Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa [1 ed.] 9780896804623, 9780896802636

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african s tu d ie s/histo ry /slave ry

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—Robert Ross, Leiden University

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa examines the rural Cape Colony from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-seventeenth century to the outbreak of the South African War in 1899. For slaves and slave owners alike, incorporation into the British Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought fruits that were bittersweet. The gentry had initially done well by accepting British rule, but were ultimately faced with the legislated ending of servile labor. To slaves and Khoisan servants, British rule brought freedom, but a freedom that remained limited. Increasingly, the gentry’s dominance of the countryside was threatened by English-speaking merchants and money lenders, a challenge that stimulated early Afrikaner nationalism. The alliances that ensured nineteenth-century colonial stability all but fell apart as the descendants of slaves and Khoisan turned on their erstwhile masters during the South African War of 1899 – 1902. Wayne Dooling is a lecturer in African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Copublished with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, South Africa Cover design by Flying Ant Designs

Ohio University Press Ohio University Research in International Studies Africa Series No. 87 www.ohioswallow.com

ISBN-10 0-89680-263-9 ISBN-13 978-0-89680-263-6

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa

“This is a major work of South African history, putting economics and exploitation back where they belong, in the centre of the country’s historiography.”

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa

Wayne Dooling

Ohio University Research in International Studies Africa Series No. 87 Ohio University Press Athens

First published in 2007 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press Private Bag X01 Scottsville 3209 South Africa Email: [email protected] Website: www.ukznpress.co.za © 2007 Wayne Dooling Published for distribution in the United States by: Ohio University Press Ohio University Research in International Studies Africa Series Athens, OH 45701 Executive Editor: Gillian Berchowitz www.ohioswallow.com To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax). ISBN 978-0-89680-263-6 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

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The books in the Ohio University Research in International Studies Series are printed on acid-free paper ƒ ™

Typesetting: Trish Comrie Cover designer: Flying Ant Designs

In memory of my mother, Christine Dooling

Cape Colony, c.1850.

Stellenbosch village with surrounding Moddergat Rivier farms, c.1890. (courtesy Cape Archives)

Malmesbury village with surrounding Mosselbanks Rivier farms, c.1890. (courtesy Cape Archives)

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1: The Making of the Cape Gentry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Chapter 2: The Bitter-sweet Fruits of British Rule . . . . . . . . . . .

58

Chapter 3: Negotiating Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Chapter 4: Problems of Free Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Chapter 5: The Remaking of the Cape Gentry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Select Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

Preface and Acknowledgements

M

y understanding of South Africa’s past has been profoundly shaped by growing up under apartheid rule and by living through the worst excesses of that regime. The research for the Ph.D. thesis out of which this book grew was conducted at a time of intense social conflict during the dying days of the white minority government. By the time that the thesis had been written up, the country had tasted the first fruits of black majority rule. At the time, I was convinced that there were historical parallels between the way in which the freedom of 1994 was to be understood and the liberation that had come with slave emancipation 160 years earlier. I was eager to point to historical discontinuity. I wished to show that the ending of chattel slavery marked a sharp break in South Africa’s colonial past and that it had real meaning to the liberated, even if grinding poverty continued to blight the lives of rural workers. I believed at the time, and continue to believe, that economic indicators are not the only measure of emancipation from oppression. Freedom would, of course, be sweeter if it brought tangible material improvements to the living standards of the majority and reduced inequality in a country renowned for being one of the most unequal in the world. But those who privilege these measures over all others have little understanding of how racial oppression is experienced by those who suffer it, and are profoundly ignorant of the meaning of human dignity that comes with emancipation from such oppression. Many of the descendants of South Africa’s freed slaves and indigenous Khoisan population continue to suffer terrible afflictions – wretched poverty, alcohol addiction, limited educational opportunities and dependency – but they are not slaves. I wished to show, therefore, that the emancipated slaves could give meaning to their freedom and that their small actions played a part in macro-historical processes. viii

But I was also aware of the staying power and inventiveness of the ruling classes. During the elections of April 1994, I saw liberal bourgeois politicians in the Western Cape playing on the less objectionable heritage of slavery and shamelessly seeking the votes of people about whom they knew virtually nothing. The bourgeoisie have been remarkably successful at retaining wealth and power. More than a decade after the end of apartheid, the distribution of wealth in South Africa by and large follows the racial mould set in colonial times, the growth of a substantial and confident black middle class notwithstanding. The bourgeoisie are not as homogenous as they once were, but their strength lies in their diversity. The ambiguous and bitter-sweet legacy of freedom – the initial exuberance of liberation and upward mobility experienced by the freed combined with the durability and inventiveness of dominant classes – was at the forefront of my mind in writing this book. Few intelligent visitors to contemporary South Africa fail to comment on its combination of intoxicating vibrancy and profound social ills. I completed most of my writing at a distance from South Africa, in the relative comfort of the United Kingdom, another country renowned for the adaptability and endurance of its dominant classes. Britain can justifiably claim to be the most tolerant country in Western Europe, a noble tradition that sits happily (in the academy no less than elsewhere) with a long and continuing legacy of imperialist greed and polite racial exclusion. This experience, too, has left its mark on me and no doubt on this book. I have incurred many debts in the course of completing this book. The Emmanuel Bradlow Foundation generously funded my Ph.D. studies at the University of Cambridge. I received further financial assistance from St. John’s College, Cambridge, the Smuts Memorial Fund, Cambridge, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London was equally generous in its funding and in granting me leave from teaching. My particular thanks must go to the staff of the National Archives in Cape Town. I am also grateful to Glenn Cowley and Gillian Berchowitz, respectively from the University of KwaZuluNatal Press and Ohio University Press, for their enthusiasm for this project from the outset. Margaret Lenta was a patient and careful copyeditor. ix

At the University of Cape Town, I was privileged to have been taught by some of South Africa’s most talented historians. Nigel Worden, Vivian Bickford-Smith, Bill Nasson, Christopher Saunders and Howard Phillips have been especially supportive, encouraging and generous with their time. From Helen Bradford I learned that there is ‘hope derived from history’. A number of colleagues and friends have read and commented on various parts of the manuscript, engaged my thoughts and assisted in myriad ways. I am especially grateful to William Beinart, Saul Dubow, Johannes du Bruyn, Elizabeth Elbourne, Richard Elphick, Bill Freund, Tony Gorman, Isabel Hofmeyr, Jonathan Hyslop, Timothy Keegan, John Lonsdale, Shula Marks, Susan Newton-King, Nicholas Southey, Robert Shell, Stanley Trapido, Patricia van der Spuy and Gavin Williams. Mona Philand and Hazel Petersen provided decades of nurturing. Helen Verran and Max Watson took me into their family. Claudia and Vivian BickfordSmith, Nerhene and Nolan Davis, and Barbara and Stanley Trapido have been pillars of friendship. A few individuals deserve special mention. I have differed with much of what Robert Ross has written about the Cape Colony, but this is only because his scholarship has served as such a beacon and an enormous source of inspiration. He has responded to my thoughts with characteristic good humour, generosity and intellectual vitality. At the University of Cambridge, John Iliffe supervised my work with unflagging energy and care. He saw this project through to the very end and I am especially grateful for his continued faith during its darkest moments. Nigel Worden introduced me to the world of Cape colonial history. He has read virtually every word I have ever written since my earliest days as a postgraduate student in Cape Town. His historical skills are matched only by his care as a teacher and friend; to him I am enormously indebted. My greatest thanks are to Ruth Watson, without whom this book would never have seen the light of day. She has assisted in more ways than I would care to admit, has lived with this work longer than she should have, has read far more draft chapters than she would have liked, but most importantly, convinced me that I had something to say. Sally Hines saw the project through to the end with kindness and efficiency.

x

Acknowledgements I am grateful to journal publishers for their kind permission to reproduce material in Chapters 1, 2 and 4 which was previously published as follows: ‘The Making of a Colonial Elite: Property, Family and Landed Stability in the Cape Colony, c.1750–1834’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 1, 2005, 147–62 (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals); ‘The Origins and Aftermath of the Cape Colony’s “Hottentot Code” of 1809’, Kronos, 31, 2005, 50–61; ‘In Search of Profitability: Wheat and Wine Production in the Post-emancipation Western Cape’, South African Historical Journal, 55, 2006, 88–105.

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Introduction

I

A

n essential item on almost any tourist itinerary of contemporary South Africa is a meander along one of its many ‘wine routes’. To visitors to post-apartheid South Africa, the oldest of these routes, around the settlement of Stellenbosch, offers particular delights. Here, in a fine climate and on ancient estates, within sight of seemingly endless vineyards against the backdrop of beautiful mountains, foreign visitors are free to spend their dollars, euros and pounds on some of the world’s finest wines. Domestic visitors are not excluded from such pleasures. On one estate, Spier, ‘a holistic, exciting and socially relevant multidimensional project . . . with wine-making, superb restaurants, a luxury hotel, a country club, [and] large-scale organic vegetable production’,1 local visitors of all colours are regularly entertained. On these estates, the magnificent oak-lined avenues and ‘Cape Dutch’ gables speak of a culture so grand that it is second to none. Even the most grudging and cynical visitors cannot fail to be seduced; they can only conclude that the people who established these estates knew how to live. These estates, visitors are told, are steeped in history. Their origins have been meticulously documented. The oldest ones are as old as South Africa itself. The most famous can trace their lineage through wellpreserved property deeds, the first of which were issued in the seventeenth century – Boschendal dates its origin to 1690, Spier to 1692, and Meerlust to 1693.2 The improvements to buildings on such estates, moreover, can be dated with remarkable precision.3 Such vistas serve to convey a picture of perpetuity and timelessness – as if to say that the presence of those who occupy the land today is as 1

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

natural as the landscape itself. In some instances the material record serves this story well. The sundial at Meerlust, which dates from 1732, ‘still keeps good time’.4 Not only have these properties stood here since the beginning of South African time, but so have their owners. Meerlust fell into the hands of Johannes Albertus Mijburg in 1757 ‘and has remained in the Myburg family ever since’.5 What visitors to these estates are asked to witness, although they might not be told as much, is a specific culture and its durability. It is a premise of this study that the material remains of this culture are those of an ancient landed ruling class that established itself at the southern tip of Africa. This class was not timeless – it was made. How it came to be and how it exercised power is the first subject of this book. Power was exercised, first and foremost, over an imported slave labour force. It is no secret that the culture of this landed class was built on the backs of chattel slaves. The historical and archaeological evidence is in plain sight. On Spier the jongenhuijsen (slave quarters) have been preserved (although they now house a restaurant) and the quarters at Meerlust boast the fine decorative work of slave artisans known to have worked on farms throughout the area. ‘Slave bells’ are to be seen in a number of places. Not far from Boschendal is Pniel, a mission settlement established shortly after the final emancipation of slaves in 1838.6 Less visible to visitors, perhaps because it is so much taken for granted, is the singular fact that this culture was built on a process of colonial conquest more complete than anywhere else in South Africa. It is a second premise of this study, therefore, that the remains of the culture visible are those of a colonial ruling class. The members of this colonial ruling class enjoyed particular rewards and challenges. Foremost of these colonial rewards, as we have seen, was slave labour. Chattel slavery made the rapid accumulation of wealth possible and so obviated the need for noble pedigree required in European societies. One of the primary colonial challenges was an indigenous population that had to be killed, or conquered and domesticated. In time, the imported slave labour force and domesticated indigenous population ended up living and working side by side, a rare situation in the history of European expansion. Even so, this landed class shares a history in certain fundamental ways with the great landed classes of Europe and those found in societies

Introduction

3

born out of European overseas expansion. The landowners of this corner of South Africa have had to cope with challenges similar to those faced by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landowning classes everywhere – demographic ones thrown up by great fecundity and specific property and inheritance regimes, the ‘bourgeois’ assault of the nineteenth century, and the legal ending of servile labour, the last of which was arguably the most profound revolution in the nineteenth-century world. The longevity of this landed class, then, cannot be taken for granted. Rather, it requires historical explanation, the second subject of this book. This historical explanation is of necessity rooted in the study of conflicts and contradictions generated by the twin processes outlined above – the making of a landed slave-owning class and the subjugation of an indigenous population. The interplay between the challenges faced by landed classes everywhere and those that were presented in a colonial setting produced a historically specific institution, the settler colonial state. The colonial state, the third subject and central theme of much of this book, was not an unchanging institution. Like the landed and subordinate classes to which it was related, the colonial state had to be made. It was a complex web of shifting alliances, shot through with contradictions and punctuated by crises.7

II In some ways, this view of a durable and successful landowning class is reflected in recent scholarly literature on the Cape Colony. Here, from the enclave occupied by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the middle of the seventeenth century, so the story goes, settler farming developed along a gradual, cataclysm-free road to capitalist agriculture. Despite initial setbacks, the obstacles presented by nature were soon overcome. In the southwestern Cape, a classic ‘Mediterranean’ complex of wheat and wine, was well suited to a region endowed with abundant winter rainfall. In the arid interior an extensive pastoral culture made determined progress against nature and an indigenous population. The knowledge that was acquired from the latter ironically made both processes possible. Despite heroic resistance from the indigenous Khoisan and largely uncoordinated and individualised acts of resistance

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

from the slave population, settler farming won the day. European settlers failed to accumulate anywhere near the wealth of their counterparts in, say, the United States, but when the eighteenth century is viewed from the perspective of both the individual farmer and the Cape economy as a whole, then it is clear that settler agriculture was far from stagnant or moribund. This was a dynamic agrarian economy, tied to world markets for agricultural commodities and capable of generating sufficient capital to sustain a lively slave trade fed from the Indian Ocean.8 In periodic episodes in the course of the eighteenth century, the main beneficiaries of this trajectory, the ‘Cape gentry’, made assaults on the power of the state, the monopolistic VOC. The Company won most of these battles, but growing weaker over time, was forced to accommodate to the power of this increasingly confident landed class. Under Dutch rule, the Cape gentry never did capture the state, but it was clear by the second half of the eighteenth century that it was they who ruled the countryside. With their retinues of slaves and dominance of the main organs of local judicial and military power they stamped their authority on those below them, black and white. At the time that they had to face their greatest crisis – the legislated ending of slavery – ‘the pre-eminence of the gentry within Cape society had been established’.9 In this orthodoxy, the Cape gentry, unlike so many other slaveholding classes, survived the great crisis of the nineteenth century almost unscathed. They had done well under British rule, established for the first time in 1795 and more permanently in 1806. After emancipation, and from the middle of the nineteenth century with greater access to the coercive apparatus of the state, former slave-owners continued to farm their estates successfully at the expense of a divided, dependent, impoverished and alcohol-addicted labour force. Emancipation was a ‘non-event’ and ‘class relations in the countryside remained more or less stagnant’. In short, the dominance of the gentry ‘lasted, more or less, ever since’.10 Put another way, the former slave-owners were ‘Junkers’: an ancient landed ruling class set on the Prussian model that had successfully transformed itself into a modern agrarian bourgeoisie. Such classes are by their nature reactionary and their centrality to the making of modern political formations has long been recognised.11 It was arguably their

Introduction

5

hold over state power – the persistence of the ‘old regime’ – and their continued exercise of cultural hegemony through the nineteenth century that led Europe into the catastrophic Great War of 1914–18.12 Even in the case of that perennial exception, England, with its supposedly ‘open elite’ and endlessly adaptable ruling class, the Victorian era ‘gave legitimacy to antimodern sentiments’.13 Similarly, in the plantation ‘black belt’ of the southern United States, some have argued, the continued hold over land and the machinery of the state by former slave-owners in the aftermath of the Civil War explains the racist violence and relative backwardness of the southern states. The ‘New South’ in this view was not new at all; the South, instead, had chosen the ‘Prussian road’ to modernity.14 And in South Africa, too, scholars have found a model in the ‘Prussian road’.15 In this view, agricultural and mineral capital allied to form the reactionary power bloc that came to power in 1948. The Prussian marriage of ‘iron and rye’ had ‘its South African counterpart in the uneasy union of “gold and maize”’.16 The consequence was apartheid – a downward spiral of authoritarian repression and violence coupled with extraordinary (if dysfunctional and ultimately unsustainable) economic growth.17

III And indeed, there is much to commend this schema. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as we have seen, the owners of the Cape’s grand estates take pride in showing off their inheritance. They are the lineal descendants of the Cape gentry. Their ancestors were active participants in the social movements of Afrikaner nationalism. The forebears of no less a figure than Jan Christiaan Smuts, white South Africa’s premier statesman in the first half of the twentieth century, lived in the Swartland region of Malmesbury district from 1786. They occupied the main family farm in 1818 and kept it for a span of six generations until 1946.18 It will become clear in this book, however, that this view of perpetuity does not hold up to closer scrutiny. The Cape gentry did survive the crisis of emancipation, but the manner in which landed classes retained title to land is at least as important as whether or not they did so. For

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

classes, including landed ones, rarely remain unchanged. The original Junkers were no exception. The severe agrarian crisis of the 1820s, brought on by falling grain prices following the Napoleonic Wars, led to the radical transformation in the social basis of estate agriculture. Those heavily indebted simply went bankrupt, and by 1829 only 42.6 per cent of estates in East Prussia were with the same families as held them in 1806.19 The chief beneficiaries of such transfers were non-nobles, ‘less dominated by tradition, more willing to introduce new agricultural methods, and above all, equipped with fresh capital’.20 By the end of the crisis, a new, reconstituted landowning class – an ‘embourgeoised’ nobility — had come into existence.21 It was this new class that led the way in the transformation of Prussian agriculture. Most importantly, they broke down the traditional paternalistic bonds that existed between lords and peasants and paved the way for the breakthrough to capitalist agriculture. A similar process occurred in the postbellum American South. Here the retention of title to land was no indicator of a ‘Prussian path’. The inability of southern planters to command credit and capital led to an accommodation with merchants. Many were able to hold on to their land in the wake of the destruction of the Civil War only by heavily mortgaging their landed property to merchant-creditors. Those planters who survived and prospered became entrepreneurs, to whom land was just one investment in a wide-ranging portfolio. Slave-ownership, in other words, no longer formed the basis of their economic and social power. 22 The old landed classes of the plantation ‘black belt’ had undergone a ‘bourgeois metamorphosis’.23 As a class without slaves, the old southern elite was bereft of political power at the level of the new national state.24 Nor does the South African Highveld correspond to a ‘Prussian’ model. As Timothy Keegan has shown, landlords here were, in the wake of the mineral discoveries of the late nineteenth century, ‘more likely to be victims of South Africa’s industrial revolution than amongst its beneficiaries’.25 The most successful and progressive farmers of the early twentieth century were for the most part ‘new men’ – in the case of the Highveld, new settlers of Cape or British origin, or those merchants, lawyers or businessmen who gained a stake in agriculture through the vehicle of mortgage capital.26 And Helen Bradford has further shown that ‘mortgage debt had a considerable impact on the

Introduction

7

process of class formation in South Africa’ by separating farmers from the land.27 The coercive and brutal nature of labour relations on the Highveld was as much the result of the penetration of agriculture by external sources of capital – mineral and merchant capital – as of anything else.28 Similar processes were at work in Cape Colony. It is worth drawing on one example. In 1849, little more than a decade after final emancipation in 1838, Middelkraal, a Malmesbury district farm once worked by slaves, passed into the hands of Johan Andries Heyse Wicht, parliamentarian, moneylender and slumlord of mid-nineteenth century Cape Town.29 Between 1883 and 1897 Middelkraal was farmed by Hendrik Gideon Greeff, not in his own right, but as the insolvent tenant of the merchant firm of the brothers Stephan.30 By 1946, Fredrik Christoffel Rust, the farm’s subsequent owner, could count amongst his assets one hundred shares of the Suid Afrikaanse Nationale Trust en Assuransie Maatskappy (SANTAM), that prime vehicle for the mobilisation of Afrikaner savings to the nationalist cause. The road from slavery to volkskapitalisme was clearly not linear.31 The history of Middelkraal illuminates a number of points made in this book. There was no vector-like path from slave-owner to successful modern capitalist farmer. Viewed over time, agriculture and landed wealth were fundamentally unstable. Capital accumulation was a hard business and it was rare for families to retain and expand the capital accumulated in the years before emancipation through to the twentieth century. And most importantly, the seeds of transformation were to be found not within the agrarian economy, but with agents outside – in this particular case, English merchant capital. The nineteenth-century Cape, this study proposes, witnessed a thoroughgoing revolution in productive relations. To survive the crisis of emancipation required profound adjustments from the landowning class. These adjustments are the subject of Chapters Three and Four. More often than not, the adjustments were forced on the former slave-owners – firstly by their freed slaves and secondly by English-speaking merchants. The freed slaves of the Cape Colony, like freed slaves almost everywhere, resisted attempts to resurrect labour relations akin to slavery. They left their former owners in large numbers and cherished their new-found mobility. The outcome was a wage-labour regime that squeezed margins of profitability and encouraged a rapid turnover of landed wealth.

