Wonder of nature's vigil as aeons pass

Hoerikwaggo is 260 million years old. Sometimes wrapped in a thick white fog, she keeps watch over the "richest single floristic area on the planet" as she towers above where the warm Indian Ocean meets the cold Atlantic.

Table Mountain - which, according to SANParks, was christened Hoerikwaggo or "Sea Mountain" by the indigenous people of the Cape - has seen it all.

And in the past 20 years of democracy she has grown in international esteem and in the wonder she evokes.

The mountain kept watch over those who ushered in freedom while they were shackled.

"During our many years of incarceration on Robben Island we often looked across Table Bay at the magnificent silhouette of Table Mountain," said Nelson Mandela in 1998. "To us on Robben Island, Table Mountain was a beacon of hope. It represented the mainland to which we knew we would one day return."

When Madiba died last year his face was projected onto the mountain. Of late Table Mountain has been illuminated in all colours to create awareness of important events or causes - red for HIV/Aids, yellow for the 2011 census and blue for International Childhood Cancer Day.

But the lights have also been turned off, notably to mark Earth Hour.

The mountain is part of the Table Mountain National Park.

It was inaugurated as one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature on December 2 2012.

"Though it defines our city, it is much greater than that. It is a piece of our natural heritage that belongs to all South Africans and, we believe, the world," Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said.

Sabine Lehmann, managing director of the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway, said that 20 years ago the cable cars ran at 4.4m a second and could carry only 23 people at a time. That year the mountain welcomed its 10-millionth visitor.

Today's state-of-the-art rotating cable cars can each carry 65 people at 10m a second. This year the cableway expects its 24-millionth visitor.

In 1994 the cableway did not operate in a national park, or at a world heritage site, and the mountain was not one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature. The national park was proclaimed in 1998.