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
Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India Damião de Góis, that during the trip five monuments were set in place. San Rafael, in the Bons Sinais river; São Jorge, in Mozambique; the Holy Spirit in Malindi; Santa Maria, in Ilhéus, and San Gabriel, in Calicut. These monuments were meant to affirm the Portuguese sovereignty in these places so that other explorers who arrived later did not take the land for themselves as discoveries. On May 17, 1498, the fleet reached Kappakadavu, near Calicut, in the current Indian state of Kerala, thus having established the route via the Indian Ocean and managing to open the sea route from