A hunter-gatherer community (later known to the Khoi-khoi as Sonqua/San, and still later to the Europeans as Bushmen) develops near Pinnacle Point, Mossel Bay, during a time of exceptionally low sea levels (about 80 metres lower than present) and higher rainfall which provides a lush grassland coastal strip (while most of Africa is desert and the earth endures an ice age), which, by the quality of its microlith spear points, indicates technological innovation.

Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt sends a Phoenician expedition southward from the Red Sea to explore the coast of Africa which, according to ancient Greek historian Herodotus (4.42), circumnavigates Africa clockwise in three years returning through Gibraltar ('pillars of Hercules'). The remains of an ancient Phoenician galley were reported (page 4) to have been excavated at the Cape.

The nomadic Khoi-khoi people arrive at the Cape (later known a 'Hottentots' with reference to their language, and are known today as Nama). Their name for the site of 'Cape Town' is Camissa, meaning 'place of sweet water' for as nomads with cattle it was an important resource (Stilfontein Spring) flowing down from the mountain (unfortunately flowing wasted today in a storm-water drain from Oranjezicht into the sea)

In addition, the click sounds in the Xhosa language of the Eastern Cape, which distinguishes it from the Zulu,
are derived from the Khoikhoi language.

Portuguese explorer Bartholomew Diaz (Bartolomeu Dias) lands at Mossel Bay, which he calls dos Vaqueiros because of the Khoi-khoi cattle he saw, and later at St. Croix island in Algoa Bay. Sailing further east his party reach the Great Fish River and then turning back westward arrive at the Cape which he calls 'Stormy Cape' (the Portuguese king, Dom John, later calls it the 'Cape of Good Hope' because it holds promise of a route to India) and arrives back in Lisbon in December 1488 after a voyage of 16-months and 17-days.

Vasco da Gama is sent by King Dom Manuel of Portugal with four ships to follow up on Diaz's discoveries, rounding the Cape on November 22.

Bartolomeu Dias (Dias de Novaes) dies in a storm at sea off the Cape coast.

A Portuguese squadron under Castilian nobleman Antonio de Saldanha, on its way to blockade the Red Sea before proceeding to India, is forced by a storm to enter Table Bay. He climbs Table Mountain to ascertain his location and his men trade with the Khoi-khoi and take on fresh water, but a skirmish breaks out with the Khoi-khoi and Antonio de Saldanha is wounded in the arm.

Table Bay is initially named after him as 'Aguada de Saldanha',
but later in 1601 it is renamed as 'Table Bay' by Joris van Spilbergen.

March 1: The Portuguese lose 58 men (some report it as 65), including Dom Francisco de Almeida first governor and viceroy of the Portuguese State of India (Estado da India), in a fight with the Cape Peninsula Khoi-khoi provoked by the Portuguese attempt to steal some of the Khoi-khoi cattle, after their three ships Garcia, Belém and Santa Cruz had anchored in Table Bay to replenish water.

1590 until 1700, 2632 ships had called at the Cape, and before van Riebeeck arrived in 1652 the figure of ships that called at the Cape was 1071. This represents a rise from around 8 ships a year in the last decade of the 1500s to around 30 in a year with layovers of 2 days to 8 days by the time Van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape.

The Dutch dominated the numbers, but England followed with France, Portugal, Denmark regularly coming to the Cape.

• April 7: An earthquake strikes in the Milnerton area of Cape Town.

March: The Dutch ship Nieuwe Haarlem, returning from Java to Holland, strands on Milnerton beach (Table Bay) at the Cape.

To protect themselves the shipwreck victims build a small fort which they name the
"Sand Fort of the Cape of Good Hope".
(they burn the wreck to prevent obstruction to other vessels, leaving 19 cannon and four anchors)
They stay for nearly one year until rescued in 1648 by a fleet of 12 ships under the command of W.G. de Jong.

A report by two castaways (Leendert Janszen, Matthew Proot) encourages the Directors of the Dutch East India Company

to establish a refreshment station at the Cape for their passing ships.
Johan/Jan Van Riebeeck was also on one of the rescue ships, and upon seeing the Cape decides to return.

