On this day, April 3

How the colonisation of SA began, the first cellphone call, a ‘royal bastard’ dies, and a famous guitarist says he didn’t smoke his father’s ashes.1648 After being marooned for nearly a year at the Cape, the rescued sailors of the Dutch ship Nieuw-Haerlem leave for home and give a favourable report of their experiences. The story is the “catalyst” that determines which of England, France or the Dutch will be the first to settle in the region and where they would settle. If it had not been for that shipwreck, the history of colonial South Africa would have turned out very…