Portuguese South African Portuguese South African Portuguese South Africans () are South Africans of Portuguese ancestry. The Portuguese explored the coasts of South Africa in the late 15th century, and nominally claimed them as their own with the erecting of "padrões" (large stone cross inscribed with the coat of arms of Portugal placed there as part of a land claim). Bartolomeu Dias did so in 1486, and Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497, en route to India. The early 20th century witnessed a trickle of emigrants from Madeira whose numbers greatly increased in the decades
Time in Portugal Empire: although almost all continental Portugal is located west of the 7.5°W meridian (i.e. in the theoretical zone of time zone), for mainland Portugal it was adopted as its time zone. By the same law, time zone was adopted for the Azores and Cape Verde, for Madeira and Portuguese Guinea, for São Tomé and Príncipe and São João Baptista de Ajudá, for Angola, for Mozambique, for Portuguese India and for Macau and Portuguese Timor. These time zones were adopted on 1 January 1912. Daylight saving time ("Hora de Verão", in Portuguese) was observed for the first time in 1916, during