The Dutch Watch is formed, a paramilitary organization formed by settlers in the Cape, initially to protect (white) civilians against attack and later to maintain law and order. (In 1795 British officials assumed control over the Dutch Watch, and in 1825 they organize the Cape Constabulary, which becomes the Cape Town Police Force in 1840.)

young Khoi girl Krotoa, or 'Eva' (age 12, born 1643) of the Goringhaicona (Strandlopers) tribe, begins acting as interpreter for the Dutch after working in the household of Jan van Riebeeck for his wife.

The Dutch East India Company (or VOC) grants Cape land to Dutch settlers (free burgers) causing serious friction with the local Khoi-khoi tribes who regard the same land as their communal grazing area.

In consequence, the Khoi-khoi refuse to work for the Company or its employees,
and so slaves are imported from Angola by the VOC to supply labour.

Governor Van Riebeeck begins to build a wooden wall with watch towers along the banks of the Zoute/Sout/Salt and Amstel/Liesbeek rivers, but then later decides to plant an indigenous wild almond hedge (Brabejum stellatifolium) with brambles (the 'Grensheining') to help protect the Dutch settlers from Khoi-khoi raids (probably to also restrain further Dutch settler/farmer-expansion/encroachment), as the Dutch settlement now includes the Khoi-khoi's traditional cattle grazing grounds.

(Wild almond nuts contain cyanide and are poisonous unless specially treated by soaking and roasting,
a technique discovered by the Khoi-khoi ('Hottentot') and Sonqua/San ('Bushmen') people who used to eat them.)

The Dutch settlers accuse the Khoi-khoi of harbouring runaway slaves and the first 'Hottentot' war breaks out.

May 6: Zacharias Wagenaer (German) succeeds Van Riebeeck as governor of the Cape.

Commander Zacharias Wagenaer is instructed by VOC Commissioner Isbrand Goske to build a pentagonal fortress out of stone (see January 1666).

April 26: Khoi-khoi interpreter Krotoa (Eva) legally marries Danish surgeon/explorer Pieter van Meerhoff. Their wedding reception is held in the home of Governor Zacharias Wagenaer.

(Eva had been baptised as a Christian on May 3, 1662 by visiting pastor, the Reverend Petrus Sibelius,
and she was instrumental in working out terms for ending the First Dutch–Khoi-khoi War).

She is niece of (King) Herry (Autshumao) head of the 'Strandloper'/Beach-comber Khoi tribe,
and her sister is wife of Oedasoa, head of the Cochoqua tribe of Khoi-khoi.
June 2: Their marriage is also solemnized in church.

(Of the children born from this marriage three survive.

After the death of her husband in Madagascar in 1668, she returns to the Cape with her children 30 September 1668

but suffers from depression and alcoholism from the social rejection
as both the Dutch colonials and her Khoi-khoi community no longer regarded her as one of them.

Krotoa’s eldest daughter, Pieternella, marries Daniel Zaaijman, a friend of Van Riebeeck’s. They live in Madagascar for a while, but return to the Cape upon the departure of the VOC from that island.

January 2: The first stone of the fortress/castle is laid, but the work is interrupted frequently because the Dutch East India Company is reluctant to spend much money on the project. The fortress eventually houses a church, bakery, various workshops, living quarters, shops, and cells, among other facilities.

The second 'Hottentot' war breaks out between the Dutch and the Cochoquas (Saldanhars) of the Khoi-khoi. Khoi-khoi leader Gonnema and his people escape to the mountains but loose almost 900 sheep and 800 of their cattle to the Dutch attackers.

February: Johan Heerentals is appointed governor by the Dutch East India Company. He orders the digging of a moat around the unfinished Castle and he, his wife, and his son, carry out a basket of soil each time they pass the Castle. He lays down a regulation that every person passing the Castle, male and female, must do the same.
He improves relations with the Khoi-khoi by posing as a super-chief.

Peace between the Khoi-khoi and the Dutch is eventually achieved with a tax on the Cochoquas of 30 head of cattle per annum as a sign of their submission to the Dutch.

The Dutch settlers spread further and begin farming in the valleys of Stellenbosch and Paarl, taking more of the Khoi-khoi pasture lands.

Mixed/multiracial marriages are now prohibited. (See: April 26, 1664).

April: Portuguese ship Nossa dos Milagros on its way to Europe with 200 on board is wrecked off Cape Aghulas.
The survivors (including the Ambassador Ok-Khun Chamnan Chaichon of Siam and his staff) swim ashore and begin the long walk to the Cape of Good Hope.

