AHC: Cape Malay Malays Having Colonized Cape

We know that when the Dutch established their first colony in Cape Town in what is now South Africa, they started importing Malays amongst others to be their slave labor. However; there had already been an extensive but [at the time] unheralded series of migrations by Malays that mostly encompassed the South Pacific [most prominently in New Zealand, Tahiti, the Hawaiian Islands and Easter Island] but it did extend as far as Madagascar as early as 500 A.D.
Hence, my challenge to those interested would be to see how been plausible for these descendents of Malays who'd settled in Madagascar to have extended their holdings further and established a colony centered around the Cape of Good Hope before the first indisputable European siting by Bartolomeu Dias.
 
Hence, my challenge to those interested would be to see how been plausible for these descendents of Malays who'd settled in Madagascar to have extended their holdings further and established a colony centered around the Cape of Good Hope before the first indisputable European siting by Bartolomeu Dias.

Would their crops be viable there?
 
Ummm... No.

The Austronesian/Polynesian peoples did populate Polynesia, much of southeast Asia and as far as Madagascar, true. BUT Malays are only a subset of that group, and not the farthest ranging one. It would be like claiming Germans conquered India, because 'Aryans' (i.e. Indo-Europeans) did.

That said, the people who settled Madagascar COULD have continued on. But, as Simreeve pointed out, they've got a problem with crops. The agricultural package they've got wouldn't work on the Cape.

In addition, the obvious way to the Cape is following the coast. However, the coast nearest them is already settled with Bantu agriculturalists and they have no competitive advantage over them.

Sure, they could sail a long distance through nasty seas to reach the Cape - but, as pointed out above, they'd have problems once they landed, so they wouldn't be able to make a successful settlement.
 
The Polynesian colonists of New Zealand had similar issues with adapting their crops to the temperate islands they made their home. I'd argue that wider-ranging Malagasy could still establish settlements on the Cape, but without their full crop package. I'd imagine it'd look much like Aotearoa, actually, focusing on yams and pigs.
 
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