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

It should be clear that the processes discussed above can only be fully illuminated by detailed study of the internal dynamics of the agrarian economy. Output figures tell one story, but they do not reveal anything about how surplus was extracted, about the vicissitudes of individual establishments, and about rates of profit and loss. As Susan Newton-King has shown in her study of the Colony’s north-eastern frontier, a micro-economic study from within a particular economy tells a story radically different from macro-economic studies based on averages and aggregates.32 One of the largest obstacles to this approach is the absence of farm records.33 J.S. Marais noted nearly seven decades ago that the records of bankruptcy proceedings would bring rich rewards. He was correct. Marais deserves special mention.34 Virtually alone amongst modern historians of South Africa, he has hinted at the long-term negative impact of emancipation on slaveholder wealth and the radical changes initiated by emancipation. ‘The brunt of the burden of emancipation was placed upon the backs of the slave-owners,’ he wrote.35 Marais could just as well have been writing of his successors when he wrote of those who had gone before: ‘Recent South African historians have shown a tendency to believe that whatever the sufferings of individual slave-owners may have been, the community as a whole did not suffer even in the years immediately following emancipation. It cannot be said that they have established their contention.’36 But Marais’s suspicions were, by his own admission, based on ‘scraps of evidence’.37 Hence he saw the need for an ‘intensive study’ based on the records of bankrupt estates.38 This book, then, has heeded Marais’s advice. It has made extensive use of this vast body of hitherto almost unused records. As with similar records for the British Caribbean,39 they have been immensely revealing. But as is the case with all historical sources, they are not without their problems. They present historians with challenges similar to those presented by the records of deceased estates (wills, household inventories, receipts of credit and debt and so forth). ‘Even at its very best,’ writes one historian who has employed such records in the United States, ‘an inventory is but the still life of an enterprise, farm, or household stopped in time . . . frozen at the moment of death.’40 The records of insolvent estates are similarly snapshots of one moment in time. Furthermore, they are, by definition, of a specific type of farming establishment: one that had failed. It will become clear

Introduction

9

in the course of this book, however, that insolvency was a routine event in the history of a great many farms. It was, in other words, a typical experience. In the fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier, a wheat-farming area studied here in great detail, virtually every farm experienced bankruptcy at some point in the course of the nineteenth century. The records of insolvent estates thus have at least as much utility as those of deceased estates, used to such great effect for earlier periods in the Colony’s history.41 Far from providing static pictures, the records of insolvent estates provide glimpses into the histories of individual estates at numerous points in time. In the case of the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Middelburg, for example, we have records for every point at which the farm witnessed insolvency: 1844, 1870, 1877, 1884 and 1909. Ideas about the continuity of landowning classes have largely been assumed. The history of landownership has hitherto not been subjected to any detailed empirical investigation, another contribution which this study seeks to make. The records of land transfer (and their associated mortgage bonds) have been essential to this enterprise. These underutilised records are of fundamental importance to understanding of the social and economic transformations of Cape colonial society. They tell us a great deal about the ‘persistence’ of the former slave-owners, about the spatial dimensions of the credit market and, when married with the records of insolvent estates, about the cultural values attached to land and credit. Such records are best used when confined to individual localities. Although this study draws on material from many regions in the Colony, it studies two fieldcornetcies, the smallest administrative units in the Colony, in some detail. These are the fieldcornetcies of Mosselbanks Rivier and Moddergat, situated in the districts of Malmesbury and Stellenbosch, and representative of wheat- and wine-farming areas respectively. At the time of emancipation both areas were regions of wealthy slave-owners, closely tied to the market in Cape Town.

IV It is a major shortcoming of the existing literature on the Cape that it fails to situate the crisis of the nineteenth century within a longer and

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Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

broader history of the colony’s landed classes.42 For the challenges and repeated crises of the nineteenth century were mediated through institutions created and moulded in the eighteenth century. To understand how the crises of the nineteenth century were managed requires an understanding of the cultural values of the slave-owning society of the eighteenth century. It is also to understand the nature of the Cape gentry’s rule. This is in large part the subject of Chapter One. This study develops the concept of a ‘moral community’ to understand the nature of rule by the Cape gentry.43 Few in Cape colonial society could stand outside the boundaries of such a community. Although the use of the term ‘gentry’ implies a society fractured along lines of class, it should be noted that these divisions were muted by ties of patronage, kinship and marriage. In the Cape, as elsewhere in the pre-capitalist rural world, community ‘did not ordinarily involve or evoke harmonious or egalitarian relations; more often than not it was marked by multiple hierarchies, harsh regimens, and nasty legitimating sanctions’.44 The moral community governed many aspects of rural life, including, as we shall see in Chapter One, the ways in which slaves and servants were treated. Community membership brought rewards, but it also imposed certain forms of behaviour. A most important aspect of community life, of course, was the circulation of land and wealth. In this regard, Cape landlords constructed a durable political economy in which the rules governing the circulation of land and wealth were defined in community and familial terms, not dictated by an informal market over which they had little control. Although slaveholders had of necessity to participate in a market economy, it was their membership of a moral community that protected them against the sometimes detrimental consequences of participation in that economy. A sense of community bound individuals to an intricate web of obligations and expectations, of which the lending of money was perhaps the most public manifestation. To poorer members of this society, money was loaned in accordance with strict moral rules. At times of crisis, however, such community values came under immense strain. Few crises were more severe than the emancipation of slaves and it was at precisely this time that the slaveholders’ values came under determined ideological attack. Colonial merchants stood at the forefront of this assault. The penetration of the Cape countryside by merchant

Introduction

11

capital under the banner of ‘free trade’ is discussed in Chapter Five. For most of the nineteenth century the Colony’s merchant class attempted to free colonial agriculture from the hold of the moral economy of the former slaveholders. To a very large extent they were successful. But the Colony’s landowning classes proved highly adaptable. In coming to terms with merchant capital, the Cape gentry, as a class, was reconstituted. They did so partly by taking on the values of merchant capital and partly by political mobilisation. Through their main political party, the Afrikaner Bond, they sought to control the state. In some ways these adaptations to a bourgeois economy were made easier by the fact that the Cape gentry had accommodated to British rule as far back as the end of the eighteenth century. The British government found in the urban and rural Dutch elite, as Anthony Atmore and Shula Marks were first to point out, a class of willing and enthusiastic ‘local collaborators’.45 This was a mutually beneficial partnership that reached its apogee during the governorship of Lord Charles Somerset of the 1820s. The British government of occupation had little wish to commit substantial resources to staffing the colonial bureaucracy of this expanding colony. In return for acquiescence in British rule, the Dutch elite enjoyed great prosperity. At times prosperity came through simple theft from the coffers of the colonial state. More widely, however, it came through the British government’s protection and support of the local wine industry. The gentry held on to their slaves and continued to rule. In remote districts the presence of the British military ensured that the frontiers of conquest would not be rolled back. But for the Cape gentry, the fruits of British rule were bitter-sweet. The consequences, as discussed in Chapter Two, were mired in contradiction. As a result of slavery, the alliance between gentry and the British colonial government was presented with its greatest challenge. The slaves themselves forced the question of slavery into centre stage. Under pressure from radical evangelical agitation, and with clear evidence that slaves in the western hemisphere had imbibed the ideology of the ‘age of revolution’, the British government sought to reform slavery through its amelioration programme. Coupled with this was the fact that missionaries brought the sorry state of the indigenous population to the knowledge of metropolitan authorities.

12

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

By inserting itself into the relationship between master and slave, the colonial state irrevocably altered the institution of slavery. The slaves at the Cape responded to new legal opportunities with alacrity, as scores made their way to courts across the Colony to seek redress for a wide array of real and perceived violations of their rights in law. In 1825 the Colony was shaken to its foundation when a group of slaves in the remote district of Worcester attempted to throw off the shackles of their bondage. The alliance between the British colonial state and its collaborators verged on collapse. It was saved by the gentry’s realisation that the slave economy was terminally ill. Even in this profound crisis, one that threatened to take away the very basis of their existence, the Cape gentry accommodated to British rule. They would do so repeatedly in the course of the nineteenth century. Each accommodation required varying adaptations; each resulted in a reconstituted ruling class; and each reaffirmed and ensured the continued basis of colonial rule. But this form of colonial rule would not survive the end of the nineteenth century. It fell apart dramatically in the midst of the South African War as the descendants of slaves and Khoisan, now soldiers of the British imperial army, were able to turn on their erstwhile masters. As an imperialist war turned into a civil war, the Colony’s labouring population once again placed themselves at the centre of colonial relations, a presence they had enjoyed since the birth of this colonial society.

Notes 1. A. Mountain, An Unsung Heritage: Perspectives on Slavery (Cape Town: David Philip, 2004), p. 181. 2. Mountain, An Unsung Heritage, pp. 181, 184. 3. H. Fransen (ed.), A Cape Camera: The Architectural Beauty of the Old Cape, Photographs from the Arthur Elliot Collection in the Cape Archives (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2000), pp. 131, 135 4. Fransen, A Cape Camera, p. 135. 5. Mountain, An Unsung Heritage, p. 182. 6. Mountain, An Unsung Heritage, pp. 181–6. 7. Much has been written about the colonial state, but I continue to be guided by J. Lonsdale and B. Berman, ‘Coping with the Contradictions: the Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914’, Journal of African History, 20, 1979, pp. 487– 507.

Introduction

13

8. See especially, R. Ross, Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994); ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 1983, pp. 193–217; ‘ “Rather Mental than Physical”: Emancipations and the Cape Economy’, in N. Worden and C. Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994); Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London: Routledge, 1983); ‘The Cape of Good Hope and the World Economy, 1652–1835’, in R. Elphick and H. Giliomee (eds.), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 (2nd edition, Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989). For a view of the slaveholding economy that stresses its dynamism but is more hesitant to draw such straight lines, see N. Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 19–40, 64–85. For Susan Newton-King’s appreciation of the wretched poverty of the pastoral economy of the interior, see notes 32 and 41. 9. Ross, ‘Rise of the Cape Gentry’, p. 194. 10. Ross, Beyond the Pale, pp. 44, 217; Ross, ‘ “Rather Mental than Physical”: Emancipation and the Cape Economy’, esp. pp. 161–6; Ross, ‘Rise of the Cape Gentry’, p. 217. Nigel Worden also stresses the continuity of dependence of labouring classes between the pre- and post-emancipation periods; ‘Adjusting to Emancipation: Freed Slaves and Farmers in mid-nineteenth-century South-Western Cape’, in W.G. James and M. Simons (eds.), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town: David Philip, 1989). Although J.N.C. Marincowitz has demonstrated the scale of movement of freed slaves to mission stations, he too has emphasised the continued dependence of many freed slaves and the continued labour-intensive nature of the wheat economy; ‘Rural Production and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838–1888, with Special Reference to the Wheat Growing Districts’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985. 11. B. Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). 12. The most extreme statement of this view is in A.J. Mayer’s The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Croom Helm, 1981). 13. M.J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1890 (London: Penguin, 1981), p. 7. 14. Contrast C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951) with J. Wiener, ‘Planter-Merchant Conflict in Reconstruction Alabama’, Past and Present, 68, 1975, 73–92; ‘Class Structure and Economic Development in the American South, 1865–1955’, American Historical Review, 84, 1979, 970–92; Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1865–1885 (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). See also C.A. Shifflett, Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South: Louisa County, Virginia, 1860–1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). 15. M.L. Morris, ‘The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture: Class Struggle in the Countryside’, Economy and Society, 5, 1976, esp. pp. 309–10. 16. S. Trapido, ‘South Africa in a Comparative Study of Industrialization’, Journal of Development Studies, 7, 1971, pp. 309–20. 17. Robert Shell has gone so far as to seek in South African slavery the origins of apartheid. He points to the ‘striking similarities’ between the economic and demographic structures of Cape slavery and apartheid and is concerned to find out

14

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

how the ‘demographic structures [of slavery] endure[d] so stubbornly.’ See R.C-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), pp. xix–xx. For an effective critique of this view, see T. Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996), p. 297 (note 30). W.K. Hancock, Smuts: The Sanguine Years, 1870–1919 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 4, 562 (notes 2 and 4). R.M. Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology 1770–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 275. Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility, p. 282. Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility, pp. 279–86; see also H. Schissler, ‘The Junkers: Notes on the Social Significance of the Agrarian Elite in Prussia’, in R.G. Moëller (ed.), Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany: Recent Studies in Agricultural History (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986). B.J. Fields, ‘The Advent of Capitalist Agriculture: the New South in a Bourgeois World’ in T. Glymph and J.J. Kushma (eds.), Essays on the Postbellum Southern Economy (Arlington, Texas: A & M University Press, 1985), p. 81; H.D. Woodman, ‘The Reconstruction of the Cotton Plantation in the New South’, in Glymph and Kushma (eds.), Essays, p. 111. S. Hahn, ‘Class and State in Post-emancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective’, American Historical Review, 95, 1990, p. 85. Hahn, ‘Class and State’, p. 92. T.J. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986), p. 196. Keegan, Rural Transformations, p. 197; H. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa 1924–1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1987), pp. 29–31; J. Krikler, Revolution from Above, Rebellion from Below: The Agrarian Transvaal at the Turn of the Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 90. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom, p. 27. H. Bradford, ‘Highways, Byways, and Culs-de-Sacs: the Transition to Agrarian Capitalism in Revisionist South African History’, Radical History Review, 46/7, 1990, pp. 59–88, esp. p. 84. DO, Transfer Deed no. 1583, 1 November 1849. On Wicht, see Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 53. DO, Transfer Deed no. 863, 18 April 1853; Transfer Deed no. 345, 21 December 1883; Transfer Deed no.2033, 18 March 1897. DO, Transfer Deed no .6423, filed 10 May 1950. Rust’s will of 1946 is attached. On volkskapitalisme and SANTAM see D. O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 98–101. S. Newton-King, Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 152. Detailed records of only one farm are known to be extant, and a study of those records has shown how atypical that farm was; E.A. Host, ‘Capitalisation and Proletarianization on a Western Cape Farm: Klaver Valley, 1812–1898’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand

Introduction

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45.

15

University Press, 1968; first published 1939), esp. pp. 188–215. This great book has been much underappreciated, probably because of Marais’s ‘liberal’ credentials. Marais described himself as an ‘Afrikaner nurtured in the tradition of a western-Cape farm’. Cape Coloured People, p. viii. The Cape Coloured People, as Christopher Saunders has noted, was a pioneering account of previously neglected subjects in the history of the Cape Colony but ‘it was mainly a study of white policy towards people of colour, not of their history from within’. C. Saunders, The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988), pp. 116–17. True as this may be, Marais’s genius was not merely to bring neglected subjects to the foreground, but to show, through a study grounded in detailed empirical investigation and freed from an agenda set by English-speaking missionaries, that the main themes and processes of early South African history could not be understood without allowing slaves and indigenous peoples to occupy centre stage. The Cape Coloured People, then, is not a history of ‘Cape Coloured people’, but quite simply a history of the Cape Colony. For an appreciation of another of Marais’s studies, see Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 9. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 188. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 190. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 189. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 188. See K.M. Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados, 1823–1843 (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). W. Rothenberg, ‘Farm Account Books: Problems and Possibilities’, Agricultural History, 58, 1984, p. 106. See Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, esp. pp. 64–84; Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1652–1780’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping; Shell, Children of Bondage, esp. pp. 85–134; and especially Newton-King, Masters and Servants, pp. 150–209. John Edwin Mason’s understanding of emancipation, for example, is rooted in an analysis of the preceding two decades; Social Death and Resurrection: Slavery and Emancipation in South Africa (London: University of Virginia Press, 2003). For my earlier use of this concept, see W. Dooling, Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa c.1760–1820 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1992), esp. pp. 22–3. S. Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (London: Belknap, 2003), p. 33. A. Atmore and S. Marks, ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 3, 1974, esp. pp. 110–11.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Making of the Cape Gentry

The basis of all proceedings here is the Roman civil law, tempered or corrected by local circumstances and unforeseen occurrences. (Lord Macartney, Governor of the Cape 1797–1798)1

I

n 1793 Dirk Gysbert Verwey killed one of his slaves. Laberlot was murdered at Wolwedans, a farm situated in the fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier, an area closely tied to the market for grains in Cape Town. The unfortunate slave’s only infraction was to have deserted, probably the commonest strategy of work avoidance employed by countless slaves in the now-sprawling colony. The murder was brought to the attention of the Court of Justice in Cape Town by three of Laberlot’s fellows who believed that he had died as a consequence of a severe beating, and not, as Verwey claimed, because he had fallen from a ladder while trying to escape from the mill in which he had been confined. An autopsy found evidence of severe maltreatment and confirmed what the slaves already knew.2 At the end of the court’s investigations, Verwey was sent home with no more than a reprimand, and an instruction to treat his slaves more decently in future. On the face of it, this conclusion may seem unsurprising. In all slave societies, after all, the law weighed heavily in favour of slave-owners who laid claim to the bodies of their human property. The law’s primary function was the maintenance of hierarchy, deference and the sanctity of private property. Desertion could not be tolerated because it struck at the heart of idealised versions of the meaning of chattel slavery. Slaves who ran away effectively negated the proprietary claims of their owners to their persons. All slave-owning societies recognised that corporal punishment was required to maintain 16

The Making of the Cape Gentry

17

authority over a population held in involuntarily servitude, and in some societies the category of ‘murder’ did not exist when it came to the killing of slaves. Murder required premeditation and murderous intent, and which slave-owners would be so foolhardy as to kill their own property? The colonial legal system, in the main based on the principles of Roman-Dutch law, was invested with every eighteenth-century European notion of the rule of law. Equality before the law did not exist, of course; that concept was a product of nineteenth-century liberal thought. Colonial law was nevertheless remarkable for the attention it paid to due process, legality and precedent. But Verwey was not acquitted for these reasons. He was set free because he was tried before a colonial legal system in which matters of honour and individual reputation were more important than actual deeds. The Court of Justice, the highest court in the land, was concerned to hear that Verwey’s neighbours knew him as one who treated his slaves well. That was enough to secure his acquittal. The privileging of individual reputations over more abstract notions of the rule of law was the particular victory of a colonial ruling class that had risen to power in the course of the eighteenth century. Throughout the colonial period, this slaveholding class – the Cape gentry – jostled for power with the VOC. As the eighteenth century drew to a close, the bankrupt VOC held only a tenuous grip over a far-flung colony. Although leading slaveholders had considerably less political power than their counterparts in some other societies that grew out of European expansion, their control over the colonial legal system was no less effective. By virtue of their command of the colonial legal system, the Cape gentry ruled the countryside. This chapter describes the rise of this class and examines the nature of its rule.