About 180 French Protestants ('Huguenots'), who had fled Catholic persecution under Louis XIV, immigrate to the Cape.

BUT they are however prohibited from holding church services in their mother tongue (French).

Sheikh Yusuf is exiled to the Cape by the Dutch.
(In 1684 Yusuf had been persuaded to surrender on the promise of a pardon, but the Dutch renege on their promise and instead imprisoned him at the castle of Batavia (Indonesia). Suspecting that he would attempt escape, the Dutch then transferred him to Ceylon in September that year, before exiling him to the Cape on 27 June 1693 on the ship Voetboeg.
Yusuf, along with 49 followers including two wives and twelve children, were received in the Cape on 2 April 1694 by governor Simon van der Stel. They were housed on the farm Zandvliet (later named Macassar in honour of Sheikh Yusuf's birthplace), far outside of Cape Town, in an attempt to minimise his influence on the Dutch East India Company's slaves.
The plan failed however; Yusuf's settlement soon became a sanctuary for slaves and it was here that the first cohesive Islamic community in South Africa was established. From here the message of Islam was disseminated to the slave community of Cape Town. Sheikh Yusuf dies at Zandvliet on 23 May 1699.)

• September: An earthquake hits the Milnerton area of Cape Town.

Adam Tas, partly Jewish, arrives at the Cape, marries Elizabeth van Brakel in 1703, and becomes aware of the conflict of interest between local farmers and VOC officials who also farm. (See 1705).

February: Abdul Basir, ruler of the kingdom of Sumbawa, an island east of Java, is exiled in chains to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company.
At the Cape he marries Sitina Sara Marouff, daughter of Shaykh (Sheikh) Yusuf..

(Basir is pardoned in February 1710, but re-exiled to the Cape again in 1713)

Dutch Commander De Chavonnes reports that fewer than 30 Dutch settler families can be regarded as 'wealthy' because of a limited market for their farm produce.

Adam Tas is asked by local farmers to represent their problems with the discrimination/corruption of VOC officials in a letter of complaint. He does so, and the 63-burgher-signed petition is sent directly to the VOC headquarters in Amsterdam.

February 28, before dawn: Adam Tas is arrested on instruction of Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel and imprisoned at the castle under punitively stringent conditions.

(He is only released after the Netherlands directorate of the VOC (the Seventeen) dismiss the Cape Governor (23 April 1707) and VOC officials are subsequently forbidden to own any land at the Cape. Tas renames his farm Libertas (Latin for Freedom) for his release, with the meaning 'Tas is Free').

A devastating smallpox epidemic spreads among the Khoi-khoi (Chainoqua, Hessequa, and other tribes), contracted from Dutch imported slaves, killing very many and causing others to flee inland, resulting in a further serious labour shortage at the Cape. This also results in the death of Maria Everts (1660-1713, whose parents had been captured in Guinea, West Africa, sold to the Dutch in 1658, who obtained their freedom in stages, and were pioneers of the small Christianised free black community living in the Table Valley) .

The boundary of the Cape is now the Gouritz River. No Dutch farmer is allowed to settle beyond it.

Another smallpox epidemic breaks out among the Khoi-khoi.

July: Three aggrieved slaves on Varietas farm kill their foreman Behr and his wife in retaliation for his cruelty. They are hunted down, their bodies broken on the wheel in a slow torture, and they are then beheaded and their heads put on pikes for public display as a deterrent to other slaves.

The area thus becomes known as driekoppen (three-heads) which is today called Mowbray.

The boundary of the Cape is now at Riviersonderend.

The Dutch East India Company imports slaves from Moçambique and Zanzibar.
March 8: Jan de la Fontaine becomes Governor of the Cape.

May 21: Nine ships are wrecked in a storm in Table Bay with a loss of 208 lives.
July 9: Moravian missionary George Schmidt arrives at the Cape (See 1742).

Many Dutch farmers in the Piquetberg/Piketberg area abandon their farms in the face of continuing San (Bushmen) cattle raids.
One early farmer later writes:

Estienne Barbier (Sergeant of the Waterkasteel), a Frenchman and concerned about the tyrannical behaviour of the VOC, after being imprisoned at the Castle because of his complaints, escapes and hides for a year on the farm of French Huguenot widow Cilliers of Daljosafat. He offers to be spokesman for the grievances of the local farmers, and consequently pastes a protest (aan alles de Africanders Gebroedsels) on the church door at Drakenstein (known as Paarl today).

