Grabouw

Grabouw is a mid-sized town located in the Western Cape province of South Africa.Grabouw is located some 65 km south-east of Cape Town, over Sir Lowry's Pass from Somerset West, along the N2 highway. The town is the commercial centre for the vast Elgin Valley, the largest single export fruit producing area in Southern Africa, which extends between the Hottentots-Holland, Kogelberg, Groenland, and Houwhoek Mountains.The town's population at the 2001 census was listed as 21,593.HistoryPre-colonial historyThe original inhabitants of the area were the Khoikhoi pastoralists and the San hunter gatherers. The indigenous people of the region, the Chainouqua Khoi, inhabited a large area on both sides of the Hottentots Holland Mountains. They traded with early European settlers, but were later dispossessed from their lands by the Dutch colonists, who began to move into the area in the late 1600s and took the Chainouqua land for farming. Fortunately, the Khoikhoi names for some of the region's specific land-forms are recorded, and include Houtema, which is thought to have been the name for the Palmiet River, and Gantouw which was the name for Sir Lowry's Pass.