The emergence of a settler society The Cape gentry had their origins in the founding by the VOC of the Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. This company was the world’s most successful merchant corporation at the time, and an outgrowth of the maritime expansion of Europe that got underway from the beginning of the fifteenth century. Determined to wrestle control of the lucrative spice trade to the East Indies from the

18

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Portuguese, the Dutch were at first concerned merely to supply their ships with fresh produce as they rounded the Cape en route to the spice-producing islands of the Indonesian archipelago. The creation of a successful refreshment station, however, proved harder than the Company expected. Well into the 1670s the initial settlement remained weak and vulnerable. In 1654 the fledgling colony nearly starved to death.3 By 1656 the 181 men who had arrived in 1652 were reduced to 133 as a consequence of death and disease.4 An earthen fort that had been built by the Colony’s first Commander, Jan van Riebeeck, marked the Dutch presence. Its collapse in 1663 symbolised the fragility of the settlement. A new stone castle that was started in 1666 was completed only in 1674. The indigenous Khoikhoi, who kept large herds of sheep and cattle, turned out to be difficult trading partners. For much of its first decade the settlement remained dependent on food imported from Europe. It was under these desperate circumstances that the Company decided to free some of its servants from their contracts with the VOC. In 1657 nine Company servants were granted freehold title to plots of land on the Liesbeeck River close to Table Bay. Each freeburgher, as those released from Company contracts were called, was to have ‘as much land as he may desire for gardens’.5 In its efforts to feed the Colony, the Company strongly discouraged the growth of an urban settlement. It was hoped that agriculture based on freehold tenure would be more successful at providing passing f leets with fresh produce. And so, unwittingly and with much reluctance, the VOC founded a colony of white settlement. These freeburghers, of whom there were 51 (all male) in 1658, formed the nucleus of the Colony’s settler population. Company sailors and soldiers, drawn from the lowest rungs of European society, provided the raw materials for this community. Many were refugees from Europe’s Thirty Years War, the effects of which were felt long after the war ended in 1648. Peasants from all over continental northern Europe, including Germany, Scandinavia and Switzerland, were drawn to Holland where they found work with the VOC, often through the dubious practices of Amsterdam’s seelenverkäufers (soul-sellers), boarding-house keepers who doubled as labour touts for the VOC. Commonly, impoverished migrants to the city found that the only alternative to starvation was to

The Making of the Cape Gentry

19

enjoy the hospitality of such individuals who in turn recouped their investments by selling the labour of their unsuspecting guests to the VOC. Those who ended up at the Cape were mostly housed in the Company Castle. Soldiers were to serve the Company for five years, exclusive of the time taken up by the voyage, which could last up to six months. They were not allowed to return home while bound by their contracts. 6 Escaping from strict Company discipline and in pursuit of leisure and recreation outside the Castle’s walls in the canteens and brothels of early Cape Town, the Company’s servants forged ties with other sectors of the infant colonial society. Very early in the settlement’s history there developed an informal underclass economy that included sailors, soldiers, free blacks and slaves. Company soldiers and sailors gravitated towards those on the lower rungs of the social scale – slaves and free blacks. Junior Company servants, an early traveller noted, ‘ruin[ed] themselves by connexions with black women’. 7 Certainly, as the Commander noted disapprovingly in 1681, members of the garrison had no qualms about having sexual liaisons with slave women. Such unions could be stable and long-standing.8 The women in the Company Slave Lodge attracted many a soldier and sailor, and the VOC unsuccessfully attempted to forbid them from entering the lodge by issuing one proclamation after the other.9 Proclamations of this nature appeared to have been of little avail, for in 1718 the Council of Policy, the political arm of the VOC at the Cape, was forced to recognise that sexual relations between slaves and soldiers were commonplace and that many soldiers had in fact fathered children by slave women.10 In time, however, sailors and soldiers forged closer ties with the settler population. It could take a long time for sailors and servants to attain freeburgher status.11 One of the most obvious routes into settler society was for soldiers to find employment as knechten 12 and schoolmasters on settler farms. Theoretically, the years spent in the service of farmers were not discounted from soldiers’ initial five-year contracts, ‘but by making presents to the right people it [was] sometimes possible to secure exemption from this rule’.13 Company servants were released from duty in this way for up to a year at a time, but Mentzel, one of the eighteenth-century Cape’s most astute observers, claimed that he had ‘known men . . . who had gone on for twenty years . . .

20

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working for one settler after another, leading an extremely pleasant, care-free existence, gradually collecting a little hoard of money, and evincing not the slightest desire either to re-enter the Company’s service or to return to Europe’.14 These were the people who ended up as the settlement’s ‘accidental colonists’. 15 Few had left Europe with the intention of settling at the Cape and they were most often drawn into the settler community ‘by degrees, often aided by a sudden twist of fate’.16 The Colony’s first white farmers had no easy time. To establish an arable agricultural settlement in an alien environment was a considerable challenge. Ferocious gales battered the settlement and wreaked havoc with newly planted crops. At the same time, indigenous Khoikhoi attacked settler outposts. As a consequence, bountiful harvests eluded the first freeburghers. They were barely able to feed themselves, let alone passing fleets. Profits proved elusive as loans to the Company needed to be serviced. Matters were made worse by the fact that the Company fixed agricultural prices and monopolised the market entirely, the existence of a small market in contraband cereals notwithstanding. By the end of 1658 the first freeburghers were in near revolt against the VOC as they discovered that they were to receive only half the income they had expected.17 Although the Company raised the price of wheat in later years, the majority of early freeburghers lived in dire poverty. As a consequence, many decided to abandon agriculture, a fact that the Company recognised in 1670.18 By 1678 not even a third of freeburghers continued to farm.19 It is not surprising that many failed to see the benefits of settler status. There were profits to be had from trade in livestock with the indigenous Khoikhoi, but the Company forbade this practice. If the Colony’s first settlers were ‘accidental colonists’, they were also a reluctant settler class. By 1707 some 40 per cent of the 570 burghers whose fate is known had given up on an independent settler existence. Many had returned to Company service, while others managed to stow away on passing ships.20 Those who stayed in the Colony drifted back to Cape Town and either sought work as artisans, established boarding house establishments, or sought poverty relief from the Company. Cape Town thus developed as an urban centre in spite of Company policy. One of the greatest difficulties the freeburghers faced was that of labour. Company soldiers turned out to be too expensive, and it soon

The Making of the Cape Gentry

21

became apparent that the Khoikhoi, for as long as they retained access to their independent means of subsistence, would prove a reluctant and inadequate labour force. Moreover, as so many European settlers discovered in other parts of the world, indigenous populations were notoriously difficult to enslave. For these reasons, the Company decided to turn to slavery. It was no accident, thus, that the first significant numbers of slaves to be imported into the Colony followed almost immediately upon the establishment of the first settler farms. In 1658 more than half of the total population of the settlement consisted of slaves. In that year 228 slaves had been imported from the coast of Guinea; shortly thereafter 174 Angolan slaves were brought into the Colony. Slavery was thus firmly established from very early in the Colony’s history. In 1679 settler agriculture began to turn around. In that year farms were established in the newly founded district of Stellenbosch beyond the immediate environs of Cape Town. The expansion of the Colony owed much to the efforts of the new governor, Simon van der Stel, after whom the new district was named. Van der Stel was keen to promote settler agriculture and managed to convince the Directors of the VOC to increase the prices of cereals. In 1687, by which time Stellenbosch was closed to further colonisation, the settlement of Drakenstein was founded when twenty-three persons received property there. The new settlements showed immediate dividends – in 1687 the district of Stellenbosch produced 3 865 muids21 of grain, compared to the 921 harvested in the Cape district.22 These modest successes gave impetus to further colonial expansion. With no regard for indigenous patterns of settlement and transhumance, more freehold grants, ranging in size from 80 to 160 acres, were handed out on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. By 1717, when the issue of freehold grants ceased, 400 such farms had been allocated. Agricultural profits, however, remained hard to come by. In 1690 the Company, always with a firm eye on its bottom line, reverted to earlier practices and again reduced the price of cereals. In 1695 Batavia refused altogether to buy the Colony’s surplus grain. As a consequence, much land in the Cape and Stellenbosch districts was abandoned or remained uncultivated. Although Robert Ross has warned against a view of the Cape’s agricultural economy as stagnant and debt-ridden,23

22

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there is overwhelming evidence that the difficulties of these early decades were real. Since the Colony did not control the market for meat as tightly as it did for grain, for many, especially the young without capital resources, livestock farming away from the immediate environs of Cape Town seemed to promise a better livelihood.24 An important factor in the opening up of the livestock frontier was the introduction in 1703 of the leeningplaats (loan farm) system. This form of land tenure grew out of the rights granted to freeholders to graze their livestock on common land that the VOC claimed for itself. In 1703 freeburghers were for the first time issued with free grazing permits which gave them exclusive use over a designated area where livestock could graze for up to six months of the year. Such farms could not be within an hour’s walk from the centre of any other one. In practice it meant that farms were vast, typically 6 000 acres in extent. As from 1713 settlers were granted the right to cultivate wheat on their loan farms, but from this time they also had to pay an annual rent for their grazing permits. Despite the fact that many failed to keep up with payments, freeburghers became the de facto owners of their loan farms: ‘there was little distinction between the freehold land and loan farms, whose leases became so secure that the fixed improvements (which could be sold) came to include the value of the land on which they stood’.25 Thus, until 1813 when the system of loan farms was abolished, these farms could be sold and bequeathed in much the same way as freehold property. In theory only improvements could be sold and transferred; in practice, however, as a British official noted at the time, it was ‘very well understood . . . that the good quality is paid for and becomes the only object of the purchaser’. Those who held loan farms felt ‘secure in the possession thereof, as if they were real property’.26 The security of tenure that these trekboers (as the stock farmers of the expanding frontier became known) enjoyed under the loan farm system is evident in the length of time that individual households were able to remain on specific properties. By 1731 some of the principal loan farms had been occupied by the same families for twenty years on average; the same sites could be occupied for the life of the person to whom they had been ‘loaned’.27 The opening up of the livestock frontier led to the dramatic expansion of colonial boundaries. The result of such expansion was that the vast

The Making of the Cape Gentry

23

majority of the Colony’s settler population ended up as livestock farmers. By 1770 they constituted two-thirds of all independent farmers.28 In large part, this process of frontier expansion was fuelled by a combination of rapid population growth and a system of inheritance that encouraged dispersal. Compared to other colonies of European settlement, the Cape’s temperate climate meant that settlers were particularly successful in increasing their numbers. In the eighteenth century as a whole, settler numbers doubled with each generation.29 The settler population grew from 259 in 1679 to about 2 000 in 1717. By 1751 the white population had reached 5 000 and it stood at 13 830 in 1793.30 Between 1700 and 1780 the boundaries of the Colony had increased tenfold – to the Gariep (Orange River) in the north and the Fish River in the east.

Frontiers of conquest It should be remembered, of course, that every step of settler expansion involved the conquest of indigenous lands, the depletion of Khoikhoi herds, the invasion of traditional hunting grounds of hunter-gatherer communities, and the ultimate loss of independence by indigenous peoples. The aggressive expansion of the settlement initiated by Governor Simon van der Stel and the establishment of the districts of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, that did so much to put settler agriculture on a firm footing, greatly advanced the process of conquest. At first, the Khoikhoi of the southwestern Cape were shrewd traders, refusing to part with young and healthy cattle. To these pastoral people, loss of livestock was more dangerous than loss of land, for they could retain their independence as long as some land between settler farms remained vacant on which to graze herds. As settler numbers increased, however, land came under increasing pressure. Most importantly, the Company’s punitive expeditions against independent clans destroyed the Khoi’s ability to resist demands for larger numbers of cattle. As early as the 1660s Khoikhoi herds had started to decline steadily and irreversibly. Some Khoikhoi retreated into the northern and eastern interior, where, in the late eighteenth century, determined resistance to settler expansion was mounted, but by the end of the 1670s the Khoikhoi of the southwestern Cape were at work as servants on settler farms. Khoikhoi labour was invaluable to European settlers because many did not have the means or lines of credit to afford slaves. At first, the Khoi acted only as

24

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herders, but in time they were also employed in the cultivation of crops: ‘in short, they did almost anything a slave could do’.31 By the end of the seventeenth century the independence of the Khoikhoi of the Western Cape had effectively been eradicated.32 The first arrival of smallpox in 1713, a disease with which European settlers had long had contact and that is almost synonymous with the destruction of indigenous peoples around the world, served merely to complete the process of colonial conquest.33 In the northern and eastern interior, as we have noted, white settlers met with more determined resistance from indigenous Khoisan.34 In response, the Company created the commando, an institution that became the defining feature of the South African frontier. The first purely civilian commando went out in 1715. In 1739 settlers and Khoisan on the northern frontier fought each other in the first of a series of dreadful ‘Bushman Wars’. The viciousness of commandos during the war of 1739 marked their evolution into instruments of genocide.35 The outcome of the first ‘Bushman War’ confirmed colonial conquest south of Namaqualand and west of the Doorn River.36 North of the Olifants River, limited rainfall diverted settler expansion to the northeast, towards the Roggeveld and Hantam, and ultimately to the fertile Sneeuwberg and Camdebo.37 In 1754–55 commandos crushed further resistance to settler expansion and for the next fifteen years colonial expansion strode ahead more or less unchallenged. From about 1770, however, as colonial settlers entered the central escarpment of the South African interior, they faced the most aggressive resistance yet from any indigenous peoples. In a ghastly war that lasted for forty years the ‘Bushmen’ held the settlers at bay. Their guerrilla tactics effectively put a stop to further expansion.38 In certain regions, such as the Nieuweveld, the Koup (south of the Nieuweveld mountains) and Tarka (to the east of the Sneeuwberg), Khoisan got the upper hand. On the eve of the creation of the district of Graaff-Reinet, settlers feared that the region as far south as the Breede River was threatened. It was only in the Sneeuwberg where the Khoisan could not prevail; even here, however, settlers were routinely forced to flee their farms. By 1774 both Company and settlers had come to the conclusion that settler occupation of the region would have to be abandoned. Even Adriaan van Jaarsveld, who had made his name on the frontier by committing

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25

the most horrible atrocities, was forced to quit the region. But the Sneeuwberg’s favourable elevation and greater fertility meant that settlers would return. Despite these victories, the Khoisan paid a heavy price. In 1774, as it became apparent that settlers were losing the war, the Company assisted in convening the first ‘general commando’ which mounted operations along the 300-mile northern frontier. This commando, intent solely on annihilation of the enemy, killed hundreds of ‘Bushmen’. Official figures, which are almost certainly an underestimate, put the number of ‘Bushmen’ killed at 503.39 ‘The massacre at that time’, a British Select Committee found more than six decades later, ‘was horrible, and the system of persecution continued unremitting.’40 Several more commandos went out in succeeding years. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century ‘general’ commandos more often than not replaced local ones and the Company even attempted to have a permanent general commando in the field. In 1777 the Council of Policy effectively proclaimed the extermination of the ‘Bushmen’ a matter of policy. Article 13 of the instructions issued to field commanders in 1780 by the authorities of the district of Stellenbosch stated Company policy most clearly: With respect . . . to the Bushman Hottentots . . . you must be always active in attacking and overpowering them in their caves and hiding places; but, in the event of their not being induced to surrender, you, or those in charge of the commandos, are at liberty to put them to death, and entirely destroy them, sparing at the same time, as much as may be in any way possible, their women, their men not capable of defending themselves, and their children, and ever avoiding the cruel and inhuman shedding of innocent blood.41 But it took more than a few general commandos to destroy the Khoisan. ‘Bushmen’ attacked trekboer homesteads with stealth and cunning. Major Collins, who toured the frontier in the early years of the nineteenth century, described their methods of attack as follows: They usually make their incursions in autumn; at which time the horses are sickly, or, at least, in bad condition, and unable

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on that account as well as from the want of water, to pursue them with vigour. They generally conceal themselves behind rocks, or bushes, as near as possible to the Cattle, and if the Hottentots who guard them should fall asleep . . . they approach them softly, and murder them. If no opportunity is afforded them in the field, they lay [sic] in wait towards the close of day, for the return of the herds to the farm houses; and, having dispatched the Herdsmen, drive away their prey, favoured by the night.42 The creation of the district of Graaff-Reinet in 1786 was in large part in response to such ‘depredations’, and Woeke, the district’s first landdrost, pursued Company policy with vigour. Within a decade of the establishment of the district, in excess of 2 500 ‘Bushmen’ had been killed. 43 Some authorities have put the figure as high as 3 200. 44 Honoratus Maynier, Woeke’s successor, reported that commandos of 200 to 300 armed men regularly took to the field. But such violence was counter-productive. In 1789 Woeke calculated that between July 1786 and December 1788 the ‘Bushmen’ had cost the Colony 92 191 rixdollars45 in damages. In this time they had shot and killed 99 horses and taken 6 299 cattle and 17 970 smaller animals. Khoi and slave herdsmen bore the brunt of such attacks, and dozens were killed during this period.46 By 1795 farmers on the northeastern frontier had lost an estimated 19 161 cattle and 84 094 sheep.47 As the sun set on VOC rule at the Cape Colony, the northeastern frontier remained unconquered. That task would fall to the British colonial state. At the end of the eighteenth century despairing white settlers, unable to dispossess the indigenous occupants of the northeast, declared themselves to be ‘completely ruined’.48 It was clear that the frontier trekboers had failed to reap substantial profits from livestock farming: the overwhelming majority in fact lived in extreme poverty. No doubt for this reason, European travellers reserved their greatest condemnation for what they perceived to be the slothfulness of frontier trekboers.49 To be sure, the frontier had its successful accumulators. But even the wealthy, Mentzel noted, ‘with all their super-abundance of cattle, have to eke out a miserable existence just like the poor, and they are very badly off for the amenities of life’. 50 The frontier was home to a

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substantial number of bijwoners, landless whites who had to satisfy themselves with being clients of wealthier kin.51 Trekboers had of necessity to maintain ties with the market in Cape Town, but by the second half of the eighteenth century these terms of trade – in large part dictated by itinerant traders (smousen) – weighed so heavily against them that some 40 per cent of frontier households were ‘barely able to make ends meet’.52 As early as 1740 the Council of Policy concluded that the failure of trekboers to keep up with their quitrent payments was not the result of ‘willfulness but truly from poverty and lack of money.’53 Poverty of this nature meant that frontier settlers were unable to employ slave labour to any significant extent. As a consequence, they turned on the indigenous populations with extraordinary ferocity.54 The introduction of the inboekstelsel, or what was later euphemistically called ‘apprenticeship’, was an attempt at mimicking chattel bondage. The Stellenbosch authorities declared in 1780 that those captured in war, ‘whether they be fighting men . . . or not, and the children, must be divided among those who have assisted on the commando’. Such captives were ‘to serve for their subsistence for a certain fair term of years, according to the prisoner’s age’.55 A clear link was established between poverty and the use of war captives, since it was decreed at the same time that if those who assisted on commando were unwilling to take war prisoners into their employ, ‘the division and delivery must take place to and among the other inhabitants, always preferring those who are the poorest . . . and who can derive the most advantage from their services’.56 By 1795 upwards of 1 000 ‘Bushmen’ had been taken captive and taken up as farm servants. As a consequence there were probably twice as many war captives in settler employ on the northeastern frontier than chattel slaves.57 In 1812 large numbers of ‘Bushmen’ were reported to be at work on settler farms in the Sneeuwberg, the Koup and the Nieuweveld, where they served as herders ‘with full as much care and attention as the Hottentots themselves’.58 On some frontier farms ‘Bushmen’ were the only servants to be seen.59 The majority probably disappeared into the historical record as ‘Hottentots’.60 Relations between colonial masters and their indigenous servants were shot through with appalling violence, a consequence, NewtonKing has argued, of trekboer attempts to enslave indigenous peoples in situ. The fundamental problem facing frontier settlers was that they had

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the ‘enemy within’. ‘Without authority, then, and lacking even the primitive instruments of state repression available to slaveholders in the arable districts, the man who would be master of his Bushman servants was compelled to rely in part on naked force.’61 Consequently, they failed to translate colonial power into authority. Hegemony, in other words, proved unattainable. There can be no doubt that extreme violence was inscribed into the daily fabric of frontier life. On this basic fact, the colonial record is unambiguous. But violence and authority could sit side by side, and it remains to be seen whether hegemony came more easily to the wealthier slaveholders of the western districts. The slaveholders of the arable west partook in their share of colonial violence. There is no evidence to suggest that relations between masters and servants/slaves were more violent on the frontier than in the more settled and arable regions.62

The making of a slave economy On the expanding frontier, European settlers could not hope to replicate the lives of their counterparts in the southwest. If settlers on the pastoral frontier were mired in poverty, those who remained in the southwestern districts were, after the initial adjustments of the seventeenth century, capable of producing wheat and wine, both profitably and in everincreasing volumes. Substantial numbers of freeburghers farmed with both grains and wine – in 1797/8 mixed farming accounted for 40.1 per cent of arable production in Stellenbosch. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, there was also a great degree of specialisation, with particular farmers producing wheat or wine exclusively.63 Wine production in the Colony rose from 1 133 leaguers (about 582 litres) in 1725 to 5 528 in 1775 and 9 643 in 1806. It is estimated that wheat production rose from 15 000 hectolitres in the 1720s to 130 000 by 1806. 64 The key to success in the arable southwest lay in the brutal exploitation of slave labour, although the Colony became an area of relatively small-scale slaveholdings when compared to other colonies of European overseas expansion. Increased agrarian output was made possible by the importation of ever-increasing numbers of slaves from trading ports in the Indian Ocean. The Cape’s privately owned slave population grew from 337 in 1692 to 14 747 in 1793.65 Between 1720 and 1790 the Colony’s slave population grew at an average annual rate

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of 2.56 per cent.66 For most of the eighteenth century slave numbers exceeded those of settlers by a narrow margin, although the proportion of slaves to burghers was higher in core arable districts.67 Unlike the settler population, whose numbers increased rapidly through natural growth, slave numbers could only be increased through continual importation, an index of the wretched conditions under which the vast majority of slaves lived. The slave population was increased via the Company’s existing slave trading network, which included markets in Indonesia, the west coast of India, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Madagascar. Between 1652 and the ending of the slave trade in 1807 about 60 000 slaves were imported into the Colony. ‘It is against reason’, Ross has written, ‘to suppose that the slave trade necessary to achieve such a population increase would have occurred if the slaves had not been required to work in a steadily expanding agricultural sector, since probably only around a third of these slaves resided in Cape Town.’68 But the evolution of the slave economy was not quite as linear as this picture suggests. It is true that from the beginning of the eighteenth century a close correlation developed between arable production and slave numbers, but this correlation was not sustained throughout the century and was highest in the 1730s and early 1740s.69 The size and distribution of the slave population were closely related to fluctuations in the Cape economy. In the first half of the eighteenth century freeburghers were in fact in a better position to increase their slaveholdings than they were in the latter half of the century. In the Cape district, for example, the mean number of slaves for all farmers increased from 6.85 in 1705 to 11.49 in 1723 and, most dramatically, to 19.34 in 1741.70 But in the 1740s this steady progression was interrupted by a crisis in the slave economy. The crisis of the 1740s – the result of a coincidence of increased agrarian output and a fall in slave numbers brought on by a rise in mortality (the reasons for which are unclear) – retarded the growth of the slave economy for the duration of the eighteenth century. 71 Complaints of labour shortages were rife during this decade. The fact that slaveholders complained of increased slave desertions suggests that the crisis was as much social as it was economic. The labour shortages were clearly real, for by the end of the decade the agrarian economy was in the deep recession.