November 14: He is arrested and imprisoned in the Donkergat at the Castle. The 'Council of Justice' sentences him to death and he is bound to a wooden cross in the open square of the Castle, where first his right hand is chopped off, and then he is decapitated. His corpse is drawn and quartered, and various body parts are sent to the outposts of the Dutch Colony as a warning of the consequences of any unlawful behaviour.

March: Courageous Moravian Christian missionary George Schmidt baptises five Khoi-khoi converts, which angers the Cape Governor Swellengrebel in his support of the disapproval of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) which, from 1738, has regarded the Moravians as an 'heretical sect'. (See Christmas Eve, 1792).

June 30: Petitioners request permission of the VOC to build a Lutheran church.

Request denied, as the Dutch Reformed Church requires a monopoly. (See: 1780).

Imported slaves now outnumber the Cape colonists by three to one.

The Dutch boundary of the Cape now runs from the Olifants River to the Great Brak River.

Some Dutch farmers in the Swellendam area begin indiscriminately shooting scores of San men, women and children in retaliation for cattle raids.

Ryk Tulbagh becomes Governor.

September: The Cape Governor Ryk Tulbagh codifies Slave Laws declaring that only assault and murder are to be punishable by death; that hard labour and corporal punishment are to be penalties for all other offences; and that

it is illegal for slaves to gather in groups of three or more.

Another smallpox epidemic breaks out among the Khoi-khoi.

The Gamtoos River is now the Dutch boundary of the Cape.
Cape Town itself now consists of about 550 low, white, flat roofed houses, built on a grid pattern, with its streets bounded by open canals.

Summer: Three groups of Dutch farmers, half-castes and Khoi, under command of Opperman, hunt San/'Bushmen' like animals in the Cape mountains, killing 503, and capturing 239. The punitive raids against San cattle-raiding also continue...

22: Captain Cook, the explorer, puts in to Table Bay with two ships (Resolution of 462 tons, and Adventure of 330 tons) on his way to settle the question of the alleged southern continent (Antarctica), returning in March 22, 1775, after a voyage of 60,000 miles.

The Cape boundary is now a line running from Bruintjies Hoogte near Colesberg in the north to the Bushman's River in the south.

Robert Jacob Gordon arrives at the Cape as Second-in-Command of the garrison, and later becomes Commandant/Commander.

Commander Robert Jacob Gordon, accompanying Dutch Governor Van Plettenberg on a journey into the interior as head of his security, discovers the 'Orange' River while scouting ahead, but guides the Governor away from it lest he see it and name it after himself. Gordon then returns later with his men to hoist the flag of the Dutch royal house in midstream and name it as the Orange River in their honour.

The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC, as the 'official' church of Cape Colony) lifts its previous ban on Lutheran churches at the Cape. (Some sources give 1783).

March 31: The French frigate La Silphide brings news that Britain has declared war on the Netherlands and delivers a letter from the Dutch ambassador to Paris ordering the Cape Governor van Plettenberg to defend the Cape against the British, and that the Netherlands had entered into an alliance with the French.

June 21: A French fleet under Admiral de Suffren arrives with two regiments of soldiers, forty artillerymen and a large amount of arms, ammunition and stores, and lands them at Simons Bay. The French occupation provides an economic boost to the Dutch settler–farmers.

On conclusion of peace between Britain and the Netherlands, the French troops are sent from the Cape to Mauritius.

A Burgher Council is constituted to govern Cape Town, consisting of three Dutch East India Company (VOC) officials and three appointed free burghers.

The first Merino sheep (two rams and four ewes) arrive in the Cape for Commander Robert Gordon, as a personal gift to him from the royal Dutch Prince of Orange. (See: September 1795).

San clans retreat northward into the mountains and the Kalahari desert.

Eve: Three Moravian missionaries, through the good offices of Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) minister Helperus van Lier, are now permitted to resume Christian ministry at the Cape among the indigenous inhabitants (begun by George Schmidt, but banned by the DRC).

January 29: the VOC Director of Fortifications, Lieutenant L.M. Thibault, writes a report to Cape Governor A.J. Sluysken at the Castle on the status of Hout Bay fortifications. Three stone forts are situated so that they can fire their 24-pounder cannons across each other and also therefore maintain a continuous fire toward the sea as each fort in turn reloads its cannons. Their range is one mile, the approximate width of Hout Bay. Forts one and two are front line in the sense that they can fire on enemy ships as they enter the Bay.

