Q 01/05

Cape Town is which of South Africa's three capitals?

A) The legislative capital

B) The executive capital

C) The judicial capital

D) The commercial capital

Answer · why

A) The legislative capital

Parliament sits there; Pretoria holds the executive and Bloemfontein the judiciary. It is also the country's oldest city.

Q 02/05

Cape Town is South Africa's second-largest city by population after which?

A) Durban

B) Johannesburg

C) Pretoria

D) Port Elizabeth

Answer · why

B) Johannesburg

Johannesburg overtook it by the 1936 census, as mining pulled the country's centre of gravity inland.

Q 03/05

Which Portuguese navigator, the first European to reach the area in 1488, named it the 'Cape of Storms'?

A) Vasco da Gama

B) Ferdinand Magellan

C) Bartolomeu Dias

D) Pedro Álvares Cabral

Answer · why

C) Bartolomeu Dias

King John II renamed it the Cape of Good Hope for the optimism of an open sea route to India; da Gama sighted it in 1497.

Q 04/05

Who founded the Dutch settlement at the Cape in 1652 as a way-station for East Indies ships?

A) Simon van der Stel

B) Piet Retief

C) Willem Adriaan

D) Jan van Riebeeck

Answer · why

D) Jan van Riebeeck

He worked for the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, and built the Fort de Goede Hoop that the stone Castle later replaced.

Q 05/05

What unusual weapon did Khoikhoi warriors use to kill Francisco de Almeida at the 1510 Battle of Salt River?

A) Poisoned arrows and spears

B) Fire ships in the shallows

C) Cattle trained to answer whistles

D) Packs of trained war dogs

Answer · why

C) Cattle trained to answer whistles

Sixty-four of his men died with him; the Goringhaiqua clan later traded fresh meat to passing ships for tobacco, copper and iron.