The first people to use very sporadically the land around Camps Bay were the nomadic San (Hunter Gatherers) from about 20,000 years ago. Around 2,000 years ago the pastoralist Khoi moved into the Cape from the African interior. The Khoi gradually pushed the San out or used them as labourers to graze cattle and sheep here in the summer before moving inland in winter. There were both forest and bush or fynbos patches and open ground. Life was hazardous: lions and leopards hunted antelope and stray cattle.
Jan van Riebeek arrived at the Cape in 1652 with 100 men to establish a supply station (fresh mountain water, vegetables, fruit, meat) for the VOC (Dutch East India Company) ships travelling round Africa from the Netherlands to and from their trading colonies in Asia and India. The Dutch traded cattle for metals (mainly copper) and tobacco with the Khoi who grazed on the slopes of Table Mountain in the summer months.
The growing need for land around the settlement for VOC security and food growing purposes pushed the Khoi away from the more fertile north and east facing slopes of Table Mountain and in 1657 they were restricted to Camps Bay or further afield.
By 1713 the Khoi population had been reduced by 90% through contact with the Europeans, either by trading (loss of cattle to the Europeans) or illness (measles and smallpox brought into South Africa by the Europeans). All that was left of their settlement on the Atlantic coast was a neglected old kraal (Oudekraal).
The area of Camps Bay was wild, remote and inhabited only by wild animals. It served as a refuge for a small number of escaped slaves, political and religious prisoners from the Dutch colonies in the East.
In and around Camps Bay there are at least three tombs (kramats) to teachers and holy men of Islam. This is one reason why the mountain slopes south of Camps Bay to Llandudno have not been developed. They remain pristine fynbos country. The most interesting tomb is of Sheikh Noorul Mubeen on the left on the road leaving Camps Bay towards Hout Bay. He had been imprisoned on Robben Island from 1716, miraculously escaped and hid near Oudekraal, clandestinely teaching Islam to interested slaves.
The area near Camps Bay beach was then granted in 1729 to be farmed by a German soldiering for the VOC, Johan Wernich, and passed from father to son. Johan Wernich junior died in 1789 and was survived by his third wife, Anna Koekemoer.
Now owner of the farm, its cattle and slaves, she married Friedrick Ernst von Kamptz, a German mercenary soldier/sailor, who had worked for the British in India and then the VOC in the Cape. The area became known as “Die Baai van von Kamptz”. The Wernichs had farmed the area successfully for 40 years but after only two years it was named after von Kamptz, apparently a much more difficult person than the Wernichs.
After building a track round the coast to Cape Town in 1779 von Kamptz visited Germany but could not get back due to the American War of Independence with the British. France and Netherlands had sided with the Americans against the British.
The French were in Cape Town from 1781 to 1784 helping the VOC to fortify the area against the British. Von Kamptz’s farm went to ruin and he eventually returned and sold to the VOC in 1786.
For around 20 years there was a lonely guardhouse and cannon site manned by VOC soldiers, which can still be seen on the left on the road going past Camps Bay High School guarding the beach.