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In the second half of the eighteenth century the size of slaveholdings declined: between 1752 and 1773 the mean number of adult male slaves among slaveholders in the Cape district remained at about eleven, and Stellenbosch slaveholders held on average between five and six adult male slaves in this same period.72 By 1799/1800 the figure had increased to 15.75 for slaveholders in the Cape district, possibly as a consequence of a boom in the 1780s, but the higher number is probably the result of more accurate reporting under the new British government. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, moreover, agricultural depression was reflected in a decline in land prices.73 The correlation between slave ownership and arable production was at its lowest level at the end of the eighteenth century and farmers in the western districts had to make up for the shortfall in slaves by employing substantial numbers of Khoisan labourers, a practice made possible by the disintegration of indigenous societies under the pressure of colonial expansion.74 Freeburghers apparently had some difficulty in building up large holdings of slaves. Slaveholding was widespread throughout the arable southwestern districts, but, as noted earlier, holdings were mostly modest in scale. Throughout the eighteenth century, the vast majority of slaveholders owned fewer than ten adult male slaves.75 Although about one fifth of slave-owners in the Cape district owned more than twenty adult male slaves in the 1730s through to the 1750s, by the second half of the century the percentage of such slave-owners had been reduced to between about twelve and fifteen percent of the slave-owning population.76 Individual slaveholders were able to build up their holdings only gradually and the general trend in the eighteenth century was ‘towards a group of moderately prosperous arable farmers’ who owned between ten and twenty adult male slaves.77 The Cape economy was clearly not sufficiently dynamic to allow for the growth of a substantial number of large-scale slave-owners. For the vast majority there appears to have been a threshold beyond which slave numbers would not increase. The Stellenbosch farmer Jan Blignault, for instance, was reported to have owned seventeen slaves (all male) in 1731; at the time of his death about twenty years later, he had eighteen slaves in his estate, although it is possible that he would have had more had the crisis of the 1740s not intervened.78 But if slaveholders could not increase their holdings substantially in their lifetimes, it was

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specifically what happened at death that militated against the growth of a class of large-scale slave-owners. In the Cape Colony, the Roman-Dutch law of succession almost ensured the dissipation of property at death. The combination of a system of partible inheritance and the fact that settler families tended to have several offspring meant that wealth, whether in the form of land or slaves, could easily be scattered. This break-up of estates hindered the development of an elite class of very large-scale slaveholders.79 Those who owned more than one farm and several slaves could to some extent provide for heirs, but even in such cases, dispersal of property was the inevitable result. Furthermore, inheritance and marriage practices were closely intertwined. Although a nineteenth-century report on the Cape’s inheritance law noted that the ‘Colonial Law of Marriage has no necessary connection with the Colonial Law of Inheritance’, it also recognised that the ‘consequences which are really consequences of the law of marriage are very generally spoken of as consequences of the law of inheritance’. 80 As a rule, Cape settlers married ‘in community of property’, which meant that the property that each party brought to the marriage became joint property. In such cases, when the husband or wife died the surviving spouse received between half and two-thirds of the share of the estate, while the remainder was to be equally distributed among the children. The law decreed that the heirs, male and female alike, were each entitled to a ‘legitimate portion’ of the estate. Customarily this was taken to mean that children were to share equally in the proceeds. Wills could thus not be used to disinherit heirs.81 But while the laws of succession demanded the division of property, loan farms, which were in theory leased from the VOC, could not be subdivided. It was not possible simply to carve holdings into smaller and smaller pieces to facilitate the division of property, as happened, for instance, on the nineteenth-century Highveld. For the most part, thus, landed estates at the Cape were sold off in their entirety, and farms generally retained their original dimensions well into the nineteenth century. The consequence of such a system meant that landed property at the Cape changed hands regularly. To be sure, a few individuals did hold onto their properties for relatively lengthy periods of time. Johan

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David Kriel kept Hoornbosch, a farm in the fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier, in his possession from 1764 to 1792.82 Tobias Mostert held nearby Klipheuvel from 1785 to 1825, when he transferred it to his son Nicolaas Gerhardus Mostert who in turn kept the property until 1835.83 Thus Klipheuvel remained with the Mosterts for fully fifty years. For the most part, however, the straightforward passage of landed property from one generation to the next was relatively rare. So too was the close attachment of families to specific estates. Wolwedans, scene of the death in 1793 of the slave Laberlot, changed hands nine times between 1751 and 1835, or an average of once every nine years.84 In only two of these instances in the latter case did transferor and transferee bear the same last name.85 The neighbouring farm, Hoornbosch, saw an even greater turnover: it changed hands sixteen times between 1751 and 1835, or an average of once every 5¼ years.86 Other farms in the neighbourhood saw similar changes in ownership. The farm Drooge Valey saw five transfers between 1757 and 1815, 87 and Klipheuvel changed owners six times between 1763 and 1835.88 To nineteenth-century British observers, this system of land tenure was ruinous, and the records of relatively prosperous settlers show that their observations were not entirely misplaced. When Jan Blignault died, for instance, his two sons, Jan and Pieter, were both able to purchase farms from the estate.89 None of his three daughters, all of whom were married at the time of his death, acquired any fixed property. Seventeen of Blignault’s slaves were auctioned to eleven different individuals.90 Of these, four slaves (Diana, November, July and Jacob) went to Jan Blignaut Jr. and two slaves (Baatjoe and Jan) went to Pieter Blignault. Jacobus Theron and Jacobus du Toit, Blignault’s sons-in-law, purchased two other slaves, Floris and Meyer respectively. The remaining nine slaves were sold to individuals not obviously related to Blignault.91 Each generation, seemingly, had to build up holdings anew.

A Cape gentry? This system of inheritance – the absence, by and large, of the intergenerational transfer of wealth – with its resultant consequence of rapid turnover of properties and dissipation of wealth, has led some to doubt the existence of a class of ‘gentry’ slaveholders.92 And indeed, comparison with other colonial settings shows that inheritance was essential to the

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making of such classes. On the eastern shores of the United States, for instance, a slave-owning ‘gentry’ was fully formed by the time of the American Revolution, even though British aristocrats might not have agreed with the appellation. Inheritance strategies were crucial to the making of the Chesapeake ruling class. Those who attained great wealth depended for their success on inheritances from parents. Very few were able to rise to the possession of great riches from humble origins and not many attained the economic position of their parents while the latter were still alive, especially after stagnation in the tobacco economy set in from the mid-eighteenth century.93 Although the extent to which Cape freeburghers could amass large holdings of slaves was limited, it is nevertheless clear that inheritance was not a total leveller. Ross has shown that of the 53 families94 in which at least one member owned 10 000 vines or more in the district of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein in 1731, nineteen families remained in 1825.95 The Colony thus had distinct differentials in wealth, and certain notable families dominated. The ever-perceptive Mentzel divided the Cape’s settler population into four classes. First, there were the absentee-landlords who lived in Cape Town. These men had ‘a considerable fortune and [were] comfortably off’. They employed knechten to oversee their rural properties and visited their estates only once or twice a year: ‘when such a freeburgher does appear on one of his farms, he cuts a figure like a European nobleman, and is a strict master to his slaves’.96 The second class of settlers, in Mentzel’s typology, consisted of resident landlords intimately tied to production for the Cape Town market. They possessed ‘excellent farms, paid for and lucrative’. These persons produced much in excess of their subsistence needs and lived ‘like a gentry’.97 Many employed knechten, but for the most part they personally oversaw production on their estates. The third class of farmers was the ‘industrious class’ who worked side by side with their slave labour force. All members of such households, including women and children, participated in agricultural production. Such a farmer was ‘both master and knecht’.98 Finally, there were the poorer stock farmers of the far interior. Estate inventories of arable farmers from the middle of the eighteenth century confirm such disparities of wealth. There were the poor, the moderately wealthy and the very wealthy. Jan Martinus Coors and his

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spouse, Jacoba Coetzee, appeared to work their Drakenstein farm without any slaves; in 1758 their estate was valued at a mere 63 rixdollars.99 Jan Steenkamp and his spouse Helena van Heere, who lived in the Swartland, owned two slaves in 1759 (although both had deserted at the time their estate was liquidated).100 Stephanus Sebastiaan Walter was one of the moderately wealthy. At the time of his death, c.1762, his estate was valued at 4 343 rixdollars and included two farms in the Stellenbosch district and thirteen slaves.101 The wealthy were typically owners of extensive landed property and an above-average number of slaves. Jan Blignault owned eighteen slaves and no fewer than seven properties (mostly located in the fertile Drakenstein district) at the time that his estate was liquidated in 1752.102 In 1762 Hendrik van der Merwe’s estate, which was valued in excess of 6 000 rixdollars, included six separate pieces of landed property situated in Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, as well as twenty-three slaves valued at 2 300 rixdollars.103 Similarly, Johannes Louw, who died at more or less the same time, was the owner of six farms, located in the districts of Stellenbosch, Drakenstein and Swellendam, as well as thirty-nine slaves. 104 The route to such wealth was not easy and it remains to be seen how, in the face of the perils of inheritance and economic uncertainty, some families came to dominate. There could have been few whose pedigree was as modest as that of Willem Stolts, one-time owner of Wolwedans. There was nothing unusual about Stolts’s estate when it was liquidated on his death in about 1750. It was one of many dealt with in similar manner each year. Stolts’s property was disposed of by auction – common practice and an event that would have afforded the opportunity for gossip and socialising in the Cape countryside. Those who gathered to pick up a few bargains would have known that Stolts was a slave-owner of some means. At the time of his death he owned eleven slaves. In addition to Wolwedans, he also owned the neighbouring farm, Hoornbosch, on which white knechten oversaw production. Stolt’s assets realised the sum of 5 578 rixdollars, more than enough to satisfy the creditors and to leave his heirs with tidy inheritances. Significant sums of cash were left to his heirs once the farms and slaves were sold and the liabilities against the estate taken into account. His wife of 15 years, Johanna van Beulen, collected 684 rixdollars and each of his six surviving children stood to receive 114 rixdollars.

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Stolts clearly had no dynastic wealth to his name; quite the contrary. His relative affluence at the time of his death belies his modest origins. He had purchased Wolwedans in 1726. Initially, he must have done much of the farm work himself, for in 1731 he owned only a single (male) slave.105 At this time he surely would have been counted amongst what Mentzel called the Colony’s ‘industrious class.’ In time, however, Stolts grew wealthy. In 1735 he owned five slaves (four men and one woman); by 1740 he had increased his holding to seven slaves, and, as we have seen, at the time of his death he was the owner of eleven slaves. In 1743, while retaining ownership of Wolwedans, Stolts purchased Hoornbosch, a nearby farm, which supported 6 000 vines from which he was able to squeeze five leaguers of wine. By the end of the decade Hoornbosch contained 10 000 vines from which he produced ten leaguers of wine. But the most startling fact of Stolts’s background is that he was a slave for the first thirty-two years of his life. At the time of his death he was, to use the colonial nomenclature, a vrij swart (free black). Born into slavery in 1692 as Willem van de Caab (of the Cape), Stolts remained in bondage until 1724 when he was manumitted by the will of his owner, Christina de Bruyn, widow of Jan Botman, a long-standing resident of Stellenbosch district. In partnership with two other freed slaves, Stolts started his life of freedom with eight oxen and two fishing nets.106 It is not clear exactly how Stolts was able to break into landownership in Cape Town’s hinterland. The history of connections between Cape Town and its hinterland is one of the least understood aspects of the early colonial period. Colour was clearly not an absolute barrier to success in the first half of the eighteenth century. The means by which Stolts raised the capital to purchase his farms provide some clues, however. On both occasions he found the necessary capital by obtaining mortgage loans from senior VOC servants – the first from Hendrik Swellengrebel, the person destined to become the Colony’s first Capeborn governor, and the second from Willem van Kerkhof, another Company official. The Company had prohibited its officials from engaging in arable production for their own benefit, and lending money at interest was an obvious way in which such persons could partake in the profits of a slave economy.

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As we have seen, the Colony’s landed families had to find ways to cope with the destructive effects of partible inheritance. In this, they were not unique. Their contemporaries in Mexico found that ‘a prolific wife was almost a guarantee that a family would lose its estate.’ Few landed Mexican families ‘ever succeeded in outwitting the combined effects of the testamentary system and the fertility of their womenfolk’.107 Further comparisons are instructive. British commentators, who naturally saw primogeniture as the only means to secure landed stability and unhindered capital accumulation,108 found partible inheritance objectionable wherever they went, whether the Cape Colony or imperial Russia.109 What such commentators failed to realise, however, was that for many of the world’s ancient landed classes, equal division of property upon death had deep cultural significance, even if it did threaten landed stability and the continuity of lineages. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the British colonial government tried to overhaul the Colony’s laws of marriage and inheritance, they met with considerable resistance from the landowning classes. 110 Landlords of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Highveld showed similar devotion to partible inheritance. For these landlords, as it was for the authors of the American Revolution, partible inheritance was synonymous with republican virtue, despite the concomitant dangers of being separated from the land. Primogeniture, by contrast, represented the ‘customs of the middle ages’.111 When Lord Milner tried to abolish partible inheritance in the Transvaal in the aftermath of the South African War, he found implementation difficult, as landlords remained stubbornly wedded to customary practices.112 Perhaps the most instructive comparative example of devotion to partible inheritance comes from imperial Russia. In that society, nobles were renowned for their ideological commitment to partible inheritance, despite sinking into greater and greater debt as a consequence. For them, partible inheritance was a ‘way of life’ and ‘reflected a deeply ingrained cultural expectation which maintained that all offspring should receive approximately equivalent shares of their patrimonial inheritance and then should build up their estates independently from that fragmented base’.113 Nevertheless, sections of the Russian nobility constituted a ‘gentry’ by virtue of their ties to specific localities (rather than specific pieces of land), their involvement in the political life of these localities,

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and perhaps most importantly, their personal involvement in the serf economy.114 Although particular lands changed hands regularly, this type of ‘gentry’ was made possible because the property that noble women (widows in particular) controlled ensured that local landholders remained local landholders.115 As in imperial Russia, Cape settler women played a crucial role in ensuring that land and wealth circulated within narrowly constructed familial boundaries. Since women were for the most part younger than their spouses, widowhood was virtually guaranteed in the life-cycle of a large number of settler women. Widows gained control over substantial amounts of property, both landed and human. In 1732, for example, the widow of François du Toit was the owner of thirteen male slaves and 10 000 vines in the Drakenstein district.116 At the time of her death in 1748, Debora de Koning, widow of Jacobus Moller, had listed among her assets a farm along the Liesbeeck River and thirty-six slaves.117 Johanna Snyman, widow of Anthony Lombard, and Elisabeth Mostert, widow of Albertus Laubser, must have been among the wealthiest persons in their respective neighbourhoods in the 1750s. Johanna Snyman’s assets included 34 slaves, the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Drooge Valley, Voorspoed, a farm situated in Riebeeckscasteel, a number of opstallen,118 as well as a house in Table Valley. Elisabeth Mostert was the owner of the Paardeberg farm Orange and 23 slaves.119 Even though more research needs to be done before we can call the eighteenth-century Cape a ‘widowarchy’,120 control over this kind of property would have made widows very attractive in the colonial marriage market. Indeed, some of the Colony’s most well-known and wealthiest individuals attained their positions of prominence by virtue of marriage to such widows. Martin Melck, one of few slave-owners in the Colony who ever admitted to owning more than 100 slaves, is a good example. He arrived at the Cape in 1746 and in 1750 purchased the Stellenbosch farms Watergang and Aan’t Pad. But it was his marriage, in 1752, to Anna Hop, widow of one Jan Giebelaar, which set him on the road to great wealth. The year before he married Hop his recorded property amounted to one horse, forty-eight head of cattle, 4 000 vines and nine leaguers of wine. From her first husband Anna Hop had inherited two farms, Elsenburg (the estate on which Melck eventually came to reside and which so impressed visitors)121 and Mulders Valley. The year that

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Figure 1.1 Ownership history of Wolwedans, 1751–1810.

she married Melck she also owned 15 slaves (10 men, 2 women, 2 girls and a boy). As time passed Melck acquired several more farms as well as houses in Cape Town. Anna Hop died in 1776 (at which time Melck’s property was valued at 240 000 guilders122), and in 1778 he married another widow, Maria Loubser.123 Most significantly, widows were conduits for the transmission of property from one generation to the next, as the history of Wolwedans clearly shows. In 1757 Jacobus van Aarden, who had acquired the estate six years earlier, sold Wolwedans to his brother-in-law Dirk Verwey, who at the time was married to Susanna Francina van Aarden (see Figure 1.1). When, in 1782, the farm was transferred to Dirk Verwey’s son, Dirk Gysbert Verwey, its registered owner was the younger Verwey’s stepfather, Jan Jurgen Kotze. Dirk Gysbert’s mother, Susanna Francina van Aarden, had remarried.124 In 1797 Verwey Jr. sold the farm to his brother-in-law, Jacobus Gideon Louw.125 In short, although Wolwedans changed hands several times between 1751 and 1835, all those who owned the farm between 1751 and 1810 were connected by marriage. The key conduit in this instance was Susanna Francina van Aarden, widow of Dirk Verwey. In this way, marriage made for the preservation of landed wealth. Widows were equally important in the transmission and accumulation of slaves, as one further example from Mosselbanks Rivier shows (see Figure 1.2). In 1800 Johannes Nicolaas Louw (brother of Jacobus Gideon Louw, owner of Wolwedans, 1797–1810126 ) purchased Kalbaskraal.127 At the time of his death, c.1819, Louw owned 36 slaves.128

The Making of the Cape Gentry

Figure 1.2

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Slave ownership, Kalbaskraal, 1800–1834.

