ABSTRACT
The city of Cape Town is the product of a fractured history that goes back some 350 years. Historically, the area now known as Cape Town was inhabited by Khoi pasturalists. In the mid-17th century, seafaring Dutch traders led by Jan van Riebeeck took advantage of the friendliness of the Khoi and the bounty of the land to set up a refreshment station. By 1659 the Dutch East India Company was bringing in slaves from South-East Asia, Madagascar and the east coast of Africa to bolster the economy of a burgeoning settlement. The intermarriage of indigenous people (Khoi), Dutch settlers and their descendants, and slaves resulted in a group whose home language eventually became known as Afrikaans. This group was to become the majority population at the Cape. Over time the Khoi were dispossessed and driven into the interior.