27: the Portuguese slave ship, the Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa, sinks about 100m off the coast of Cape Town, transporting more than 400 enslaved people from Mozambique to Brazil. The history of the ship follows:

(Remnants from shackles, iron bars used as ballast for the ship, and a wooden pulley block, are shown for the first time at Cape Town's Iziko Slave Lodge museum in June 2015).

The boundary of the Cape is now at the Fish River.

11: A British naval force under Admiral Elphinstone anchors in False Bay with 3,000 troops under Major-General Craig.

4: Another British fleet arrives in False Bay with 3,000 reinforcements.

14: More than 4,000 British soldiers advance from Muizenberg toward Cape Town against its approximately 1,700 defending troops.

16: The Cape surrenders to the British.

November 5: A violent storm strikes Table Bay wrecking many ships and drowning more than 300 passengers and crews of the destroyed ships.

The bodies recovered are buried in mass graves on Table Bay beach (buried today under Cape Town's Foreshore).

The Cape is returned to the Batavian Republic by the British – in terms of the Treaty of Amiens.

The Dutch (Batavian Republic) resume control of the Cape.

December 25: A 'privateer', the 32-gun corvette Le Napoleon from St Malo in France, under the captaincy of Jean Le Nouvel, is pursued by the 32-gun British frigate HMS Narcissus (893-ton), under captaincy of Ross Donnelly (1761–1840), along the shore to prevent it warning the Dutch of the impending British attack by a secret expeditionary force of seven warships* (to retake the Cape from the Dutch) under naval command of Commodore Sir Home Popham. The Le Napoleon is forced to run aground at Olifantsbos (today part of Table Mountain National Park) and most of her desperate crew drown in the surf.

October 27: North of Malmesbury – From farm to farm Louis of Mauritius (stirred by reports of slave uprisings in America and the Caribbean), accompanied by two Irish men James Hooper and Michael Kelly; another slave, Jeptha of Batavia, two slaves Abraham and Adonis, and later assisted by an Indian slave and two Khoi men lead an insurrection of about 350 slaves.

reaches the Governor of the Cape, Lord Caledon, and infantry and cavalry ambush the Slave March at Salt River where the participants scatter. The leadership group are all rounded up when the dragoons capture 326 of the marchers and take them to internment sites at the Castle and Tygerberg hills. Louis is picked up in Wynberg and Hooper and Kelly are captured in Saldana Bay. Of these, 47 are put on trial including Hooper, Kelly, Lois and the two Khoi leaders. Nine are found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged. Another 11 were sentenced to death as well, for 'active participation'. Many others are given lessor sentences including imprisonment on Robben Island. Most of the death sentences are carried out after confirmation by Governor Caledon, including that of Louis of Mauritius and James Hooper.

• December 4: A violent earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale shakes the Milnerton and Blaauwberg valley area leaving open fissures in the ground. The tectonic fault runs in a south-easterly direction from about eight kilometres offshore of today's Koeberg Nuclear Power station, beneath the Milnerton area and across the Cape Flats and forms the centre of the earthquake belt in Cape Town.

German missionary Johann Hinrich Schmelen arrives at the Cape and travels by ox wagon north to Pella on the Orange River to preach the gospel on behalf of the London Missionary Society.

1814 he marries one of his Khoi converts Zara Xaigas who greatly assists him in writing the first grammar of the Namaqua/Khoi-khoi language and the first translation of the four Gospels into that language which is to be printed by the Bible Society in 1831, the year Zara dies of TB and exhaustion).

The British annexation of the Cape is confirmed by the Treaty of Vienna.

October: Lieutenant Frans Rossouw with soldiers arrives at the farm of Freek Bezuidenhout in the Baviaans River Valley to arrest him for contempt of court. Bezuidenhout retreats to a cave but is shot dead by two pandours (Khoi soldiers),

Fifth Frontier War begins.

April: Battle of Grahamstown in which Xhosa chief Nxele is defeated.

May: Irish settlers land at Saldanha Bay to travel overland to Clanwilliam.

