A tapestry of people: The growth of population in the province of the Western Cape

Abstract

The best place to begin a study of human settlement is with climate. Most of the Western Cape province - the land lying north of a line running parallel to the southern coast approximately 100 kilometers inland, from Worcester to Uniondale - is too dry for arable farming. And the rain which does fall south of the long range of mountains tends to come in the winter months which is suitable for wheat but not for tropical cereals. Thus when ironworking, Bantu-speaking, people began to move east and then south from the Niger-Congo area in a great wave of migration that began some 2000 years ago they moved into the wetter eastern part of what is now South Africa where there was good grazing for their cattle and where the crops they knew - sorghum, millet and, later maize, - would grow...