Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the capital and largest city of the Western Cape, and the country's second-most populous city, after Johannesburg. The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.
The city is known for its harbour, its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Located on the shore of Table Bay, the City Bowl area of Cape Town, which contains its central business district (CBD), is the oldest urban area in the Western Cape, with a significant cultural heritage. The metropolitan area has a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean, which includes a northern section in the West Beach region, as well as the False Bay area in the south.
The Table Mountain National Park is within the city boundaries and there are several other nature reserves and marine-protected areas within and adjacent to the city. These include Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which contains 5 of South Africa's 6 biomes, and displays many plants native to the Cape region.
A popular global tourist destination, Cape Town has been named the best city in the world, and the world's best city for travellers numerous times, including by The New York Times in 2014, Time Out in 2025, the World Travel Awards in 2026, and The Telegraph for the past 8 years (2017 through 2025). Cape Town has South Africa's highest household incomes, lowest rate of unemployment, highest level of infrastructure investment, strongest service delivery performance, largest tourism appeal, and most robust real estate market.
History
Early period
The earliest known remnants of human occupation in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek in the late 1920s. Subject to much debate, earlier estimations as to an upper Pleistocene origin have since been revised. At their most generous and conservative estimates, D. D. Stynder et al. radiocarbon date SAM-AP 4692 to the mid-Holocene at 5448 and 5136 BCE (or 7457 and 7145 cal BP) respectively.
Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to reach the area, arrived in 1488 and named it "Cape of Storms" (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to the Indian subcontinent and East Indies. In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River, the Portuguese admiral Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four of his men were killed and his party was defeated by the "Goringhaiqua" (in Dutch approximate spelling) using cattle that were specially trained to respond to whistles and shouts.
The Gorinaiqua were one of the Khoikhoi clans who inhabited the area. In the late 16th century French, Danish, Dutch, and English, but mainly Portuguese, ships regularly continued to stop over in Table Bay en route to the Indies. They traded tobacco, copper, and iron with the Khoikhoi clans of the region in exchange for fresh meat and other essential traveling provisions.
Dutch period
In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the United East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, VOC) were sent to the Cape Colony to establish a way-station for ships travelling to the Dutch East Indies, and the Fort de Goede Hoop (later replaced by the Castle of Good Hope).
The settlement grew slowly during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour shortage prompted the local authorities to import enslaved people from Indonesia and Madagascar. Many of these people are ancestors of modern-day Cape Coloured and Cape Malay communities.
Under Van Riebeeck and his successors, as VOC commanders and later governors at the Cape, a wide range of agricultural plants were introduced to the Cape. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had a large and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region.
British period
With the Dutch Republic being transformed into Revolutionary France's vassal Batavian Republic, Great Britain moved to take control of Dutch colonies, including the colonial possessions of the VOC.
Britain captured Cape Town in 1795, but it was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803. British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg when the Batavian Republic allied with Britain's rival, France, during the Napoleonic Wars. Following the conclusion of the war Cape Town was permanently ceded to the United Kingdom in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.
The city became the capital of the newly formed Cape Colony, whose territory expanded very substantially through the 1800s, partially as a result of numerous wars with the amaXhosa on the colony's eastern frontier. In 1833 slavery was abolished in the colony freeing over 5500 slaves in the city, almost a third of the city's population at the time. The Convict Crisis of 1849, marked by substantial civil upheaval, bolstered the push for self-governance in the Cape.
With expansion came calls for greater independence from the UK, with the Cape attaining its own parliament (1854) and a locally accountable prime minister (1872). Suffrage was established according to the non-racial Cape Qualified Franchise.
During the 1850s and 1860s, additional plant species were introduced from Australia by the British authorities. Notably rooikrans was introduced to stabilise the sand of the Cape Flats to allow for a road connecting the peninsula with the rest of the African continent and eucalyptus was used to drain marshes.
In 1859 the first railway line was built by the Cape Government Railways and a system of railways rapidly expanded in the 1870s. The discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1867, and the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886, prompted a flood of immigration into South Africa. In 1895 the city's first public power station, the Graaff Electric Lighting Works, was opened.
Conflicts between the Boer republics in the interior and the British colonial government resulted in the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. Britain's victory in this war led to the formation of a united South Africa. From 1891 to 1901, the city's population more than doubled from 67,000 to 171,000.
As the 19th century came to an end, the economic and political dominance of Cape Town in the Southern Africa region during the 19th century started to give way to the dominance of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the 20th century.
South African period
In 1910 Britain established the Union of South Africa which unified the Cape Colony with the two defeated Boer Republics and the British colony of Natal. Cape Town became the legislative capital of the Union, and later of the Republic of South Africa.
By the time of the 1936 census, Johannesburg had overtaken Cape Town as the largest city in the country.
In 1945 the expansion of the Cape Town foreshore was completed, adding an additional 194 ha (480 acres) to the Cape Town CBD, and by extension, the City Bowl region.
