge of people without hope. More recently, the mountain has been scarred by a massive destruction of cultural property, the removal of an entire community from the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak.
