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HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE NATURE RESERVE

James Hallinan

Introduction

st
The history of the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve began on July 1 , 1939 when the
nodal area, known at that time as Smith’s Farm, was purchased by the Divisional Council of
the Cape. This marks a red-letter day in the history of the conservation movement in South
Africa in that through this action - the Divisional Council became the first local authority in
South Africa to accept the conservation of natural and cultural heritage resources as one of its
duties to public service. The purpose of this paper is to discuss not only the events leading up
to this achievement but how, in the light of more than three and a half centuries of urban,
agricultural and industrial development on the wider peninsula, this southernmost area - apart
from the Cape Point Lighthouse development and a scattering of historical homesteads -
remained virtually unaltered from its natural state up to this time. In 1998 the Cape of Good
Hope Nature Reserve was incorporated to become the southernmost section of the Table
Mountain National Park. (Fig. 2.1)

The ‘discovery’ of the Cape of Good Hope

Early, Middle and later Stone Age stone artefacts and allied cultural material found across the
Cape Peninsula bear mute witness to the fact that this area was inhabited by hunting and
gathering people for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years before the first foreign callers
arrived at the Cape. So perhaps we should be reserved in the use of the word ‘discovered’ in
reference to the epoch-marking voyage of Bartolomeu Dias (1487- 1488). What can be said
with certainty is that for the wider world Dias and his doughty crew confirmed the existence
of this narrow spit of land or ‘cape’ at what they believed to be the southernmost point of

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