The early Cape was settled not only by ex-VOC workers who became free burghers and the Huguenots but also by slaves who lost their freedom and was brought to the Cape. To fix a date for the arrival of slaves at the Cape is a variable since we know that slaves were ship wrecked and would have made their way to the Cape prior to 1652. With the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck at the Cape we already have a slave mind set since within a month of the establishment of the settlement, van Riebeeck, was already requesting the directors to allow the importation of slaves. Less than a year after van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape the first named slave joined the settlement, he was called Abraham, he was fleeing from his master in Batavia, he arrived as stowaway on 2 March 1653, on the ship Malacca. Eva van Madagascar was a gift from Verburgh and was brought to the fort 12 December 1654. The slaves from very early tried to get their freedom, Anthony from Madagascar ran away 12 March 1655, never to be seen again. A slave with the name Espagniola, from a French ship, was sent to Robben Island on 29 May 1657. There were also very young slaves: “Clein Eva” was about 5 years old and was a gift to van Riebeeck from the King of Antongil in Madagascar. There were two young girls, Cornelia 10 and Lijsbeth 12 years old, from Abyssinia they arrived March 1657 at the Cape. Domingo of Bengal was sent to Robben Island on 17 July 1658. Two other early slaves were Angela van Bengal and Domingo van Bengal.
Enslavement and its practice reveal the dark side of human nature. Unfortunately there has been a certain amount of shame and stigma attached to those who lost their freedom. Some who are descendants of these slaves have shared in this false sense of shame. This kind of thinking is totally irrational, why should one be ashamed of the fact that ones ancestor was the victim of slavery. If one wanted to lay blame it should be leveled at the perpetrators not the victims. The numbers of South Africans who has ‘stamouers’ who were slaves or descendants of slaves are far more than what one would expect. The irony is that those who could claim slave ‘stamouers’ would be far greater amongst the so-called coloureds and whites than amongst the blacks of South Africa.
The first slave to be freed at the Cape was Catharina Anthonis, who was born in Bengal, and liberated because Jan Woutersz from Middelburg wished to marry her – this was on 21 May 1656. Another slave Maria van Bengal, was a slave of the sick comforter Pieter van der Stael, she was sold into freedom 6 July 1658 to be married the 21 July to Jan Sacharias. “A dropsical Bengalese woman married to a Netherlander and with the consent of the Commander .. (they) tapped from her fully five mutsjes of water. Another full tankard was removed on the following day. … She died at daybreak five days later and so was relieved of her pain and suffering.” The numbers of slaves at the early Cape amounted to about a dozen until the arrival of two shiploads of slaves from Africa.
WHERE DID THEY COME FROM
The Cape received their slaves mainly from the Indian Ocean basin, since that was the trading domain of the VOC. The Dutch usually captured slaves, who came from West Africa, on the sea from other slaving nations. The first ship load of slaves arrived 28 March 1658 at the Cape on board the ship Amersfoort, with 174 slaves from Angola. A number of these slaves were sent to Batavia, many died and some ran away. These Angolan slaves’ numbers reduced within a few years to 43. The myth that the early Cape only had contact with Bantu when the Boers encountered the Xhosa at the Fish river many years later is false, since the slaves from Angola included the presence of Bantu in the Cape society.
The next shipload of slaves arrived 6 May 1658 with 228 slaves from Guinea on the ship Hasselt. Considering the early arrival of these two boat loads of people and the continual stream of other slaves that was brought to the Cape one should not be surprised at the number of slave ‘stamouers’. It has only been in recent years that greater research has been focused on these people. The slaves at the Cape came from many countries and cultures: India, East Indies, Abyssinia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Japan, Guinea, and Angola and many other places. There has been a lot of interest in the experience of the Cape Huguenot, it is amazing that only in recent times has the focus started to turn to the experience that the slaves had to endure. There seems to have been an unwarranted shame that has been associated with the slaves. The fact that our ‘stamlande’ also includes countries such India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar has been very little propagated. Unlike many other slave societies whose slaves were homogenous, the Cape had a real cosmopolitan slave population. The Cape was like the tower of Babel, with very diverse nationalities and languages. The slaves places of origin can mainly be divided in four equal part, Africa, Madagascar, Indian sub continent, and East Indies (Indonesia).
>> A. M. van Rensburg <<
