Helderberg

Region of the City of Cape Town, South Africa

Helderberg refers to a planning district of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality, the mountain after which it is named, a wine producing area in the Western Cape province of South Africa, or a small census area in Somerset West. Originally known as the "Hottentots Holland" area, it was renamed "Helderberg" by the City of Cape Town following concerns about possible racist connotations in the name (see Hottentot). However, many people who live there still refer to it by its former name. The Helderberg consists of Somerset West, Strand, Gordons Bay, Macassar and a few other towns. The district takes its name from the mountain of the same name, which is Afrikaans for "clear mountain", referring to the way in which the western side of the mountain is illuminated in the evenings, and which culminates at a height of 1137 m at The Dome.

The Helderberg region is the area between the watershed of the Helderberg and Hottentots Holland mountains and False Bay. The Helderberg planning district of the City of Cape Town includes subsections Macassar, Somerset West, Strand, Gordon's Bay, Sir Lowry's Pass, Stellenbosch Farms, and the Steenbras River valley. as well as a range of animal species, such as the tiny parrot beaked tortoise (Homopus areolatus), various snakes and a large variety of birds. Silwerboomkloof Natural Heritage Site is a small, protected valley (“kloof”), near the Helderberg Nature Reserve, conserving an isolated forest of the rare Silvertree (Leucadendron argenteum), a striking, silver coloured tree of the Protea family, which is actually indigenous to the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, making the population at Silwerboomkloof an isolated anomaly. This reserve encloses a section of Boland Granite Fynbos and Renosterveld and a total of around 220 species of plant have been recorded. It is the smallest of three towns in the Helderberg region that was previously a municipality in its own right. Gordon's Bay consists of the old village, situated around the old harbour and Bikini Beach, the mountainside on the lower slopes of the Hottentots Holland mountains overlooking False Bay, and the low lying suburbs close to the main beach, making up the most recent expansion of the town. It is mostly a residential area, with a small area of light industry. It is a subdivision of the Helderberg municipal planning district. Before being known as Strand, the settlement was known as Mostert's Bay. In 1970, during the Apartheid era, all black, coloured and Asian people were forcefully removed when the town was classified as a white only resort. Included in the communities forced to leave at this time were the descendants of Cape Malay slaves, who had escaped from Cape Town over 100 years earlier. They lost their homes, but their mosque still stands. Recent expansion and development of Somerset West, Strand and Gordon's Bay has resulted in them now being adjacent to each other. Strand also used to accommodate one of the largest dynamite factories in South Africa, owned by the AECI group. This area is being redeveloped into a large new mixed use urban development, Paardevlei, and current tenants include Cheetah Outreach. The mountain crossing of the Hottentots Holland range was known by the indigenous Khoi people as the Gantouw or Eland's Pass, and was used as a stock route. The Dutch and British settlers at the Cape built a rough pass called the Hottentots Holland Kloof Pass following the Gantouw route. The first recorded crossing was in 1664,