Muslim Imam Abdus Sammat, a free black from Indonesia, arrives at the Cape and eventually begins to minister to a small congregation of free Javanese fishermen squatting on 'Crown Land' in the area of Mosterd's Bay (later renamed Strand).
(The community numbers are later boosted after the emancipation of slaves in 1838; by 1879 this settlement has grown to 800 of which 75% are Muslim; and in 1882 the colonial government issues proper land grants to these Mosterd's Bay squatters).

April: The British prison ship Brampton arrives in Sydney, Australia, from the Cape with deported Khoi-khoi leaders: David Stuurman (who had twice escaped from Robben Island); Jantjie Piet, and ten others.

October 11: John Fairbairn, who later becomes a prime influence for press freedom at the Cape, arrives in Table Bay on the ship Mary.

In Groot Constantia – Jacob Pieter Cloete (1793-1875) runs the family farm owning 33 adult and child slaves.

July: Settler Bishop Burnett petitions the British parliament to reform the Cape Judicial System (reformed in 1827).

June 19: Ordinance 19 is promulgated for the appointment of Slave Protectors to protect the interests of slaves and to make it possible for slaves to buy their freedom.

January: The Chief Justice, Sir John Wylde, had been the judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court in New South Wales. As Chief Justice he is also appointed ex officio the judge of the Cape Vice-Admiralty Court. The previous Vice-Admiralty judge, George Kekewich, who had sat as assessor in the old Court of Appeals for Criminal Cases, is appointed third puisne judge. The senior puisne was William Menzies, a member of the Scots bar, who is remembered in South Africa for his Reports, printed from his notebooks after his death (and for his unauthorised and subsequently repudiated action in annexing the Orange Free State and regions beyond in the name of Queen Victoria in 1842).

June 27: The Cape of Good Hope Philanthropic Society (for aiding deserving slaves and slave children to purchase their freedom) is established by 18 Christian men who elect a management committee of thirteen from among themselves, which receives donations for this purpose. (Its report of July 1833 states that 126 slave children had thereby been freed).

Ordinance 50 is promulgated, exempting Khoi-khoi (Hottentots) and other free persons of colour from the provision of carrying passes, entitles coloureds to ownership of property, guarantees them freedom of movement, exempts them from compulsory labour and stipulates that their labour relations with their employers has to be organised on a contractual basis.

John Fairbairn later describes this Ordinance as
the "Magna Charta" [Magna Carta] of the Coloured population of the Cape.

April: Freedom of the Press is finally ensured by ordinance.

February: John Fairbairn proposes that slave emancipation by Britain should follow a system of indenture after emancipation, providing for compensation in the form of debentures on which interest (£72,000) would be transferred to the Cape.

This year's emancipation of all slaves by Britain's parliament causes an estimated financial loss of about 6 million rixdollars to the Cape colonists.
October 29: But John Fairbairn describes the slave emancipation in The South African Commercial Advertiser as –

Cape 'apprentices' (slaves) must be freed by December 1, 1838.

The Sixth Frontier War breaks out in the Eastern Cape.
Settler Henry Dugmore writes of it –

Four hundred settler homes are destroyed. Settler loses later tabulated are –

January: Military aid arrives under Colonel Harry Smith reaches Grahamstown after riding 600 miles from Cape Town in 6 days. Later, Governor Sir Benjamin D'Urban arrives in Algoa Bay with reinforcements by sea.

May 10: Cape Governor Sir Benjamin D'Urban proclaims the Kei River as the new colonial boundary.

September: Sixth Frontier War ends, and the Province of Queen Adelaide is annexed between the Great Fish River and the Kei River.

March: The Province of Queen Adelaide is renounced and the frontier returns to the Great Fish River.

December: The Cape's government gazette carries an advertisement which reads –

February: News arrives of the murder of Piet Retief and his followers by Zulu chief Dingane and his army.

End October: Field-Cornet Gideon Daniel Joubert (1795-1858) of Nieuw Hantam (near Colesberg) is sent to collect those slaves ('apprentices') who wished to return to the Cape after their owners/masters had 'illegally' emigrated (the 'voortrekkers') out of the Cape Colony. He planned to visit every Voortrekker encampment on the way to Port Natal to individually interview every 'apprentice'. He managed to locate and interview about 100, most of whom signed declarations they wished to remain with their masters, and about 40 adults and children wished to return with two wagon-loads of their belongings, arriving about ten days before Christmas.

