Information on Melkbosstrand, Western Cape, South Africa

Melkbosstrand is a beach and coastal village on the West Coast north of Cape Town. It is named after the species of bushes which grow on the dunes. Melkbosstrand falls under the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.

The town and its stretch of white sand beach is situated with the Blouberg mountain to the east on the Atlantic coast. It is a popular beach with surfers and is notable for being one of the landing points for the South Atlantic/West Africa and South Africa-Far East submarine cable systems.

Melkbosstrand owes much of its present day infrastructure to two significant South African apartheid government developments in the late seventies. The first, the government subsidized construction of Atlantis Diesel Engines (ADE), a joint venture between the British Perkins-Elmer and German Daimler AG, to bypass international sanctions. Although ADE was in the industrial park of Atlantis, some 50 km north of Cape Town, subsidized housing was established in Melkbosstrand to help attract and retain the many German, British, and even South African, engineers, managers, and technicians. The second, Koeberg nuclear power station, constructed with the help of the French and British some 6 km north of Melkbosstrand, necessitated the creation of high quality housing for the foreign contractors. These houses, both for Koeberg and ADE, have long since been sold off to the public.