Apartheid era
Prior to the mid-twentieth century Cape Town was one of the most racially integrated cities in South Africa. In the 1948 national elections the National Party won on a platform of apartheid (racial segregation) under the slogan of "swart gevaar" (Afrikaans for "black danger"). This led to the erosion and eventual abolition of the Cape's multiracial franchise.
In 1950 the apartheid government first introduced the Group Areas Act, which classified and segregated urban areas according to race. Formerly multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of residents deemed unlawful by apartheid legislation, or demolished. The most infamous example of this in Cape Town was the suburb of District Six. After it was declared a whites-only area in 1965, all housing there was demolished and over 60,000 residents were forcibly removed. Many of these residents were relocated to the Cape Flats.
The earliest of the Cape Flats forced removals saw the expulsion of Black South Africans to Langa, Cape Town's first and oldest township, in line with the 1923 Native Urban Areas Act.
Under apartheid the Cape was considered a "Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of "Bantus", i.e. Black Africans. The implementation of this policy was widely opposed by trade unions, civil society and opposition parties. It is notable that this policy was not advocated for by any Coloured political group, and its implementation was a unilateral decision by the apartheid government.
During the student-led Soweto Uprising of June 1976, school students from Langa, Gugulethu and Nyanga in Cape Town reacted to the news of the protests against Bantu Education by organising gatherings and marches of their own. A number of school buildings were burnt down and the protest action was met with forceful resistance from the police.
Cape Town has been home to many leaders of the anti-apartheid movement. In Table Bay, 10 km (6 mi) from the city is Robben Island. This penitentiary island was the site of a maximum security prison where many famous apartheid-era political prisoners served long prison sentences. Famous prisoners include activist, lawyer and future president Nelson Mandela who served 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment on the island, as well as two other future presidents, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma.
In one of the most famous moments marking the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech since his imprisonment from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall, hours after being released on 11 February 1990. His speech heralded the beginning of a new era for the country. The first democratic election was held four years later on 27 April 1994.
Nobel Square in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront features statues of South Africa's four Nobel Peace Prize winners: Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.
Post-apartheid era
Cape Town has undergone significant changes in the years since Apartheid. Cape Town has experienced economic growth and development in the post-apartheid era. The city has become a major economic hub in South Africa, attracting international investment and tourism. The Democratic Alliance (DA), a liberal political party which came to power in Cape Town in 2006, has been credited with improving bureaucratic efficiency, public safety and fostering economic development.
Opinion polls show that South Africans view the Western Cape as the best governed province, Cape Town as the best governed city in the country. Of South Africa's 257 municipalities, only 38 received a clean financial audit in 2022 from the Auditor-General. Of those, 21 were in the Western Cape.
The city's economy has diversified, with growth in sectors such as technology, finance, real estate, and tourism. The establishment of the Cape Town CCID has been particularly successful in revitalizing the city center, bringing businesses and people back into the area. This initiative has transformed public spaces such as Greenmarket Square, Company's Garden, and St George's Mall, attracting both locals and tourists.
In 2014 Cape Town was named World Design Capital of the Year. Cape Town was voted the best tourist destination in Africa at the 2023 World Travel Awards in Dubai and continues to be the most important tourist destination in the country. Cape Town has been named the best travel city in the world every year since 2013 in the Telegraph Travel Awards.
Rapid urbanization driven by migration from the Northern and Eastern Cape, along with the legacy of apartheid's spatial planning, have caused significant disparities between affluent areas and impoverished townships. 60% of the city's population live in townships and informal settlements far from the city centre. The legacy of Apartheid means Cape Town remains one of the most racially segregated cities in South Africa. Many Black South Africans continue to live in informal settlements with limited access to basic services such as healthcare, education, and sanitation.
The unemployment rate in Cape Town remains high at 23% as of 2024 (though nearly 10 points lower than the nationwide average), particularly among historically disadvantaged groups, and economic opportunities are unevenly distributed.
Cape Town faced a severe water shortage from 2015 to 2018. According to Oxfam, "in the face of an imminent water shortage, the city of Cape Town in South Africa successfully reduced its water use by more than half in three years, cutting it from 1.2bn litres per day in February 2015 to 516m litres per day in 2018."
In 2021 Cape Town also experienced a violent turf war between rival mini-bus taxi firms which led to the deaths of 83 people. Two years later a strike by the mini-bus taxi firms resulted in 5 deaths.
Since the 2010s, Cape Town and the wider Western Cape province have seen the rise of a small secessionist movement. Support for parties "which have formally adopted Cape independence" was around 5% in the 2021 municipal elections.
Geography and the natural environment
Cape Town is located at latitude 33.55° S (approximately the same as Sydney and Buenos Aires and equivalent to Casablanca and Los Angeles in the northern hemisphere) and longitude 18.25° E.
Table Mountain, with its near vertical cliffs and flat-topped summit over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high, and with Devil's Peak and Lion's Head on either side, together form a dramatic mountainous backdrop, which creates the City Bowl. This area comprises the Cape Town CBD as well as numerous suburbs on the mountainside.