December 16: Pretorius beats Zulu king Dingaan at the battle of Blood River.

Dr David Livingstone (medical doctor) arrives in Cape Town as missionary of the London Missionary Society to join Dr Moffatt's Christian mission at Kuruman.

The British Government announces its intention to settle young convicts at the Cape. In reaction the citizenry of the Cape band together (11 November 1848, see 1849) to –

"pledge themselves not to employ, or receive into their establishments on any terms
convicted criminals of any description, during the period of their punishment".

The British annex Natal as a colony.

The Seventh Frontier War begins (War of the Axe).

A committee of five, including John Fairbairn, despatch petitions to the British Queen and to the Secretary of State against the settlement of convicts at the Cape as a penal colony.

May 19: The Great Anti-convict Meeting is held in Cape Town of between five and seven thousand citizens. All businesses are closed for two hours; nine pre-published resolutions are presented by various speakers under chairmanship of J.B. Ebden. English and Afrikaans speaking groups were in full accord.

May 25: The petition arising from this Anti-convict Meeting, signed by 4,188 persons, is handed to the Governor.

June 16: The Anti-Convict Committee at the Cape converts into an Association and publishes a Pledge in the newspapers throughout the Colony, along with lists to be signed in commitment to the boycott of government plans to make the Cape a penal colony.

September 19: The British naval ship Neptune anchors in Simon's Bay with its load of convicts for the Cape.

Stanford, a farmer on the Caledon district, violates the provisioning boycott and supplies the government with provisions and slaughter-stock for the convict ship.

October 11: John Fairbairn brings the names of R Stanford and B Norden to the attention of the public for breaking the people's boycott.

Teachers refuse to teach Stanford's children in consequence, and the public impose a boycott on him. He is financially ruined but is knighted by the British government and paid £5,000 in compensation.

The Eighth Frontier War begins.

Sand River Convention confirms independence of Transvaal Republic.

Bloemfontein Convention restores independence of Transorangia as Orange Free State.

February: In the Eastern Cape among the Xhosa people, the young 'prophetess' Nongqawuse predicts from her visions the dawning at this date of the 'new age' of a colonist-free land, and that therefore her people should all slaughter their cattle and not plant their crops.

Many thousands starve to death as a consequence, and their resistance to colonisation crumbles for a decade.

• August 14: An earthquake strikes in the Ceres–Tulbagh area. (these earthquakes appear to have a 56-years cycle)

The first stones of Cape Town's harbour breakwater are laid as the beginning of its docks.

January: Under the auspices of the Ottoman government of Turkey Abu Bakr Effendi comes to Cape Town to help regularise Muslim religious practice. He dies seventeen-years later in 1880 after a lonely, difficult, but productive life, and is buried in the Tana Baru cemetery in the Bo-Kaap above the centre city.

The ship Kehrwieder of Captain Parow (Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Parow) is blown ashore in Table Bay with 18 other ships during a great storm. Later, Captain Parow marries (Johanna Wilhelmina Timmerman) the daughter of his gracious Cape hosts and he decides to develop the Tygerberg Valley area, which is later named 'Parow' after him as a suburb of greater Cape Town.

Alluvial diamonds are discovered near the confluence of the Orange and Vaal Rivers.

British annex Basutoland (now Lesotho) at the request of King Mosweshwe.

Diamond rush to Kimberley.

Britain's annexation of the diamond region of Griqualand (Kimberley area) to Cape Colony, now self-governing. Cecil John Rhodes (18-years-old) joins diamond rush, followed by Alfred Beit in 1875.

Proclamation of Transvaal as British Crown Colony.

The Ninth Frontier War begins in the Eastern Cape.

British forces invade, and (in 1887) annex Zululand, which is soon incorporated into Natal, now self-governing.

First Anglo-Boer War. Paul Kruger leads rebellion against British rule ('First War of Independence').

February 27: Peace talks after Battle of Majuba. Pretoria Convention: Transvaal Republic obtains limited independence.

London Convention: Transvaal (South African Republic) obtains greater independence.

April 15: The Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in Calvinia is formed on a farm Willemsrivier, about 4.5km north-west of Nieuwoudtville.

The 'skuldmonument' outside the church to the right has the names of the people who worked and saved over three years to raise the money again to build.

Gold rush to Witwatersrand begins.

In Bloemfontein, Orange Free State – Chief Justice Reitz is elected as president of the republic.

