Portugal–South Africa relations 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. South Africa had close relations with Portugal, particularly during the time that Mozambique and Angola were Portuguese colonies. South Africa under apartheid was ruled by the National Party, which shared common ground with the anti-communist "Estado Novo" regime of António Salazar in Portugal. Following Britain's decision to grant independence to its colonies in Africa, the government of Hendrik Verwoerd feared that the newly-independent states would fall under the influence
Pacific Ocean for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached