59 Facts About Cape Town

Cape Town is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa.

Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Cape Town outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony.

Cape Town became the legislative capital of the Union, and later of the Republic of South Africa.

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Formerly multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of residents deemed unlawful by apartheid legislation or demolished.

Under apartheid, the Cape was considered a "Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of "Bantus", i e Africans.

School students from Langa, Gugulethu and Nyanga in Cape Town reacted to the news of protests against Bantu Education in Soweto in June 1976 and organised gatherings and marches, which were met with resistance from the police.

Cape Town was home to many leaders of the anti-apartheid movement.

Cape Town's speech heralded the beginning of a new era for the country, and the first democratic election, was held four years later, on 27 April 1994.

The Cape Town region is characterised by an extensive coastline, rugged mountain ranges, coastal plains and inland valleys.

Cape Town Flats is a flat, low-lying, sandy area, area to the east the Cape Town Peninsula, and west of the Helderberg much of which was wetland and dunes within recent history.

Cape Town Peninsula is a rocky and mountainous peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the continent.

Cape Town has a warm Mediterranean climate, with mild, moderately wet winters and dry, warm summers.

Consequently, Cape Town now has over 300 threatened plant species and 13 which are now extinct.

The Cape Peninsula, which lies entirely within the city of Cape Town, has the highest concentration of threatened species of any continental area of equivalent size in the world.

Cape Town reached first place in the 2019 iNaturalist City Nature Challenge in two out of the three categories: Most Observations, and Most Species.

Cape Town Flats is an expansive, low-lying, flat area situated to the city center's southeast.

The rainfall patterns on the Cape Town Flats vary with longitude, such that the eastern parts get a minimum of 214mm per year and the central and western parts get 800mm per year.

Cape Town is governed by a 231-member city council elected in a system of mixed-member proportional representation.

City of Cape Town has expressed explicit support for Ukraine during the 2022 invasion of the country by Russia.

Repealing of apartheid laws limiting the movement of people to Cape Town based on race in 1986 contributed to long period of rapid population growth.

Since July 2019 widespread violent crime in poorer gang dominated areas of greater Cape Town has resulted in an ongoing military presence in these neighbourhoods.

Cape Town is noted for its architectural heritage, with the highest density of Cape Dutch style buildings in the world.

Food originating from or synonymous with Cape Town includes the savory sweet spiced meat dish Bobotie that dates from the 17th century.

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Cape Town is the home of the South African wine industry with the first wine produced in the country being bottled in the city; a number of notable wineries still exist in the city including Groot Constantia and Klein Constantia.

Islam is the city's second largest religion with a long history in Cape Town, resulting in a number of mosques and other Muslim religious sites spread across the city, such as the Auwal Mosque, South Africa's first mosque.

Cape Town is a centre for major broadcast media with several radio stations that only broadcast within the city.

Cape Town TV is a local TV station, supported by numerous organisation and focusing mostly on documentaries.

Cape Town has four major commercial nodes, with Cape Town Central Business District containing the majority of job opportunities and office space.

Cape Town water crisis of 2017 to 2018 was a period of severe water shortage in the Western Cape region, most notably affecting the City of Cape Town.

City of Cape Town implemented significant water restrictions in a bid to curb water usage, and succeeded in reducing its daily water usage by more than half to around 500 million litres per day in March 2018.

Western Cape Town is an important tourist region in South Africa; the tourism industry accounts for 9.

Cape Town is not only a popular international tourist destination in South Africa, but Africa as a whole.

Cape Town Point is the dramatic headland at the end of the Cape Town Peninsula.

The Atlantic seaboard, known as Cape Town's Riviera, is regarded as one of the most scenic routes in South Africa, along the slopes of the Twelve Apostles to the boulders and white sand beaches of Llandudno, with the route ending in Hout Bay, a diverse suburb with a fishing and recreational boating harbour near a small island with a breeding colony of African fur seals.

In November 2013, Cape Town was voted the best global city in The Daily Telegraph's annual Travel Awards.

Cape Town offers tourists a range of air, land and sea-based adventure activities, including helicopter rides, paragliding and skydiving, snorkelling and scuba diving, boat trips, gane-fishing, hiking, mountain biking and rock climbing.

Cape Town Tourism receives a portion of its funding from the City of Cape Town while the remainder is made up of membership fees and own-generated funds.

Cape Town has regularly scheduled services to Southern Africa, East Africa, Mauritius, Middle East, Far East, Europe and the United States as well as eleven domestic destinations.

Cape Town is one of five internationally recognized Antarctic gateway cities with transportation connections.

Simon's Town Harbour on the False Bay coast of the Cape Peninsula is the main operational base of the South African Navy.

Cape Town is one terminus of the luxury tourist-oriented Blue Train as well as the five-star Rovos Rail.

Cape Town has two kinds of taxis: metered taxis and minibus taxis.

The larger taxi companies in Cape Town are Excite Taxis, Cabnet and Intercab and single operators are reachable by cellular phone.

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In rugby union, Cape Town is the home of the Western Province side, who play at Cape Town Stadium and compete in the Currie Cup.

Cape Town has been a host city for both the 1995 Rugby World Cup and 2010 FIFA World Cup, and annually hosts the Africa leg of the World Rugby 7s.

For example, in 1996, Cape Town was one of the five candidate cities shortlisted by the IOC to launch official candidatures to host the 2004 Summer Olympics.

City of Cape Town has vast experience in hosting major national and international sports events.

The Absa Cape Town Epic is the largest full-service mountain bike stage race in the world.

Some notable events hosted by Cape Town have included the 1995 Rugby World Cup, 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup, and World Championships in various sports such as athletics, fencing, weightlifting, hockey, cycling, canoeing, gymnastics and others.

Cape Town was a host city to the 2010 FIFA World Cup from 11 June to 11 July 2010, further enhancing its profile as a major events city.

The Clovelly Country Club and Metropolitan Golf Club are two of the best Golf Courses in Cape Town both offering superb views while playing the 18 holes.

Coastline of Cape Town is relatively long, and the varied exposure to weather conditions makes it fairly common for water conditions to be conducive to recreational scuba diving at some part of the city's coast.

The inshore bathymetry near Cape Town Point is shallow enough for a moderate amount of refraction of long period swell, but deep enough to have less effect on short period swell, and acts as a filter to pass mainly the longer swell components to the Western shores, although they are significantly attenuated.

Cape Town has a well-developed higher system of public universities.

Cape Town is served by three public universities: the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology .

Since the African National Congress has become the country's ruling party, some restructuring of Western Cape Town universities has taken place and as such, traditionally non-white universities have seen increased financing, which has evidently benefitted the University of the Western Cape Town.

Cape Town has become a popular study abroad destination for many international college students.