Seventeen of these slaves were transferred to Louw’s widow, Maria Magdalena Heydenrych, while the rest were sold to other individuals.129 Heydenrych then married one Floris Smit who in turn took title to Kalbaskraal as well as all of Heydenrych’s slaves.130 Heydenrych survived her second husband, Floris Smit, and at the time of the general emancipation of slaves, her accumulated property made her the largest slave-owner (she claimed compensation for 35 slaves) in Mosselbanks Rivier.131 Such patterns of concentration of land- and slave-ownership meant that slaves could experience a significant degree of residential stability, a fact to which Robert Shell has alluded.132 Susanna Francina van Aarden, the matriarch of Wolwedans, was clearly concerned with her legacy in this regard. Between 1797 and 1824, she drew up four wills, in addition to the one she signed with her first husband in 1761.133 By 1824, having survived two husbands (Dirk Verwey and Jan Jurgen Kotze), she was a person of some means. At this time her nett assets (excluding slaves) amounted to 108 751 guilders, most of which was made up of outstanding loans to relatives. But one of Van Aarden’s main concerns was to retain slaves within her lineage. As early as 1793 she had disposed of most of her slaves by giving one to each of her children, and she further stipulated that ownership of these slaves was in turn to devolve to her grandchildren. Thus the rapid turnover of property that the fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier witnessed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conceals an underlying stability. The examples cited above all point to the relative stability of eighteenth-century wealth. Land may have changed hands regularly, but subsequent owners were frequently

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related by marriage. Families were not necessarily tied to specific estates, but it is evident that they were tied to localities. Women (and widows in particular) were central to ensuring the preservation of landed and slave wealth. 134 Marriages within relatively limited geographical boundaries helped to limit the destructive effects of partible inheritance. All in all, familial and residential propinquity built local communities and an intricate web of community relations. Undoubtedly, the landed elite was in the forefront of such networks. It is clear, therefore, that a stable, localised, self-reproducing elite existed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Cape Colony. This class can indeed be called gentry. The fluid ownership histories of farms suggest that a narrow search for landed stability down the male line will yield limited results. Yet although inheritance might not have been as direct (that is, down the male line) and of obvious importance as it was in the Anglo-Saxon world where primogeniture prevailed, it clearly comes into focus if we include settler women in our analysis. Frequently these women enter the colonial records only in relation to their spouses, whether the latter were dead or alive. But partible inheritance gave them control over significant amounts of property, both landed and human, and it was their control over such property that secured the stability of the colonial Cape’s landed elite. The stability of landed and slave wealth thus attained enabled slave-owners successfully to increase agrarian output as well as their slaveholdings year after year.135

Colonial authority and the rule of law The Cape gentry, however, were a colonial ruling class. More than anything else, their power rested on the ownership of slaves. If each generation could not pick up exactly where their parents had left off, wealth could, as the free black Willem Stolts showed, nevertheless be accumulated rapidly. Stolts knew only too well that his success in arable farming depended on increasing his holding of slaves. Quite simply, slaves were acquired for the primary purpose of being put to work. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then, wheat and wine production in the Cape Colony was carried out with primitive technology under labour-intensive slave regimes.136 To sustain a labour regime of this nature required a considerable amount of coercion, much of which was violent in the extreme. On the

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homesteads of the Dutch Cape, slaves and slave-owners were locked in permanent conflict. Bound to a commercial world over which they had little control, slaveholders were driven to make good on their investment in slaves. But the slaves surrendered their labour only grudgingly and were determined to limit the demands placed on them. As a consequence they were routinely beaten, whipped and deprived of the basic requirements for human well-being. Despite legions of travellers proclaiming the ‘mild’ nature of the slave regime at the Cape, the Colony’s most senior legal officer acknowledged in 1813 ‘that the Generality of slaves always incline to dissolute conduct.’ Slaves, he continued, ‘would readily oppose their masters and shake off the yoke of slavery, even at the expense of the life of the master in case they were not kept in order by fear & domestic restraint.’137 And the sjambok, a rod made of animal hide capable of causing severe pain, served the purpose of keeping slaves in fear. At least one was to be found in every slave-owning household.138 In its absence, authority evaporated. ‘In general,’ Worden has written, ‘the use or the threat of force dominated the relationship between master and slave and assured the authority of the former.’ 139 In controlling and disciplining their labour force, slaveholders had considerable support from the VOC. However much enmity might have existed between Company and colonists, they were united in their commitment to the exploitation of slave labour. Foremost on the agenda of the VOC and settlers alike was the maintenance of high levels of agricultural production. There can be no doubt that the VOC, ‘a state within a state’,140 stood as the central guarantor of the continued exploitation of slave and Khoisan labour. To this end the Company had in place an elaborate body of law meant to ensure slave compliance. The ferocity with which the state responded to attempts by slaves and servants to throw off the bonds of their domination, in addition to the latitude given to slave-owners in the ‘domestic correction’ of recalcitrant labourers, clearly point to this basic fact. Indeed, the role of the state in maintaining slavery was not incidental but crucial – slavery disintegrated wherever state support was absent.141 The law was in the main derived from Roman precedent, but in addition there were regulations issued in the form of local placaats (statutes). Between 1692 and 1784 a number of these regulations were

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published, of which the codes of 1740 and 1754 were the most comprehensive.142 As in slave societies throughout the world, the law was meant to ensure the authority of the masters. Most of all, violence by slaves against the persons of their owners could not be tolerated. An article in the slave code of 1754 stipulated that if ‘a slave or slave woman should go so far as to lift his or her hands at his or her master or mistress . . . he or she is to be punished with death without mercy’.143 But in colonial South Africa, slave-owners were not completely above the law. Roman law, which had always made some provision for bringing slaves under the control of the state, did not deny the slave a legal personality.144 The slave in Roman law was not only property or res (object of rights), but also persona, by which Roman lawyers meant human being.145 Moreover, as a consequence of the Company’s desire to retain some control over the settler population, slaves were granted limited rights. Slaves (and Khoi) had the right to take complaints of ill-treatment to local authorities, although they ran the risk of physical punishment if these claims were deemed to be ‘unfounded’.146 Most importantly, slave-owners did not have the right of life or death over their slaves. A slave-owner who killed his or her slave ‘was to be punished corporally or otherwise, according to the circumstances of the case’.147 The rights accorded to slaves and servants tended to compete with the moral economy of the slave-holding class. A central pillar of this moral economy was their view that proprietary rights in slaves should override Roman law’s recognition of the slave as person.148 As far as slave-owners were concerned, they were at liberty to treat their slaves as they deemed fit.149 As much as they needed the state to bolster and maintain their authority, they resented its interference in the masterslave relationship. In 1805 one slave-owner went so far as to claim that he was both ‘Fiscal and Landdrost’, that he alone, in other words, had the right to judge his treatment of the slaves under his command.150 In short, the intrusion of the state in master-slave relations was seen as a violation of the rights of the patriarchal household. The representatives of Company law in the countryside were the boards of landdrosts and heemraden. Landdrosts were salaried officials of the VOC who effectively acted as rural judges. In cases that came before the Court of Justice in Cape Town they served as public prosecutors. Heemraden were unsalaried and chosen from amongst the most notable

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land- and slave-owners in their respective districts. It was a testimony to the success of the Cape gentry that a few select families dominated these posts. In Stellenbosch district, for instance, the names of Hoffman, Morkel, Faure, Cloete and Wium recur repeatedly. There was considerable scope for conflict between landdrosts as VOC officials on the one hand, and heemraden and settlers on the other. A Commission of Inquiry found in 1826 that landdrosts, in their roles as prosecutors, ‘received but feeble assistance from the Heemraden’. The latter’s ‘views of impartiality or of justice in cases in which the coloured classes were engaged before them, were much perverted by the prejudices and habits that have become almost hereditary’. On occasion, bridges between landdrosts and settlers were built very successfully. Invariably, settler regard for landdrosts hinged on how much freedom they were granted in the exploitation of their servile labour force. There can be little doubt that Constant van Nult Onkruijdt, who was appointed landdrost of Swellendam in 1782, had close ties with settlers on the Swellendam frontier. By this time settler expansion had strained the Khoikhoi communities of the Overberg region to the point of collapse. Thus when Jan Paerl, a certain ‘Khoikhoi prophet’, was rumoured to be preaching the impending doom of Dutch colonial rule and the restoration of indigenous lands, his vision found a receptive audience amongst the Khoisan population. (The slaves of the region were understandably less taken in.) The day of 25 October 1788 was set aside on which the servile class would rise, kill all Europeans and await the new dawn.151 Not all believed the rumours, though, and Van der Graaff, the colonial Governor, was certainly sceptical about Paerl’s existence. He consequently engaged Van Nult Onkruijdt in a lengthy correspondence which went to the heart of Company policy with regard to the Khoikhoi. At issue were different visions of colonial rule. Van der Graaff believed that colonial stability would be best attained if the Khoikhoi were allowed a measure of independence. Van Nult Onkruijdt, on the other hand, clearly sought to advance settler interests at all costs. In the end, the local settler agenda won out. The Dutch authorities raided a number of Khoikhoi kraals (homesteads), took possession of many weapons and quelled any uprising before it had even got off the ground. The new dawn failed to materialise. Paerl all but disappeared (he does not enter

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the colonial record until some time later); the trekboers carried out a number of reprisals and entrenched their hold on conquered land.152 Paerl could well have been a creation of the settler imagination.153 In other instances, the bonds between landdrosts and settlers were more tenuous. The first landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, Woeke, was ignominiously fired in 1792 not only because of his apparent addiction to alcohol – on one occasion while on commando he was so drunk that he fell off his horse – but mainly because of his failure to convince settlers, and especially the ‘rebellious cabal’ led by the notorious Adriaan van Jaarsveld, that he had their interests at heart.154 Honoratus Maynier, Woeke’s successor, who had a hand in the latter’s dismissal, fell out with frontier settlers even more dramatically. Even though Maynier did his best to strengthen commandos against the ‘Bushmen’ and Xhosa, he was nevertheless alert to the dangers of allowing violence against Khoisan servants to spiral out of control.155 As a result, he entertained complaints made against trekboers by Khoi servants. In the parlance of the trekboers, Maynier had opened his doors to the ‘heathen’ – a policy that earned him the reputation of being the ‘attorney’ and ‘nephew’ of Khoisan servants.156 The upshot was that in February 1795 Adriaan van Jaarsveld and a number of other frontier settlers took over the administration of the district after forcibly removing Maynier from office. It was not until August 1799, a few years after the British had taken possession of the Colony, and in the midst of a general uprising of Khoikhoi and Xhosa, that Maynier was able to return to his post. His main task was to restore order to the troubled frontier. One of his proposals to this end was to register contracts between trekboers and Khoi servants as a way of ameliorating the working conditions of Khoi. Authorities in remote frontier regions were thus not only less able and willing to police their respective districts, but were also more prone to settler pressure. The Circuit Court that visited the district of George in 1812 heard from slaves and servants that ‘they seldom or never had seen any magistrate in their districts’. The office of the landdrost was ‘so far off, that a slave could not get there, to make a complaint’.157 From the mission station at Bethelsdorp the Reverend van der Kemp charged that the landdrost and heemraden of his district ‘showed themselves to be friends, relations, and even complices [sic]’ of those trekboers accused of ill-treating their Khoi servants. Their ‘flagitious conduct’ was of such a

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nature that ‘no stronger encouragement can be given, no wider door opened for the guilty to go on in adding crimes to crimes, no means contrived better calculated to deter the plaintiffs from submitting again their complaints.’ The situation was aggravated by the fact that veldcornets were frequently the ‘ringleaders in these oppressions’.158 Justice for the servile population, slaves as well as Khoisan servants, was further impeded by the fact that landdrosts were susceptible to bribery. For example, when Gerrit Visser of Tulbagh stood accused of killing Marsitrie, a ‘bastard Hottentot’, he made a gift of 125 sheep to his landdrost, H. van de Graaff. In return Van de Graaff did his best to bury the case.159 The Circuit Court of 1812 must have had such instances in mind when it found that some landdrosts, ‘in order to obtain sufficient subsistence according to the requisites of their office,’ were forced ‘to make use of means, not at all consistent with the dignity of the situation of Landdrost.’ It was clear that landdrosts were ‘not fully independent’,160 a situation that frequently worked to the detriment of slaves and servants.

Moral community, honour and reputation It would be a mistake, however, to see nothing but collusion between landdrosts, heemraden and settlers. It was the ability of the leading slaveholders to mediate the way in which the law operated – to give specific content and particular meaning to the rule of law161 – that defined them as landed gentry. And it was above all through the language of community, reputation, and honour that the gentry defined the rule of law. In doing so, they positioned themselves as guardians of the social order. The leading slaveholders knew that uncontrolled violence against the servile population would destroy any possibility of sustaining a moral hegemony. There were distinct practical reasons for limiting the violence of settlers against slaves. Michiel Otto, who early in the century was renowned for his brutality, lost many of his slaves to desertion. On numerous occasions he had to face the law as a consequence of illtreating his slaves and in the end was forced to quit farming altogether.162 As the leading slave-owners explained to Governor van Plettenberg in 1776, the ill-treatment of the servile population could only lead to ‘huge misfortune for the general welfare’.163 The decision as to whether slave-owners were prosecuted thus depended in the first instance on the wishes of local authorities. It was

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one thing for Roman law to recognise the essential humanity of slaves by according them rights in law and for the Company to limit the absolute authority of settlers over the servile population; it was quite another to put these theoretical rights into practice. In this regard, the Company was ultimately dependent on the authority of local gentries. Landdrosts and heemraden had considerable powers of patronage at their disposal. These relations of patronage bore on the zeal with which they prosecuted their cases, their interpretation of Roman law and various local statutes, their understanding of what constituted proper relations between masters and slaves and their assessments of individual reputations. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of the formation of a gentry class was the extent to which settlers could mobilise the support of local authorities. Landed society, as we have seen, was defined in large measure by residential and familial propinquity. These were moral communities, in the sense that individuals had to conform to certain acceptable standards of behaviour. In such communities, individual reputations and shame – ‘that concern for the good opinion of one’s neighbours and friends’164 – mattered. Cape settlers were clearly concerned about their good names, for large numbers of cases of libel and defamation were heard from the very earliest days of the Colony’s history. ‘As early as the year 1682,’ one report noted, ‘the attention of the local Government was drawn to the frequent occurrence of cases of defamation before the Highest Court and since that period they do not appear to have much diminished.’ Such cases ‘were especially frequent amongst the Inhabitants of the Districts whose colloquial intercourse is marked with expressions of peculiar coarseness’.165 And few things could be more damaging to reputation than to be known for excessively cruel treatment of one’s slaves and servants. A Stellenbosch settler who was found guilty in 1789 of keeping his slaves in chains begged the landdrost ‘with tearful eyes, that he not be brought before the Council of Justice and thereby bring shame upon himself and all his family and bearers of his name’.166 In 1826 a number of Stellenbosch residents made it known that any slave-owner who was condemned for cruelty towards slaves stood to lose ‘his whole credit and reputation’.167 For such reasons slave-owners were particularly annoyed when their slaves complained to neighbours.168

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Excessively cruel slave-owners suffered community censure. Johannes Kuuhn, for instance, had clearly violated the moral boundaries of what constituted acceptable treatment of slaves when, on one occasion around 1770, he undressed a slave who had deserted and had him brushed down with a curry-comb from neck to buttocks. On another occasion, Kuuhn had tied a slave to a harrow and beat him without a break for one-and-a-half hours. Such behaviour had led to rumours about Kuuhn’s vicious treatment of slaves; as a consequence he could not rely on the favourable testimony of his fellow settlers when his actions landed him in court.169 The gentry’s success, then, lay in the fact that they made matters of individual reputation central to the prosecution of criminal cases brought against slaveholders accused of ill-treating or killing their slaves. The issue of reputation was of particular importance, for in many cases slaves and Khoi were the only ones who could give decisive evidence and the admissibility of their testimony was crucial. It is not entirely true that the Court of Justice gave more or less equal weight to the testimony of slaves and settlers.170 In fact, considerable confusion reigned in the Cape law courts with regard to the issue of slave testimony. In 1827 a Commission of Inquiry spent some time on the question. The Commissioners found that the evidence of slaves, Khoikhoi ‘and persons of similar condition’ had always ‘been received by way of information, and not of proof’ and ‘such evidence has been at all times open to objections’.171 The uncertainty was to be found in the fact that local authorities were highly selective in the extent to which they accepted slave testimony. In 1771 the landdrost of Stellenbosch stated that the law with regard to slave testimony was ‘fixed’. He argued that ‘the deposition of a heathen is valid when there are no other means of arriving at the truth’. On this occasion the landdrost of Stellenbosch was concerned to reject a slaveowner’s claim to the right of life and death over her slaves and instead sought to emphasise the humanity of slaves.172 In his case against Hester Pienaar he went so far as to state that the ‘law of God’ drew ‘no distinction . . . between slaves and free persons’. The slave was a ‘fellow person’, he noted, and it was the duty of slave-owners to treat their slaves ‘with compassion’.173 The acceptance of slave testimony came to depend, by and large, on the assessment of individual reputations. In this way, unruly slaveholders

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could be disciplined.174 Thus in 1794 H.L. Bletterman, the last landdrost to serve the VOC in the district of Stellenbosch, insisted on prosecuting one Jan Caldeyer for ill-treating the slave girl Candase. He took this position mainly because Caldeyer was known as one ‘who had to be repeatedly corrected over the ill-treatment of his slaves’.175 In 1796 another slaveholder, Pieter Roux, stood accused of killing one of his slaves. Roux insisted that his neighbours and the Court of Justice knew him as someone who was used to treating his slaves ‘in accordance with the duties of a Christian’. But the landdrost disagreed with Roux’s assessment of his own reputation and had no difficulty in accepting the testimonies of slaves. Roux’s reputation was tainted by the fact that this was not the first time that he had made himself guilty of a crime of this nature.176 Slave-owners found guilty of killing their slaves could expect to be fined or, in extreme cases, banished from the Colony. Banishment was largely reserved for those of evil repute. It was, as the 1827 Commission found, ‘peculiarly applicable to those who may have contributed by the notoriety or the nature of their offences to awaken the animosity or hatred of members of a small community’.177 Slave-owners were spared capital punishment on the grounds that Roman law demanded that intent be proven before capital punishment could be inflicted, an argument that was reinforced by the idea that slave-owners would not wantonly damage their own property.178 This was not an argument, of course, that could be applied to the killing of Khoi servants. As we have seen, the Company had always drawn a distinction between slaves and Khoikhoi and emphasised the fact that the latter were not to be enslaved. It can only be for this reason that Hans Jurgen Kettenaar of the Hottentots Holland was sentenced to death in 1767 for killing the ‘bastard Hottentot’ Meij.179 In this case the landdrost specifically argued that the question of premeditation was irrelevant.180 Two days after the Court of Justice passed its sentence, Kettenaar was executed.181 It follows that if those without honour were most likely to be condemned by the legal system, then those who were not tainted with ill reputations stood to benefit. Such slave-owners could take maximum advantage of the legal uncertainty with regard to the question of slave testimony. In the absence of legal clarity they could make claims to

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standing and reputation. It is for this reason that Dirk Gysbert Verwey of Wolwedans walked free after he was charged in 1793 with killing the slave Laberlot. Verwey, as we have seen, was a long-standing member of the slaveholding community of Mosselbanks Rivier. Bletterman advanced three Roman law principles all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, rejected the validity of slave evidence.182 The Lex 6 Codicus de questionibus, perhaps the most straightforward of the three, put the matter very simply: ‘without any doubt, no slave may be heard for or against his master’. On these grounds Bletterman rejected the testimonies of the slaves who brought the case to the attention of the Court of Justice in Cape Town and ordered them to be flogged and returned to their master. There can be little doubt of Bletterman’s partiality. Not only was he unconcerned by the fact that Verwey had the slave buried without a suitable post mortem examination, a violation of the law in itself, but he was also prepared to go against a medical report (conducted after the body was exhumed on the orders of the Court of Justice) that found evidence of severe ill-treatment. But the matter did not end here: the Court of Justice and the prosecuting landdrost were clearly at odds. Unprepared to accept Bletterman’s case, the Court of Justice ordered him to conduct a more thorough investigation. In the end, however, Bletterman got his way. The best that the Court of Justice could do was to spare Laberlot’s fellow slaves corporal punishment. It ordered Verwey to treat his slaves ‘in a proper manner’ in future. Clearly, to local authorities individual reputations mattered above all else. The single most important factor that came to bear in Verwey’s case was that he was someone known to treat his slaves well. Dirk Gysbert Verwey’s acquittal was both a victory for the local gentry and an instance in the making of its power. But less than twenty years later, the Cape gentry found such victories harder to come by. How and why this should have been the case is the subject of the next chapter.

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Notes 1. PRO WO 1/326, Macartney – Dundas, 17 July 1797. 2. CA CJ 75, Landdrost of Stellenbosch to Court of Justice in case of D.G. Verwey, 4 July 1793, 132ff. 3. N. Worden, E. van Heyningen, V. Bickford-Smith, Cape Town, The Making of a City: An Illustrated History (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998), pp. 19–20. 4. Worden, Van Heyningen, Bickford-Smith, Cape Town, p. 26. 5. Cited in N. Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), p. 129. 6. W. Dooling, ‘The Castle: its Place in the History of Cape Town in the VOC Period’, Studies in the History of Cape Town, 7, 1994, pp. 10–11. 7. C.P. Thunberg, Travels at the Cape of Good Hope, 1772–1775 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1986), p. 51. 8. CA CJ 293, 5 March 1690, folio 269 ff. 9. CA VC 9, 27 November, 310. 10. Archives of the Union of South Africa, Suid Afrikaanse Argiefstukke: Kaap, 10 volumes (Cape Town: Government Printer, 1957–1984), 1 November 1718, p. 310. 11. The sailor Heinrich Schumann, for example, attained freeburgher status in 1734, ten years after his arrival in the Colony: K. Schoeman, Die Laaste Afrikaanse Boek: Outobiografiese Aantekeninge (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 2002), p. 17. 12. Knechten were Company servants temporarily hired out to freeburghers. 13. O.F. Mentzel, Life at the Cape in the Mid-eighteenth Century, Being the Biography of Rudolf Siegfried Allemann (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1919), p. 150. 14. Mentzel, Cape in the Mid-eighteenth Century, p. 150. 15. S. Newton-King, Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 11. 16. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 11. 17. P.J. Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony, 1657–1842 (translated by R.B. Beck, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995), p. 3. 18. Cited in Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 8. 19. Cited in Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 8. 20. Worden, Van Heyningen, Bickford-Smith, Cape Town, p. 20. 21. A unit of measure roughly equivalent to one hectolitre. 22. Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 10. 23. R. Ross, Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), p. 24. 24. Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 16; L. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1652–1780’ in R. Elphick and H. Giliomee (eds.), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 (2nd edition, Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989), p. 80. 25. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’ in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 79; see also Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 88. 26. PRO CO 48/13, M.G. Gie on behalf of J.P. Baumgardt, Receiver of Land Revenue – C. Bird, 23 November 1810. 27. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 94; NewtonKing, Masters and Servants, p. 61. 28. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 85.

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29. Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 138. 30. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 66; N. Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1985), p. 11. 31. R. Elphick and V. Malherbe, ‘The Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 17. 32. Elphick and Malherbe, ‘Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, pp. 7–22. 33. The introduction of European diseases to the Cape had nowhere near the catastrophic effect it had on the indigenous populations of the Americas following the ‘Columbian Exchange’. As in the Americas, however, its consequences should not be separated from the first reality of colonial conquest. It was the combination of disease with military action, enslavement, and outright massacres that led to the depopulation of the Americas. As David Stannard, has argued, human action – not smallpox and influenza – was responsible for ‘the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world’. D.E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. x. For a different view, see A.W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Connecticut, 1972). 34. Historians and archaeologists have employed the term ‘Khoisan’ to reflect the ambiguous identity of the people of the interior. As Elphick and Malherbe put it, ‘Confusion in terminology reflected confusion in reality.’ Elphick and Malherbe, ‘Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 25. Some were pastoral Khoikhoi who had retreated with the expanding settler frontier; others were people the Dutch called Bosjesmans and historians have taken to calling ‘Bushmen’, huntergatherers who had inhabited the region for thousands of years before the arrival of the Dutch. Although the extent of fluidity between these categories is a matter of some debate, it is nevertheless clear that there was some movement between huntergatherers and Khoikhoi who had lost their cattle. 35. Elphick and Malherbe, ‘Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 26. For a statement on the genocidal consequences of commando activities, see Newton-King, Masters and Servants, pp. 105–15, esp. p. 112. 36. Elphick and Malherbe, ‘Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 26. 37. P.J. van der Merwe, Die Noordwaardse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek, 1770– 1842 (Pretoria: State Library, 1988), pp. 1–3. 38. The most detailed account of this subject is to be found in Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, pp. 10–67; See also Mostert, Frontiers, pp. 219–23. 39. J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1968), p. 17. 40. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Aboriginal Tribes, British Settlements, 1837, South Africa, pp. 29ff. 41. D. Moodie, The Record, or a Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1960), Part III, p. 101. 42. PRO CO 48/2, Collins – Caledon, 30 May 1808. 43. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 112; Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 17. 44. Moodie, The Record, Part V, ‘Journal of a Tour to the North-Eastern Boundary, the Orange River, and the Storm Mountains, by Colonel Collins, in 1809’, p. 7.

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45. At the time of the British occupation the rixdollar was valued at four British shillings, although its value declined steadily. See Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. xv. 46. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 106; Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, p. 16. 47. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 112. 48. Cited in Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 115. 49. See J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 29. 50. O.F. Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, 3 volumes (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1921 and 1925), volume III, p. 110. 51. H. Giliomee, ‘The Eastern Frontier, 1770–1812’ in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 456. 52. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 154. 53. Cited in Van der Merwe, The Migrant Farmer, p. 161. 54. This is the central theme of Newton-King’s Masters and Servants. 55. Moodie, The Record, Part III, p. 101. 56. Moodie, The Record, Part III, p. 101. 57. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 118. 58. PRO CO 48/13, Report of the Commission of Circuit, 28 February 1812, p. 239ff. 59. CA CO 60, Cloete – Cradock, Report of the Commission of Circuit, 4 May 1814. 60. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 122. Andries Stockenström wrote in 1822 that those captured in war in time ‘become the most useful herds, assist the farmer in every other business, till at length they are as it were confounded with the Hottentots, often bind themselves voluntarily by contracts, and enjoy the full protection of the laws, which indeed they do from their first coming among the colonists’. Cited in Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, pp. 166–7. 61. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 128. 62. This is the implicit assumption in Newton-King’s argument which, however, is undermined by her claim that relations on the frontier ‘had been shaped within the dominant slave mode of production’ (Masters and Servants, pp. 135–7). 63. Worden, Slavery, pp. 26–7. 64. Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 15. 65. Worden, Slavery, p. 11, Table 2.1. 66. Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 20. 67. Worden, Slavery, pp. 11–12. 68. Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 20. 69. Worden, Slavery, pp. 28–31. 70. Worden, Slavery, p. 29. 71. Worden, Slavery, p. 31. 72. Worden, Slavery, Table 3.1, p. 29. 73. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 81. 74. Worden, Slavery, pp. 33–6. 75. Worden, Slavery, pp. 32–3. 76. Worden, Slavery, p. 32. 77. Worden, Slavery, p. 31. 78. CA J188; MOOC 8/8, no. 5, Inventory in estate of J. Blignault and A. Rossouw, 18 April 1752. 79. Worden, Slavery, p. 31.

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80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87.

88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

93.

53

G15-1865, Report of the Law of Inheritance Commission for the Western Districts. Guelke, ‘Freehold Farmers’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 81. See note 86. See note 88. DO, Transfer Deed no. 75, 3 September 1751; Transfer Deed no. 38, 18 March 1757; Transfer Deed no. 167, 29 October 1782; Transfer Deed no. 139, 1 May 1797; Transfer Deed no. 157, 14 April 1810; Transfer Deed no. 100, 20 August 1819; Transfer Deed no. 101, 20 August 1819; Transfer Deed no. 44, 15 July 1825; Transfer Deed no. 72, 16 October 1835. The owners of Wolwedans were as follows: Barend Lubbe (1715–1726), Willem Stolts, free black (1726–1751), Jacobus van Aarden (1751–1757), Dirk Verwey (1757– 1782), Dirk Gysbert Verwey (1782–1797), Jacobus Gideon Louw (1797–1810), Hendrik Brand (1810–1819), Thomas Fredrik Dreyer (1819-1819), Hugo Hendrik Mostert (1819– 1825), Nicolaas Everhardus Mostert (1825–1835), Christaan Lodewyk Wicht (1835– 1838). DO, Transfer Deed no. 68, 19 August 1751; Transfer Deed no. 116, 25 June 1760, Transfer Deed no. 33, 15 August 1764; Transfer Deed no. 53, 14 April 1792; Transfer Deed no. 86, 21 November 1796; Transfer Deed no. 189, 29 December 1797; Transfer Deed no. 197, 22 July 1800; Transfer Deed no. 97, 28 September 1803; Transfer Deed no. 102, 28 September 1803; Transfer Deed no. 405, 7 October 1808; Transfer Deed no. 494, 19 October 1810; Transfer Deed no. 135, 6 November 1812; Transfer Deed no. 136, 6 November 1812; Transfer Deed no. 127, 27 November 1829; Transfer Deed no. 147, 2 December1831; Transfer Deed no. 131, 13 February 1835; Transfer Deed no. 73, 25 July 1835. DO, Transfer Deed no. 45, 22 March 1757; Transfer Deed no. 10, 10 January1769; Transfer Deed no. 39, 8 February 1811; Transfer Deed no. 42, 31 January 1812; Transfer Deed no. 39, 5 May 1815. DO, Transfer Deed no. 71, 25 November 1763; Transfer Deed no. 174, 9 October 1773; Transfer Deed no. 110, 11 July 1782; Transfer Deed no. 76, 16 March 1785; Transfer Deed no. 103, 11 November 1825; Transfer Deed no. 323, 16 December 1835. CA MOOC 13/1/3, no.117, Liquidation and Distribution Account in estate of Jan Blignault and Anna Russouw, 8 August 1757. CA MOOC 10/6, no. 50, Inventory in estate of Jan Blignault, 23–27 May 1752. According to Worden, between 60 and 70 per cent of all slaves sold at the auctions of deceased estates were sold to ‘outsiders’: Worden, Slavery, p. 50. Susan Newton-King has argued that the term ‘gentry’ ‘properly belongs to a group of families who have consolidated their position over several generations – whose wealth has a dynastic quality in other words’. On the northern frontier, she suggests, ‘inherited wealth was not the decisive factor in an individual’s rise to social and economic prominence in frontier society’. Furthermore, it ‘has not yet been satisfactorily proven that such a group existed in the arable districts’. S. NewtonKing, ‘In Search of Notability: The Antecedents of David van der Merwe of the Koue Bokkeveld’, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, The Societies of Southern Africa, Collected Seminar Papers, 20, 1994, p. 26. A. Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 85–8. On the relative importance of primogeniture in the American colonies see, C.R. Keim,

54

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

113.

114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

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‘Primogeniture and Entail in Colonial Virginia’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XXV, 1968, pp. 545–68; H. Brewer, ‘Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: “Ancient Feudal Restraints” and Revolutionary Reform’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, LIV, 1997, pp. 307–46. Families are defined here as those persons sharing the same last name. R. Ross, ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 1983, p. 207. Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description, p. 98. Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description, pp. 101–2. Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description, p. 106. CA MOOC 8/8, no. 46, Inventory in estate of J.M. Coors and J. Coetzee, 8 July 1758. CA MOOC 8/9, no. 1, Inventory in estate of J. Steenkamp and H. van Heere, 21 February 1759. CA MOOC 8/10, no. 15, Inventory in estate of S.S. Walter and M. Lombaard, 8 January 1762. CA MOOC 8/8, no. 5, Inventory in estate of J. Blignault and A. Rossouw, 18 April 1752. CA MOOC 8/10, no. 38, Inventory in estate of H. van der Merwe and M. Fik, 8 December 1762. CA MOOC 8/11, no. 20, Inventory in estate of J. Louw and E. Morkel, 16 February 1762. CA J 188, opgaaf of Willem Stolts. CA CJ 2602, no. 11, Testament of ‘Steijntje’ (Christina) de Bruijn, 11 July 1723. D. Brading, Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajio: Leon, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 119, 145. In the practice of primogeniture, the English were virtually unique amongst the landed classes of early modern Europe. See for example, W. Wagner, Marriage, Property and Law in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 235. G15-1865, Report of the Law of Inheritance Commission for the Western Districts; A7-1867, Report of the Select Committee on the Law of Inheritance Bill. The Friend of the Free State and Bloemfontein Gazette, ‘The Law of Inheritance’, 18 January 1895. S.E. Katzenellenbogen, ‘Reconstruction in the Transvaal’, in P. Warwick (ed.), The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (London: Longman, 1980), p. 350; See also T. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg, 1986), p. 39 V. Kivelson, ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance: Gentry Families and the State in Muscovy’, The Russian Review, 53, 1994, p. 206; V. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 115. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces, pp. 4, 38–9, 47, 115. Kivelson, ‘Effects of Partible Inheritance’, p. 206. CA J188, opgaaf of widow of François du Toit, Drakenstein District, 1732. CA MOOC 8/7, Inventory no. 71 and no. 71½, 24 December 1748. These were buildings and improvements on fixed property and theoretically the only property that had value and that could be transferred.

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119. CA MOOC 8/9, Inventory no. 21, 4 August 1755; CA MOOC 8/8, Inventory no. 8 and no. 8½, 22 May 1755. 120. For use of the term ‘widowarchy’ in the Cape context, see H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London: Hurst, 2003), p. 38. 121. See R. Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London: Routledge, 1983), pp. 23–4. 122. The guilder was a money of account. 2.4 rixdollars made up 1 guilder. 123. J. Hoge, ‘Martin Melck’, Tydskrif vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 12, 1933–34, pp. 198–209. 124. C. Pama and C. de Villiers, Geslagregisters van die Ou Kaapse Families, 2 volumes (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1981). 125. Pama and De Villiers, Geslagregisters. 126. See notes 84 and 85. 127. DO, Transfer Deed no. 354, 1 November 1800. 128. CA MOOC 8/33, Inventory no. 58, 16 June 1819. 129. SO 6/92, Slave Register, Stellenbosch, folios 10, 11. 130. DO, Transfer Deed no. 187, 23 November 1821; CA SO 6/93, Slave Register, Stellenbosch, folio 96. 131. CA SO, 20/13, Valuation of slaves in fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier for purpose of compensation, Claim no. 3753. 132. R.C-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). pp. 110– 14. 133. CA NCD 2/5, 7 November 1797; no. 82; NCD 9/4, 29 May 1804; CA MOOC 7/ 1/92, 28 January 1824, no. 20; MOOC 7/1/17, 27 June 1761, no. 4. 134. This is a point first made by M. Hall, ‘The Secret Lives of Houses: Women and Gables in the Eighteenth-century Cape’, Social Dynamics, 20, 1994, pp. 1–48. 135. Bankruptcy in the eighteenth century appears to have been rare. Mentzel claimed to have witnessed only three bankruptcies during his eight-year stay at the Cape, and these were in any case in the relatively less fertile Bottelary region: Mentzel, Geographical and Topographical Description, III, p. 58. 136. Worden, Slavery, pp. 20–2. 137. PRO CO 48/22, Denyssen – Cradock, 16 March 1813, p.171ff. 138. Worden, Slavery, p. 106. 139. Worden, Slavery, p. 105. 140. C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 24. 141. P. Kolchin, ‘Some Recent Work on Slavery Outside the United States: An American Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28, 1986, p. 777. 142. PRO CO 48/120, Commissioners of Enquiry, 1827, Cape of Good Hope, Report on Criminal Law and Jurisprudence, 18 August 1827; G.M. Theal (ed.), Records of the Cape Colony (hereafter RCC), 36 volumes (London: Clowes and Son, 1897–1905), volume XXXIII, pp. 1–388; Worden, Slavery, p. 115. 143. K.M. Jeffreys (ed.), Kaapse Plakkaatboek, 6 volumes (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1944– 49), volume 3, p. 2. 144. K.R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: a Study in Social Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 126. 145. W.W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908).

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146. See W. Dooling, Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c.1760–1820 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1992), pp. 34–6. 147. J.A. Van der Chijs, Nederlandsh-Indisch Plakaatboek, 1602–1811, 17 volumes (Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1885-1900), volume IX, p. 576. 148. The idea of a ‘moral economy’ was, introduced by E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 50, 1971, pp. 76–136. I use the term here rather to describe the ‘class confidence, sense of hierarchy, biblical authority and political strength’ of a ruling class: P. Delius and S. Trapido, ‘Inboekselings and Oorlams: the Creation and Transformation of a Servile Class”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 8, 2, 1982, p. 219, note 15. 149. The Cape Patriots, those slaveholders who mobilized against the VOC’s monopolistic practices, were quite explicit about this: Ross, ‘Rise of the Cape Gentry’, p. 211. 150. CA CJ, Sentence in case of Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Adam van de Caab, 21 February 1805, folio 327ff. 151. R. Viljoen, ‘ “Land of Our Forefathers”: Jan Paerl, a Khoikhoi Prophet in Cape Colonial Society, 1761–1851’ (Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University, 2003), pp. 20–8. Paerl’s real identity is a matter of some uncertainty. 152. Viljoen, ‘ “Land of Our Forefathers” ’, pp. 31–7. 153. This is not Viljoen’s view. He argues that Paerl reappeared at Genadendal several years later. It is instructive, however, that none of the ‘believers’ were taken into custody, and that Paerl himself was never found in the aftermath of the attempted uprising. The only evidence that could be delivered to prove Paerl’s material existence was a knife found in some cave, and there is no direct evidence to link him to the person who later appeared at Genadendal. Governor van der Graaff clearly doubted Paerl’s existence and even Van Nult Onkruijdt was left many years later ‘to wonder who he really was’. Cited in Vijoen, ‘ “Land of our Forefathers” ’, p. 47. Paerl may really have been no more than the stuff of rumour. ‘In the fevered imagination of frontiersmen’, Newton-King has written, ‘a few disparate shreds of information could be woven together to form a dense blanket of fear.’ Masters and Servants, p. 145. 154. These were Woeke’s words; cited in J.S. Marais, Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1944), p. 14, note 87. 155. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 144. 156. Marais, Maynier, p. 71; Newton-King, Masters and Servants, p. 144. 157. PRO CO 48/13, Report of Commission of Circuit – Cradock, 28 February 1812, p. 239ff. 158. CA CO 2575, Van der Kemp – Cradock, 14 January 1811. 159. CA CJ 560, Fiscal contra Landdrost van Tulbagh, 29 December 1814, p. 2ff. 160. PRO CO 48/13, Report of Commission of Circuit – Cradock, 28 February 1812, p. 239ff. 161. Robert Ross first argued for the existence of the ‘rule of law’ in colonial South Africa: ‘The Rule of Law at the Cape of Good Hope in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, 1980, pp. 5–16. For an extended critique of this argument, see Dooling, Law and Community, esp. pp. 69–82. 162. Mentzel, Geographical and Topographical Description, pp. 49–50. 163. CA 1/STB 20/2, Landdrost and Heemraden – Joachim van Plettenberg, 6 May 1776.

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164. J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (London: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 17. 165. PRO CO 48/120, Commissioners of Enquiry, Report on Criminal Law & Jurisprudence, 18 August 1827. 166. Cited in Worden, Slavery, p. 114. 167. RCC, 27, Memorial of Residents of Stellenbosch to Landdrost and Heemraden of Stellenbosch, 10 July 1826, pp. 109–16. 168. Carel Fredrik Paret, for instance, chose not to punish his slave, August, after he had deserted on a number of occasions over a four-year period. But when August was brought home by one of his neighbour’s slaves and after August had appealed to the neighbour to speak on his behalf, Paret had him beaten: CA 1/STB 3/13, Testimony of Adonis van Mallebaar, 12 March 1795. 169. CA 1/STB 3/11, Testimony of Josias de Kock, 15 May 1770; CA 1/STB 3/11, Testimony of Christiaan Ernst, 29 May 1770; CA 1/STB 3/11, Testimony of Gerrit Beukes, 29 May 1770. 170. Ross, ‘Rule of Law’, p. 7. 171. RCC, 28, Report of Commissioners of Enquiry upon Criminal Law, pp. 128–9. 172. When her slaves wished to lodge a complaint against her, she told them: ‘Why do you want to complain, I can do with my slaves as I wish! And while it costs me money, I can beat you to death without the authorities being able to do anything.’ CA CJ 400, Eisch en Conclusie of Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Hester Pienaar, 4 April 1771, pp. 170ff. 173. CA CJ 400, Eisch en Conclusie of Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Hester Pienaar, 4 April 1771, pp. 170ff. 174. This analysis draws heavily on the insights of Eugene D. Genovese. Roll, Jordan, Roll: the World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Press, 1974), p. 27. 175. CA CJ 76, Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Jan Anthonij Caldeyer, 2 January 1794, pp. 5ff. 176. CA CJ 78, Pieter Roux – Court of Justice, 22 September 1796, pp.192ff; Landdrost of Stellenbosch – Court of Justice, 6 October 1796, pp. 205ff. 177. RCC, XXXIII, Report of Commissioners of Enquiry upon Criminal Law’, pp. 101. 178. CA CJ 393, Eisch en Conclusie, Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Hendrik Greeff, November 1767, p. 108ff; PRO CO 48/22, Denyssen – Cradock, 16 March 1813. 179. CA CJ 791, Sentence in the case of Hans Jurgen Kettenaar, Christoffel Janssen van Bieleveld, and Cornelis van der Toek, 3 December 1767, no. 38, pp. 419ff. 180. CA CJ 392, Eisch en Conclusie, Landdrost of Stellenbosch contra Hans Jurgen Kettenaar, Christoffel Janssen van Bieleveld, and Cornelis van der Toek, 3 December 1767, pp. 548ff. 181. According to J. Hoge, Kettenaar was banished from the Colony along with his accomplices. It would appear, however, as if Hoge had misread the sources he cites, for they state that Kettenaar was indeed executed on 5 December 1767. J. Hoge, ‘Personalia of the Germans at the Cape, 1652–1806’, Archives Year Book for South African History 9, 1946, p. 199; CA CJ 791, Sentence in the case of Hans Jurgen Kettenaar, Christoffel Janssen van Bieleveld, and Cornelis van der Toek, 3 December 1767, no. 38, pp. 419ff. 182. CA CJ 75, Landdrost of Stellenbosch – Court of Justice in case of D.G. Verwey, 18 July 1793, pp. 150ff.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Bitter-sweet Fruits of British Rule

I have read many books, but have never heard that liberty was obtained in any country without fighting. (Hendrik Hendrikse, Secretary to Adam Kok, 1835)1

I

n July 1812 twenty-five-year-old Jacob van Reenen killed August, a slave belonging to his father, Frederik van Reenen. The incident occurred on the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Oliphantsfontein, not far from where Dirk Gysbert Verwey had killed the slave Laberlot. August’s offence, like Laberlot’s, was having deserted. When he returned, Van Reenen, with the assistance of the other slaves and Khoi servants on the farm, bound August’s hands and feet together and suspended him in this position from an overhead beam in the kitchen of the main house. The punishment did not end there. At 7 o’clock the following morning August was untied and flogged by Van Reenen while five of his fellow slaves held him down. August was shackled and forced out to work in the fields. That night he was made to sleep with his hands and feet tied. The next day he was again put to work. By 5 o’clock that afternoon, however, unable to work any further, August had had enough. But Van Reenen’s brutality seemed to be without bounds. Sjambok in hand he beat August so severely that he was unable to walk back to the house by himself. Groaning with pain, August died in the course of the night.2 Despite the similarity of their cases and the proximity of their homes, Verwey and Van Reenen inhabited different worlds. Unlike Verwey, Van Reenen was not set free; instead, he received a prison sentence of three months. The horror of the incident so impressed the Colony’s British Governor, Sir John Cradock, that he brought the details of the case (the records of which are in excess of 400 pages) to the attention of 58

The Bitter-sweet Fruits of British Rule

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his superiors in London. To Cradock, this case, together with four others, provided evidence of ‘cold-blooded’ cruelty and of acts of ‘barbarity’ on the part of the settler population. Their ‘peculiar character’, he believed, showed the need to ‘revise the laws and judicial proceedings of the Colony.’ The sentences in all these cases, Cradock explained, made a mockery of British justice.3 A revision of judicial proceedings was what was required at a minimum; what Cradock really hoped for, however, was the wholesale introduction of ‘British Jurisprudence and Practice’. There was more at issue here than the desire of a colonial governor to see justice being served. Cradock was only the second governor to rule over the Cape after its conquest by Britain in 1806 and his disquiet went to the heart of the concerns facing the new British administration. As with all invading colonial powers, the main task facing the British government was to impose its particular vision of the world on newly acquired colonial subjects. No less than their Dutch predecessors, the British ruling classes believed in the hierarchical society of their times. But they had fundamentally different views of the means by which hierarchy and colonial stability were to be maintained. The first task facing the British government was to bring order to the unruly colony they had inherited. In parts, the colony had descended into near-chaos. One of the key ways in which they hoped to achieve colonial stability was to provide ‘equal justice’ and ‘equal protection’ to ‘all classes of citizens’.4 The ideology of free trade that dominated British colonial thinking at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought with it a humanitarian zeal that would bring about the abolition of the slave trade, the dispersal of nonconformist missions and attempts to ameliorate the conditions of slaves. Nineteenth-century British humanitarians claimed as their victories the passage in 1828 of Ordinance 50, hailed as the ‘emancipation of the Hottentots’, and the abolition of chattel slavery in December 1834.

