There has been an awful lot of tear-jerking waffle from various quarters about Archbishop Tutu's claim that whites are not grateful enough. Well, at last, we whites will apologise. Here goes:

In 1488 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape. It seems he tried to land but found the few inhabitants to be very unfriendly and nationalistic, so he up-anchored and cleared off.

In 1497 Vasco da Gama decided to see for himself and landed at St.Helena Bay, Mossel Bay, and then Natal (hence it's name because he arrived there on Christmas day).

In 1503 Table Mountain was scaled for the first time by a white man. Then the Portuguese lost interest and carried on to Mozambique. Had they colonised this part of the world, history would have been entirely different.

In 1580 Sir Francis Drake rounded the Cape and was most impressed with its beauty. However, he saw little reason to stop over as there were no Sun International Hotels in those days.

In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded, and, like the British company of the same name, sought a sea-route round the Cape so that the spice trade could be opened up. The Dutch had already colonised the East Indies and frequently sailed the route through all kinds of storms, taking many weeks to make the trip and losing a considerable proportion of the crew to scurvy.

In 1652 Jan Van Riebeek was dispatched here with instructions to establish a victualling station at the Cape. The first horses in Southern Africa were imported from Java. For this landing and these horses we humbly apologise because it meant that vegetables would be grown in this part of the world for the first time and carts no longer had to be drawn by hand.

In 1657 the Dutch, being a people of the land, established the first farms in the Cape. We apologise for spoiling the emptiness of the area.

In 1658 the Dutch brought the first blacks to the area; they were slaves captured on board a Portuguese ship. I'm sure the Dutch will offer an apology for further despoiling the racial purity that existed in the Cape; they had already screwed those that they couldn't kill out of the Hottentots, but they needed labour for the farms, so there we are. I'm sure they're sorry.

In 1688 the Huguenots arrived and consumed more of the limited arable land. Sorry.

Until 1780 no indigenous black people were found in what used to be the Cape Province; they had not migrated this far south. Perhaps they should have stayed where they were, because their arrival caused no less than nine wars during the following century. I think they should apologise.

Until 1803 the Dutch continued to import slave labour from Madagascar, Mozambique and the East Indies; we unreservedly apologise for doing this because the Coloured People were the result of this miscegeny.

Perhaps the biggest mistake made by the Dutch was to end the sponsorship of immigrants from Europe in 1707 because this meant that additional slave labour had to be imported. Wrong. Sorry.

In 1795 Europe was in turmoil: the French Revolution was at hand, in England the Industrial Revolution was turning a land of farmers into a land of shopkeepers; in the Cape the Dutch began to revolt against what they perceived to be an unfairly draconian rulership from their home country.

In 1814 the Cape was formally ceded to Britain.

In 1820 the British settlers arrived and began establishing the system of representative government. We're sorry, we made a mistake.

In 1834 the British spoiled the entire system by abolishing slavery. Sorry - we should have let it continue; it was very profitable.

In 1835 the Great Trek began because the Boers (as they had become known) hated to bow to any kind of law, especially British. Rumour has it that when they reached the Orange River there was a notice on the bank warning those who could read not to cross; they crossed, and that was the beginning of the Free State, once Mzilikazi and Dingane had been dealt with. Of course, the Trekkers should have laid down and died, so they're sorry too.

In 1852 the Transvaal was given independence; the British didn't want it. Had they known what was under the soil they would have kept it, of course.

In 1854 the Free State was also given independence; they didn't want that either.

In 1860 the first indentured Indians were brought to Natal; sorry, we should have left them at home. The problem was that India was already ruled by the British and the Indians didn't have enough to do; in Natal the sugar industry was just getting under way, so what simpler answer was there but to bring the labour force to the field? We were wrong, we should have left well alone and the world could have looked elsewhere for its sugar.