Cecil John Rhodes obtains British Royal Charter for his British South Africa Co. (BSA) to exploit chief Lobengula's territory (Mashonaland and Matabeleland).

Cecil Rhodes' BSA company sends pioneers to occupy Lobengula's territory which is renamed Rhodesia.

December 29: The Jameson Raid against the South African Republic of the Transvaal causes great bitterness between British and Afrikaner. It was a botched raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by a British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson and his Company mercenaries ("police" in the employ of Beit and Rhodes` British South Africa company) and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895–96. It was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so, but destroyed relations between English and Afrikaners in the Cape..

January 2: Battle of Doornkop. Jameson and 500 British soldiers surrender. Arrest and trial of Johannesburg Reform Committee. Rhodes resigns at the Cape. Cape Enquiry into Jameson Raid.

London Enquiry into Jameson Raid. Sir Alfred Milner takes over as British High Commissioner at the Cape.

Sir Alfred Milner (who later engineers and precipitates the cruel Anglo-Boer war) becomes British High Commissioner at the Cape.

Paul Kruger elected for fourth term as President of Transvaal. Milner sails to London on 'holiday'.

June 5: Bloemfontein Conference.

September 8: British Cabinet decides to send 10,000 troops to defend Natal.

September 26: Penn Symons pushes up troops to Dundee.

September 27: Paul Kruger calls up Transvaal burghers, and persuades President Steyn to to follow suit in the Free State.

October 7: British mobilize 1st Army Corps, etc.

October 9: Paul Kruger sends ultimatum.

October 11: Expiry of ultimatum and outbreak of war.

The vicious Second Anglo-Boer War begins, engineered by Milner to extended British domination from the Cape to Cairo.

December 13: President Paul Kruger in a telegram to General Botha –

March: In the town of Lady Grey – The Rev. David Ross (68, of the Dutch Reformed Church) is arrested and tried for treason by the British. He is accused of having helped recruit Cape Rebels and of hiding weapons in his house. Ross represents himself during his trial. He is acquitted, and wins admiration – even from his enemies – for his skilful cross-examination of those who testified against him. He is freed, but restrictions are imposed: he can only travel when in possession of a pass, and his horse is seized. Ross complains in a letter to Lord Roberts, which results in his restrictions being suspended, but he is then subpoenaed to testify at the trial of a member of his congregation in Aliwal North.

As his horse had not been returned to him, he walks the 26 miles (42 kilometres) to Aliwal North, to give his evidence, and returns on foot to Lady Grey, assisted along the way by members of his congregation.

On his return to Lady Grey, Ross resolves to never again conduct church services in English. And never again did he do so.

October: British burning of Afrikaner farms begins.

General Jan Smuts and his commando (of 250 burgers and about 500 horses) invade the Cape Colony in the belief that the use of Boer guerrilla tactics in the Cape Colony would distract and divide the British enemy forces, and so help bring relief to the hard-pressed Afrikaner Republics up north. They cross the Orange River in the easterly district of Zastron.

The Act of Union joins the British colonies of the Cape and Natal and the Afrikaner republics of the Transvaal (now Gauteng) and the Orange Free State into one as a part of the British Empire.

This Union of South Africa comes into effect in 1910, with Louis Botha as its first Prime Minister.

the First World War years (1914–1918) a midday pause, when the citizens thought of those on active military service, is observed in Adderley Street, Cape Town, as its noon day gun is fired. It is an impressive sight to see every vehicle and pedestrian come to a halt at the same time. Silence descends on the main street and its surroundings, as men removing their hats in respect during this pause. It ends by a bugle sounding from Fletcher and Cartwrights’ balcony. It is a distinctive gesture that wins Cape Town praise from far and wide, and

a stone in Adderley Street, at the junction of Darling and Shortmarket Streets,
commemorates the spot where the pause was first observed, and where Cape Town gives thanks to God for Peace in 1918.

General Jan Smuts becomes the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa.

• September 29: At 20:03 PM an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude strikes the Tulbach–Ceres area of the Cape at a depth of 15km (five children and two adults die).

(According to the theory of JM Funk, these earthquakes appear to have a 56-year cycle, each separated by 9-years)

• December 2: A 3.7 magnitude earthquake shakes the Tulbagh region, and is felt in Paarl, Saron, Riebeeck-West, Malmesbury.

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