The closing of the ‘Bushman’ frontier Probably of most concern to the new government was the disorder that raged on the Colony’s frontiers. The expansion of the trekboer economy had by the end of the eighteenth century clearly reached its limits. The arid desert in the northwest, the settled Xhosa in the east, and the

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‘Bushmen’ in the northeast and northwest combined to put severe pressure on further expansion and brought the trekboers into increased conflict with the Khoisan of the interior. It was clear that the ‘Bushman Wars’ that had commenced in the 1770s were far from over. The first British administration (1795–1803) recognised that the frontier policy of unlimited commandos bent on genocide could not work. The excesses of these commandos were proving to be counter-productive. In 1798 Lord Macartney, the first British civil governor, launched a new ‘Bushman’ policy aimed at conciliation. In later years, the implementation of this new direction in policy fell to Andries Stockenström Junior. Stockenström, landdrost of Graaff-Reinet from 1815 to 1828, showed a degree of enlightenment unusual for his times – he had no doubt that it was the advance of the colonial economy itself that was responsible for the unsettled state of the frontier. ‘He who dates the excesses committed against the Bosjesmen, their reciprocal atrocities and the encroachment on their Territories from the crossing of the old boundary, is either totally ignorant of the history of the Colony or desirous of stigmatising the present generation’, he wrote in 1826. ‘The encroachment on the aborigines began in Cape Town, and never ceased to extend by degrees until the Colonist had to go to where they are now.’5 Thus Stockenström, anxious to curb frontier violence, repeatedly refused large commandos permission to take to the field.6 New commandos against the ‘Bushmen’ were not allowed without special authority. Livestock was collected and handed out to certain kraals in the hope of putting an end to the pattern of raid and counterraid. For the first time, a northern boundary for the Colony was established and the region beyond the Sak River was to be regarded as the inalienable territory of ‘Bushmen’.7 For a while these new policies appeared to bring results. The British soon discovered, however, that the peace that these initiatives promised would prove illusory. In 1807 and 1808 settlers of the frontier regions in the northwestern districts of the Colony complained loudly of continued ‘Bushman incursions’ and requested that commandos be sent against them.8 In addition, ‘Bushman’ attacks in some northeastern regions continued to drive settlers off their farms.9 The new British Governor, Lord Caledon, refused the request for further commandos; instead he despatched an army officer, Major Collins, to tour the northern frontier and to report on conditions there.10

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Collins, for all his colonial prejudices, admitted to the atrocities suffered by the ‘Bushmen’. At the same time he recognised that the policy of attempting to pacify them with grants of livestock was doomed to failure – the transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture was not so easily achieved. Contrary to the spirit of his instructions, Collins proposed that frontier trekboers be given more of a free hand – when attacked, he argued, settlers should be allowed to follow their attackers ‘as far as the borders of the colony, and put the robbers to immediate death’.11 Although Stockenström recognised the limitations of such a policy, he could, in the absence of an alternative force, do little but support those commandos that supposedly went in pursuit ‘on the spur’.12 And although such a policy was meant to ensure that commandos limited themselves to ‘punishing the guilty and not butchering the innocent’, the policy was, in Stockenström’s words, a ‘dangerous authority in the hands of a bloodthirsty leader’.13 It was the commando, then, that conquered the northern frontier. One informant claimed to have taken part in forty-five expeditions between 1784 and 1825.14 By the end of this period no independent ‘Bushman’ settlements were to be found here.15 Indeed, it was under British rule that the ‘Bushmen’ south of the Gariep were finally subdued. Between 1800 and 1824 trekboers occupied some 50 000 square miles of ‘Bushman’ country, and destroyed vast quantities of game along the way.16 By 1832, except for those who had lived with the settlers ‘from infancy’, the ‘Bushmen’ had all but ‘disappeared’.17 A good number of those ‘Bushmen’ who served the trekboers ‘from infancy’ would have been children captured in war and sold for use in the colonial economy.18 Stockenström was keen to put a stop to the trade in ‘Bushman’ children which had clearly arisen. Although he had the foresight to recognise that it could only lead to greater instability on the frontier, an unknown number of ‘Bushmen’ were nevertheless forced into servitude.19 It seems certain that in the early years of the nineteenth century commandos were mounted with the express purpose of taking war captives. There is every reason to doubt the accuracy of accounts provided by commando leaders, but their figures, although almost certainly underestimates, are nevertheless suggestive. In the district of Graaff-Reinet 24 commandos were launched between 1797 and 1824. The significance of these particular commandos, however, is that far

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more ‘Bushmen’ were taken prisoner than killed in battle: 97 were reported killed as opposed to 280 who were taken prisoner. These figures stand in contrast to other districts where the numbers of ‘Bushmen’ killed exceeded those taken captive. In the same period, 14 commandos from Stellenbosch took only 22 prisoners, while 18 commandos in Worcester did not take any. In Graaff-Reinet these captives were ‘according to the practice of the District . . . distributed amongst the Inhabitants and put out to service for a stated period’.20 As early as 1812, thus, when ‘peace and quietness reigned everywhere’, ‘Bushmen’ were noted as serving the settler economy ‘with full as much care and attention as the Hottentots themselves’.21 The use of ‘Bushman’ servants enabled frontier trekboers to drive down the price of ‘Hottentot’ labour.22 The practice of putting orphaned children to work for settlers, ostensibly to save them from certain death, Stockenström noted in 1817, had been ‘many years in use’ and the ‘ancient custom’ was beginning to be ‘seriously abused’.23 While colonial authorities wished to be assured that captives were not passed off as slaves, they were, in time, ‘confounded with the Hottentots’.24

The making of the colonial ‘Hottentot’ There was little to be said for being ‘confounded with the Hottentots’, for the latter were not in enviable circumstances. By the end of the eighteenth century, those Khoikhoi within colonial boundaries had all but lost their land and cattle. In 1799 they made their last stand in a rebellion that would not be quelled until 1803. Specifically, the unrest emerged out of the turbulent conditions that prevailed on the frontier at the end of the eighteenth century when ‘Hottentot’ servants joined the British army in putting down a rebellion of disaffected trekboers. It would not be the last time that Africans found reason to become ‘suspicious of the good faith or intentions of the English government’. Fearing that they would be forced ‘to return to the habitations of their old Oppressors’, the Khoikhoi threw in their lot with the Xhosa of the Zuurveld.25 This was ‘the hostile union that Honoratus Maynier long before had feared and warned against’.26 There was no doubt in the minds of British authorities that an alliance of Xhosa and ‘Hottentots’ threatened the very survival of the Colony.27 Although the frontier remained volatile for a long time – bands of fugitive ‘Hottentots’

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continued to threaten the Colony for a quarter century after the rebellion28 – the presence of the British military was crucially important in turning the tide in favour of settler occupation. The old-style commandos were simply not equipped to extinguish a rebellion on this scale. Not for the last time in the history of colonial South Africa, the ‘imperial factor’ revealed clearly itself as the handmaiden of settler colonial interests.29 More generally, the events of 1799–1803, Newton-King and Malherbe have argued, amounted to no less than a ‘war of independence’.30 It was an indication of the loss of Khoikhoi independence and the extent of their incorporation into the colonial economy, that the uprising was ‘a revolt of farm servants’.31 For these reasons the rebellion had lasting and important consequences for colonial policy, chiefly because it brought home to the British authorities the need to regulate the working and living conditions of slaves and servants.32 Initial British efforts were thus directed at stripping colonial labour relations of their excessive violence. Provision was made for the registration of labour contracts between trekboers and Khoikhoi servants in the district of Graaff-Reinet. Governor Janssens of the Batavian administration extended this provision throughout the Colony and established courts of law in the frontier districts of Tulbagh and Uitenhage. As we saw in the previous chapter, Maynier was expelled from his office as landdrost in Graaff-Reinet because of his willingness to listen to Khoikhoi complaints.33 But by far the most important piece of legislation that was ultimately thrown up by the rebellion of 1799–1803 was the proclamation of 1 November 1809. For the Khoikhoi, the legislation marked the final stage in the transition from independent people to ‘Hottentots’ – landless labourers in the servile employ of white settlers. One of the lessons that British authorities drew from the rebellion was that they were not to allow the Khoikhoi to ‘become wandering Tribes again’.34 Thus, the most important article in the ‘Hottentot Code’, as Lord Caledon’s proclamation became known in settler discourse, was the stipulation that ‘Hottentot’ servants should have a ‘fixed place of abode’. They were not to move from such a place without a pass and were required to produce one to verify that they were not bound by any contracts. Those who failed to produce passes were classified as ‘vagrants’.

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Caledon’s code was bolstered by a law passed in 1812 that made provision for those Khoikhoi children who had been maintained by settlers in their first eight years, to be ‘apprenticed’ for ten further years. It is not hard to see the coercive capacities of these regulations, for the only options open to ‘Hottentots’ not resident on mission stations was to be in the service of either settlers or the colonial state. The ‘apprenticeship’ law of 1812 was especially significant in that it had the effect of binding entire Khoi households to settler farms. Indeed, this was a highly gendered servitude, for the ‘Hottentot’ servant was ‘at liberty to include his wife and children’ in any contracts. As scores of commentators later testified, the nett effect of these regulations was to immobilise Khoisan labour.35 John Philip was representative of many when he wrote of the proclamation that it consigned ‘the Hottentots and their posterity to universal and hopeless slavery’.36 And historians, taking their lead from such contemporaries, have subsequently concluded that the proclamation of November 1809 bound the ‘Hottentots’ to lifetimes of ‘serfdom’.37 The Caledon Code, however, had a significance greater than the binding of Khoisan labour. The proclamation of November 1809 was an intervention by the colonial state of an entirely different order. It heralded a sustained, colony-wide involvement of the state in relations between masters and servants. Its novelty, as Marais has noted, lay not in the introduction of passes – these had existed in various forms even under the VOC – but in its elaborate detail. In the first instance, the proclamation assumed that the relationship between settlers and Khoikhoi was to be that of master and servant. Servants were bound to serve their masters ‘diligently and honestly, with proper submission’. Secondly, it represented a final seal on Khoikhoi independence, for henceforth all Khoikhoi were subject to colonial law, removing any obligation on the colonial state to invent later ‘customary’ law for the Khoikhoi. But, above all, the Caledon Code sought to regulate relations between settlers and their Khoikhoi servants. Khoikhoi labour was now definitively placed under the surveillance of the state. Contracts of labour for periods of one month or longer were to be completed in triplicate and registered before a veldcornet, landdrost, or Fiscal.38 Most crucially, the colonial state sought to limit the violence that characterised relations between masters and servants. Just a few weeks

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before the passage of his proclamation, Caledon had occasion to lament the poor state of master-servant relations on the frontier. The problem, as he saw it, lay clearly with the trekboers. ‘Orders after orders have been repeated to ensure . . . better treatment’ of Khoi servants, but ‘the same state of barbarity which characterised these people [trekboers] for centuries still remains’. What was needed, he noted, was an ‘improvement in [their] habits and morals’. 39 As we have seen, Sir John Cradock, Caledon’s successor, used an even more explicitly moral vocabulary to describe this governing project. He claimed to be concerned to put an end to the ‘uncontrolled severity of the powerful over the weak . . . the nameless tyranny of the strong over the defenceless’.40 For the first time, thus, extensive measures were passed aimed at protecting the Khoikhoi against abuses of settler power. Servants now had the right to complain to local authorities against the withholding of wages. Masters were compelled to provide ser vants with the ‘necessities of life’ from which alcohol was specifically excluded. It became unlawful for settlers to detain servants for unpaid debt accumulated in the form of advances: such debt could in future only be recovered by legal process. Although masters retained the right to administer ‘domestic correction’, the law did seek to protect servants against gross ill-treatment. Where ill-treatment could be proved, masters were liable to a fine of between ten and fifty rixdollars. In cases of illtreatment ‘with mutilation’, masters were to be prosecuted ‘according to the law of the colony’. The code went to great lengths to ensure that Khoi servants were aware of the new regulations. Veldcornets in country districts were instructed to assemble a group composed of at least one Khoi servant ‘from each house’ in their respective wards and to explain to them ‘the full meaning’ of the proclamation of 1809. Those who failed to meet these requirements did so ‘at their peril’.41

The colonial origins of the ‘Hottentot Code’ Although Lord Caledon is widely credited with the introduction of the ‘Hottentot Code’, much of the content of his proclamation can be traced back to Maynier’s attempts to bring the rebels of 1799 to peace. The Dutch elite had learned weighty lessons from the rebellion of 1799– 1803. The intransigence that characterised their thinking in the early years of the First British Occupation was no longer evident. The policies

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introduced by the British government to mediate relations between Dutch masters on the one hand, and servants and slaves on the other, had their origins in the thinking of the colonial settler elite. Maynier had of course tried to improve the ‘habits and morals’ of the trekboers of Graaff-Reinet, and he had opened his court to ‘the heathen’. At the time of the rebellion he suggested that a register of labour contracts be kept; that landdrosts were not to ‘suffer with impunity any acts of Violence or Cruelty’ against ‘Hottentot’ servants; and that ‘Hottentot Captains’ who had become ‘particularly obnoxious’ to settlers be granted land for their occupation. Major General Francis Dundas, the Acting Governor, agreed that a recorded register of contracts would have ‘excellent effects’. Such a system was more likely to transform the ‘Hottentots’ into ‘most useful and Industrious Servants’, and if frontier settlers could be prevented from beating their ‘servants “ad libitum” ’, the latter would be loath to desert their employers ‘at every opportunity’. 42 F.R. Bresler, Maynier’s successor as landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, was well aware that the inherent violence of relations on the frontier was self-reproducing. As he wrote in 1801, Khoikhoi servants regarded settlers ‘not as their masters but as their executioners’ and served them ‘only through hunger or fear’. Quite apart from the settlers’ ‘unlimited lust for power’, Bresler added, ‘the faithlessness and other vices of the Hottentots . . . result in many of the inhabitants regarding their cruel treatment of the Hottentots as necessary. Consequently they regard it also as legitimate and inflict it without restraint.’43 And in the same year W.S. van Ryneveld, Fiscal and leading member of the Dutch elite, laid out what was in effect a blueprint of Caledon’s Code of November 1809. 44 In his ‘Plan for amending the interior Police’, Van Ryneveld premised his suggestions for the restriction of Khoikhoi mobility on his recognition of the realities of colonial dispossession. Since no ‘public notice’ had been taken during the years of VOC rule ‘of the extortions and depredations of farmers upon Hottentots, depriving them of their lands, and afterwards driving them into the interior, or forcing them to become their Servants’, the ‘Hottentots’ possessed neither cattle, ‘nor have any other means of Subsistence’. As a consequence, they could not ‘but be servants to the farmers’. With clear reference to the rebellion of 1799–

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1803, Van Ryneveld had no illusions about the hostile and violent nature of relations between colonial masters and ‘Hottentot’ servants: The Hottentots already reduced . . . to slavery . . . have often times shewed, and recently given convincing proofs, that they are by no means indifferent as to their situation, that they aim at revenge, whenever opportunity may favor their design. The farmer on the other side perceives very well that the Hottentot is only restrained by awe and a superior power . . . in short both parties, especially in the remote Districts, consider one another in the light of enemies.45 It was one thing to issue proclamations in Cape Town and quite another to implement them in rural districts where settlers had little interest in seeing a well-regulated labour market. The big problem for the colonial state was that implementation of its measures depended on the cooperation of the local authorities of landdrosts, heemraden and veldcornets who were far from impartial. It was not just that the Caledon Code weighed heavily in favour of settler interests, or that colonists ‘took from Caledon’s regulations the extra support which they needed, and . . . ignored those provisions which contravened their interests’.46 It was also that local authorities were blatantly corrupt in the administration of the new regulations. Commissioner Bigge found that ‘in many instances’ landdrosts had clearly altered contracts after they had been drawn up and in other instances their names appeared on contracts ‘made in their own favour’, effectively nullifying the system of completing contracts in triplio.47 After all, landdrosts and veldcornets were themselves ‘in the general want of agricultural labourers.’48 As Elphick and Malherbe have pointed out, the Khoikhoi were placed ‘at the mercy of those most interested in tying them down’.49 As noted earlier, the law gave farmers the right to ‘apprentice’ until the age of eighteen years those children who had been maintained by them for their first eight years. By ‘apprenticing’ the children of Khoisan servants, settlers could significantly increase the labour at their disposal, and they indeed showed ‘no reluctance . . . to avail themselves of the opportunities which [the apprenticeship laws] have afforded.’50 Between 1812 and 1823 at least 2 295 ‘Hottentot’ children were apprenticed

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out of the 3 933 born in this period.51 To prevent children from being illegally ‘apprenticed’, settlers were meant to report to their veldcornets the births of ‘Hottentot’ children on their farms and landdrosts were in turn required to keep a register of such births. But the regulations intended to protect ‘Hottentot’ households were poorly enforced and widely abused. Some landdrosts ‘were disposed to relax the necessary conditions of birth and eight years maintenance’ and considered sufficient ‘the maintenance of a child from its years of infancy’.52 The landdrost of the vast district of Graaff-Reinet did not bother to keep a register until 1821. There was thus no way of ascertaining whether the prior conditions of ‘apprenticeship’ had been met or even how many children had been ‘apprenticed’ in preceding years. It was thus in the area of child labour in particular that local authorities had great powers of patronage. In districts where age-old patron-client networks were well established, landdrosts could exercise their extensive ‘discretionary power . . . in the separation of the children of Hottentots from their parents’.53 Not only did landdrosts adjudicate claims made on the labour of ‘Hottentot children’, but they were also free to award claims on the labour of such children to any farmer they chose. 54 No doubt, a fair number of the children registered as ‘Hottentot’ apprentices were ‘Bushman’ war captives. Local authorities did not have things all their own way, however. A new Circuit Court, which consisted of members of the Court of Justice in Cape Town, was established by Sir John Cradock. But the Circuit Court, like Caledon’s Code, grew out of local conditions and the thinking of the Dutch elite in the wake of the rebellion of 1799–1803. Thus in 1801 Van Ryneveld recommended that a ‘Commission’ leave Cape Town for an annual tour of the countryside to deliver ‘prompt Justice’, to ensure that both ‘Farmer and Hottentot’ could ‘fulfil their reciprocal duties’.55 Such a Commission, he argued, would be ‘the bulwark of safety to every one obeying the Laws, whether slave, Hottentot, or farmer’. The Circuit Court that was eventually established was ordered to ensure the ‘proper treatment’ of ‘Hottentots’ as detailed in the Proclamation of November 1809. In addition, the Court was charged with looking out for instances of ‘improper domestic correction’ of the slave population. The partiality of local landdrosts was to be

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neutralised, in theory at least, by the fact that the Circuit Court was charged to investigate the records kept of punishments handed out to slaves so as to ensure that no ‘unnecessary severity be practised on this unfortunate class of people’.56 These attempts at bringing order to the frontier coincided with the dispersal of missionaries throughout the southern African interior. Through the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, the Khoikhoi actively sought to ensure that the Circuit Court lived up to its mission. In part, the conflict between settlers and mission stations grew out of the great demand for Khoikhoi labour in the wake of the abolition of the slave trade.57 But the missionaries were also clearly concerned with humanitarian issues. They did not hesitate to draw attention to the shortcomings of Caledon’s Proclamation and presented a rival discourse to the workings of the Caledon Code and Circuit Courts. It was from the mission station at Bethelsdorp – established with the blessing of the colonial government to pacify hundreds of armed Khoikhoi in the aftermath of the rebellion of 1799–180358 – that the missionaries Van der Kemp and Read wrote letter after letter in which they denounced the hopeless plight of the Khoikhoi. Bethelsdorp had become an ‘asylum’ for countless Khoikhoi who f led from ‘cruel masters’. 59 In a famous letter of 30 August 1808, published in Transactions, the official publication of the LMS, Read drew up a catalogue of particular atrocities and detailed the unjust bias of Major Cuyler, the landdrost of the district of Uitenhage. Amongst many instances of arbitrary and appalling violence, Read highlighted the case of Uithaalder, a Khoi servant who had been kept in servitude for twenty-five years without any formal contract. The ‘poor Hottentot’ sought refuge at Bethelsdorp, but had been forced to leave behind his daughter who had been ‘pickled’ – whipped with a sjambok and salt rubbed into the wounds.60 Read’s allegations caused enough of a stir in the highest circles in England to force the Governor to pay detailed attention to them. In the end Cradock decided to take these cases ‘out of the ordinary course of enquiry’ and ordered the Fiscal, the Colony’s chief prosecutor, to ‘lose no time’ in investigating the charges.61 The cases were eventually heard in 1812 during the second tour of the Circuit Court, in what became infamously known in settler propaganda as the ‘Black Circuit’.

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All in all, seventeen settlers were charged with murder. In Uitenhage, Graaff-Reinet and George, the Court heard charges of the most appalling abuse of slaves and servants.62 In the end, none of those accused of murder were so convicted. Those found guilty of ill-treatment were handed trifling sentences even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. In the case of the ‘Hottentot girl’ who was said to have been ‘pickled’, the accused, Elizabeth Kampher and her son-in-law, Ter Blanche, were fined fifty and ten rixdollars respectively.63 Nevertheless, the trials were of major significance. Nearly a hundred of the most ‘respectable families’ were implicated, and more than a thousand witnesses were summoned.64 The Circuit effectively put on trial the entire social system that had emerged on the frontier. For the first time settlers were forced to defend their actions as a class. These trials differed markedly from those that were heard in the eighteenth century, where so much hinged on individual reputations. To be sure, individual reputations still mattered, but the Circuit Court heralded a new ‘Dispensation of Justice.’ As Cradock noted in 1812, ‘no distinction is to be admitted, whether the complaint arise with the man of wealth, or the poor man, the master or the slave, the European or the Hottentot.’ 65

The Cape gentry and the making of British rule It was in this climate of opinion, then, that Jacob van Reenen of Oliphantsfontein was tried for killing the slave August. His trial provided another test case through which the colonial state could prosecute its quest for the equality of justice that Cradock spoke of. At first, Buyskes, Van Reenen’s defence attorney, argued his case on philosophical grounds by pointing to the contradictions inherent in slavery itself. The slave ‘who is entirely under the power of another’ was obliged to ‘absolutely . . . obey that will from which he in return receives protection and the necessary subsistence’. And although Roman law placed limits on the extent to which slaves were ‘entirely under the power’ of their owners by taking away their right of life or death over slaves, it nevertheless allowed slave-owners the right of ‘domestic chastisement’. Buyskes did not find much opposition in Daniel Denyssen, the Fiscal and prosecutor, with whom he shared much common ground. Denyssen had no doubt about the permanent battle of wills that raged

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between masters and slaves. The ‘Generality of slaves always incline to dissolute conduct,’ he noted, ‘and . . . they take no interest whatsoever in the welfare of their masters.’66 Slaves would not hesitate to ‘shake off the yoke of slavery’ and therefore had to be ‘kept in order by fear & domestic restraint’. And even though Denyssen recognised that in cases of ‘wilful murder . . . the great distinction between the master and the slave ceases,’ he was hardly vigorous in his prosecution. In fact, he was at pains to show that Van Reenen was not guilty of ‘wilful murder’ and resorted to the age-old argument that slave-owners would not wantonly destroy their own property. As he put it, the accused could not ‘have been foolish enough to have even indirectly wished the death of his slave’. Denyssen accepted the defence attorney’s view that Roman law prohibited the admission of slave evidence ‘for or against their masters’. Even though he argued that the evidence of slaves had ‘always been a customary means . . . to discover the truth’, he pointed out that he himself was of the view that such testimony was often ‘objectionable’ and that it did not have the ‘force of irreproachable evidence’. There was thus little to separate the prosecutor and defence attorney on these basic issues.67 Given Denyssen’s lacklustre performance, it is not surprising that Van Reenen got off lightly. Despite the fact that August’s fellow slaves brought forward evidence of the most extreme brutality, he was sentenced to only three months imprisonment.68 The sentence, which so shocked Cradock’s sensibilities, is easily explained at some level. Van Reenen belonged to ‘the most opulent and highest connected family in the Settlement’, as Cradock described them.69 He was, in other words, a member of the Cape gentry, tried in a Court ‘where inveterate habits and peculiar local proceedings must have complete sway’. 70 It was this connection that made it difficult for the state to prosecute its case. It was clear that the administration of the law was simply too closely tied in with local and personal politics. The acting Fiscal and prosecutor, J.P. de Wet, had to excuse himself ‘by virtue of consanguinity’ and Van Reenen alleged that one of the Court’s Commissioners was compromised by his ‘unwillingness or inability’ to repay an amount of money due to his (Van Reenen’s) mother-in-law.71 Ultimately, however, the outcome of the case has to be sought in the nature of British rule itself and the particular events surrounding

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the initial conquest of the Colony by Britain in 1795. The condition of the Colony’s slaves pressed upon British authorities almost immediately. General Craig had hoped that a softening of judicial violence might have had the effect of ‘inspiring them with an affection for their masters which they at present seldom feel’.72 But the Dutch officials on whom the British depended for their rule held very different notions of how best to govern a slave colony. In 1796 members of the Court of Justice saw even less possibility of ‘affection’ between masters and slaves than did General Craig. Because the jurisprudence of ‘civilised Nations’ could not be based on anything other than the ‘distinction of persons’, terror alone, they argued, would prevent slaves from bringing ‘the whole Colony to the brink of ruin’. And because slaves had to spend the greater part of their lives ‘for the advantage of those to whom they are subject’, the ‘State of Slavery’ was ‘always accompanied with a certain degree of Enmity against Masters’. Nothing short of the abolition of slavery would remove these ‘inconveniences’, but since ‘the greatest part of the property of the Inhabitants of this Country consists of Slaves’, so radical a measure as abolition ‘could not be attempted without being followed by the most ruinous consequences to a number of Families’. Members of the Court of Justice held few illusions about the nature of relations between masters and slaves and failed to bring forth any of the paternalistic rhetoric that would be heard from sections of the Dutch population in later years. The violence to which slaves were prone, they noted, originates from the consciousness which a Slave has of his condition – from the great improbability of his being able to ameliorate his condition – from the difficulties that prevent him from even using means to effect that end – from the abuse which Masters often make of their authority – from the want of those principles which might direct and comfort them in their unhappy Situation.73 In the end Craig chose to desist and, for a short while, the slave-owners got their way.74 The new government simply remained too dependent on the existing ruling elite that had held power in the days of the VOC,

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even though Craig’s successor, Lord Macartney, managed to abolish judicial torture in 1797. For now, the British government hesitated to tinker with cherished institutions. Although some of those most closely tied to the VOC had lost out as a consequence of the British occupation and looked upon the new government ‘with eyes of resentment’, the British had little difficulty in making friends of the Dutch elite, especially since the occupying forces were instructed to make as few amendments to the civil administration as possible.75 As a consequence, the new colonial administration, as Leslie Duly had pointed out, ‘was grafted on top of the existing civil service’.76 Especially important was Fiscal W.S. van Ryneveld who became the most important liaison between the Dutch population and the British government of occupation. It was he, as we have seen, who drew up a blueprint for the ‘Hottentot Code’. But there were others, such as Ryno van der Riet, the landdrost of Stellenbosch, who was particularly amenable to British rule, and Reverend de Vos, the Dutch minister at Tulbagh, who, ‘openly from the pulpit’, encouraged his congregation to support the new Government. The support, though, was crucially predicated on the understanding that the British would ‘preserve to [the Dutch population], their Religion, their lives and their property’.77 The Dutch settlers counted their slaves as their most prized property. Thus the need for colonial stability left little room for ameliorating the conditions of slaves and servants. Only the ‘exact subordination’ of the slave population could guarantee the security of the Colony, a fact that was brought home to the British authorities as trouble rumbled on the eastern frontier.78 And, as far as successive British and Batavian governments were concerned, colonial stability hinged on bolstering settler authority. Thus the measures meant to improve the condition of the Colony’s labouring classes were, in Marais’s words, ‘little more than gestures of goodwill’.79 As the missionary James Read noted, these governments thought ‘it their best policy to make [the] colonists their friends and to seek their strength in them’.80 When the British conquered the Colony for the second time in 1806 they found the same gentry class willing to collaborate with, and acquiesce in, British imperial rule. The Colony’s new rulers promised to free the Cape economy from the restrictive policies of the VOC and to incorporate it into the world’s most dynamic economy of the day.

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To the old rural and urban elite, who saw the possibilities of personal enrichment and continued influence, this held endless promise. Lacking its own administrative personnel, the new government handed out all the important offices of civil administration by way of personal favour to members of the Dutch elite. Thus local Dutch officials came to dominate the Court of Justice, the middle levels of the office of the Colonial Secretary, and the important Orphan Chamber, which administered deceased and insolvent estates and thus controlled significant sums of money. Most importantly, the Cape gentry continued to dominate the local courts of law in rural districts, so important in the award of patronage and continued control of the servile population. For these favours, the British government of course exacted a return. At a minimum, political acquiescence was required. This could be easily bought. Most significantly, land became a perquisite of office and individuals such as Denyssen and J.A. Truter, Van Ryneveld’s successor, partook in the bounty.81 But these returns probably paled in comparison with the opportunities for outright theft that continuity in office allowed the Dutch elite. By the time of his death in 1834, J.W. Stoll, who had been given land for his duties as a ‘respectable and meritorious’ public servant whilst landdrost of the Cape District, had helped himself to £15 000 of treasury funds in his capacity as Colonial Treasurer and Accountant-General.82 In 1813, F.R. Bresler, the one-time landdrost of Graaff-Reinet who had condemned the frontier trekboers for their ‘unlimited lust for power’,83 defrauded the government of 36 000 rixdollars in his post as Deputy Receiver-General. And not least, Truter, who held the incompatible posts of member of the Court of Justice and President of the Orphan Chamber, ‘borrowed’ 51 000 rixdollars of the funds under his control, an amount that he never repaid. British governors were certainly aware of the practices of their underlings. It is thus important to note, as Peires has warned, that these were not isolated instances of personal corruption, but a legacy of the VOC, where office was habitually used for personal gain.84 After all, at the time of his death in 1771, Ryk Tulbagh, one of the most influential of the VOC’s governors, had a personal fortune that was far in excess of what could have been acquired through legitimate earnings.85 For members of the old elite, then, the acceptance of British values must have seemed a small price to pay. They hastened to acquire

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competence in English, intermarried with members of the English ruling class and took them on as business partners. Thus it is not surprising that local Dutch officials could be described as ‘sort of English Gentlemen’.86 Most importantly, members of this elite took on the task of educating the larger settler community on British notions of the rule of law.87 This was not hard since, as we have seen, the aftermath of the Khoikhoi rebellion had revealed much common ground between the British government and members of the Dutch elite such as W.S. van Ryneveld. Foremost in this effort was Truter, who, in Cradock’s words, would have done ‘honor to the character of an English Judge’.88 To Truter, Caledon’s ‘Hottentot code’ showed ‘to the farmer the limits of his power, to the Hottentot the extent of his obligation, and to the Landdrost the guidelines according to which he should judge between Hottentot and farmer’.89 He used the opportunity of the opening of new premises for the Court of Justice in January 1815 to echo Cradock’s vision of legal equality. It was not sufficient, Truter argued, to ‘make good and wholesome laws’, but it was ‘especially necessary that their administration and application be effected with unbiased judgement, and without respect of persons’.90 Thus it was Truter, in his capacity as Fiscal, before his promotion to Chief Justice, who vigorously initiated proceedings against Jacob van Reenen. But not all members of settler society were ready to accept these notions of the rule of law. The Van Reenens especially were not prepared to become instruments in such lessons. The British had been wary of this family even during the First British Occupation. They were, in General Craig’s words, ‘men in general of indifferent private Characters, turbulent in the extreme and distinguished . . . as violent opposers [sic] of us’. They stood in stark contrast to individuals such as Van Ryneveld and Van der Riet.91 For his efforts Truter met with the ‘severe displeasure and enmity of the powerful family to which [Jacob van Reenen] belonged’.92 To them, the honour of the family was at stake. Certainly, to Van Reenen and his attorney, the ‘public’ punishment that the Court sought to impose was one of utter degradation and had no other purpose than to dishonour.93 Van Reenen bewailed a sentence that would lead him to ‘suffer in his honour & reputation’ and he was convinced that members of the Court of Justice were motivated by no other desire than to settle old scores.

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Having had their honour maligned, the Van Reenens sought to do the same to Truter. They had ample ammunition. On the eve of the Batavian capitulation to Britain, when the future benefits of renewed British rule must have seemed less clear, Truter and thirteen of his ilk relieved the colonial coffers of £20 000.94 Truter would come to regret this action, not so much because of the theft itself – the colonial government showed little interest in prosecuting any of the perpetrators once it retrieved the bulk of the booty – but because it became tied up with his reputation as a humane and honourable slaveholder. There is a good possibility that the looting of Batavian coffers would have disappeared from the historical record had it not been brought to the attention of the British authorities by Marie, a witness to the event and one of Truter’s many slaves. Marie, seeing the opportunity to acquire her freedom, made repeated applications in this matter. But over the following nine years, Truter refused to part with her, and instead, according to his detractors, subjected her to much cruelty. He had her incarcerated in the Cape Town tronk (gaol) where, according to witnesses, she was repeatedly flogged and subjected to terrible and degrading treatment.95 In the small community of Cape Town, Truter’s treatment of Marie became the subject of intense gossip and he felt sufficiently dishonoured by the imputations that he initiated libel proceedings against Francis Dashwood, the chairman of the government-funded Lombard Bank, who appeared to be the Van Reenens’ spokesman.96 But the Governor, Sir John Cradock, fearful of the ‘unpleasant influence on the public tranquillity’ that the case would have, dissuaded Truter from seeing his suit through to the end, in return for which any further investigations were effectively smothered.97 Marie would not go away, however, and the Colonial Office felt compelled to intervene on her behalf. Eventually she obtained her freedom, but not before Truter had to appeal for restitution of his honour to Cradock’s successor, Lord Charles Somerset.98 This was to be the beginning of a lasting partnership between Truter and Somerset. Thus it was out of slavery, slave resistance, and squabbles over honour amongst members of the gentry that the durable partnership between the Dutch elite and the colonial state was forged. Although it would not become clear for some time, Marie had exposed the contradictions of British rule based on alliance with the

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Dutch elite. More than a decade after these events, Truter described himself as free from ‘what is thought a Colonial prejudice . . . that slaves should be less entitled to claim justice and Christian charity in their treatment than free people’.99 Marie would probably not have agreed with Truter’s estimate of his own humanity. But more importantly, there were powerful members of the Dutch elite who could point to the hollowness of Truter’s later claims. The case against Van Reenen ran aground on the rough terrain of local settler politics. Truter had chosen the wrong family on whom to try to impose British notions of the rule of law. In 1822, however, the gentry found more suitable candidates on whom to impose these notions. The first example came from the district of Graaff-Reinet, where Stockenström successfully prosecuted Louis Daniel Smit for killing Danzer, a ‘Hottentot’ servant in the employ of Petrus Minnaar. In December 1821, Smit, en route to Minnaar’s place and on the pretext that Danzer had withheld knowledge from him about stolen cattle, beat the unfortunate servant with the utmost severity. Danzer died as a consequence of Smit’s sadism. His weapons included a thong to which an iron ring had been attached and his gun which he appeared to turn into a club. Danzer was left for dead by the side of the road. When news of the killing reached the authorities at Graaff-Reinet, Smit was apprehended and placed in the local gaol. He managed to escape, and hatched a plan to leave the Colony in the company of runaway slaves, ‘Hottentot’ servants and the wife of another settler, Piet Roos. But Smit was taken prisoner in the Sneeuwberg, before he had opportunity to cross the Gariep. The Court of Justice found Smit guilty of ‘wilful murder’, and sentenced him to be hanged.100 He was executed on 18 January 1822. ‘It may be easily imagined,’ Stockenström wrote, ‘what an awful Impression so dreadful . . . a spectacle made on the minds of every class of Inhabitants.’ But the conduct of Smit’s fellows was ‘highly orderly and proper’. Though ‘sunk in deep melancholy at the necessity of such dire Examples, [they] evinced the most profound respect for the Majesty of the Law.’101 The colonial state had indeed come a long way in taming the violence of the frontier. Slave-owners at the other end of the Colony, too, were made to appreciate this new ‘Majesty of the Law’. Here, Willem Gebhard of

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Paarl, near Stellenbosch, stood accused of killing his father’s slave Joris. After a lengthy trial, the Court of Justice, with Truter now as Chief Justice, sentenced Gebhard to death, a sentence to which Somerset lent his sanction. In this particular case, the Court chose to apply the ‘Law of Homicide’.102 It could do so, Rayner has argued, precisely because of the marginal nature of Gebhard’s family. Gebhard’s execution served as a salutary affirmation of the alliance that had been forged between the colonial state and the Cape gentry.103

The consolidation of gentry power This alliance between the Dutch elite and the colonial state had a solid material base. From 1806, the British government’s first concern was to make the Colony pay for itself in the face of a severe trade deficit that was already evident during the First British Occupation. The Colony imported more than one million rixdollars worth of goods in 1798 alone.104 Macartney had warned in 1797 that the Colony was unlikely to ‘ever . . . become a source of very abundant revenue’. The only value of the Cape, he believed, lay in its geographical position, ‘from its forming the master link of connection between the western, and eastern world’.105 For a long time this was true. Between 1807 and 1825 colonial exports outstripped imports in only three years – 1807, 1811, and 1812.106 In the period 1808–10, for example, the Colony earned only 408 166 rixdollars in exports, as against 508 937 rixdollars which it had to pay for imports. One of the worst periods was in the years 1814– 16, when the Colony exported only 38 per cent of the value of its imports. 107 Most of the goods imported were British cotton manufactures, along with iron and steel products. At first the government attempted to address this state of affairs by issuing more bills. In 1806 Lord Caledon added one million rixdollars to the more than two million rixdollars already in circulation. The consequence was runaway inflation as the Colony sank deeper into debt. ‘Nothing has more contributed to the decay of the Colony than Paper Money,’ wrote one observer.108 The new government realised that this state of affairs could only be addressed by increasing the Colony’s agricultural exports and for a while it hoped that colonial wheat would satisfy the purpose. But the British had inherited a serious grain crisis in 1806, as barely enough wheat had been brought to the market to feed the Colony. The situation was exacerbated by the presence of a much enlarged garrison. In 1806,

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therefore, the government increased prices paid to farmers for wheat brought to the market in Cape Town. Shortly thereafter the market in grain was freed completely.109 The new government also established a grain committee, consisting of members of the old Dutch elite, such as Truter and W.S. van Ryneveld, to investigate the Colony’s wheat supply. These measures had immediate results and wheat brought to the market increased steadily from 91 341 muids for the period 1804–1806 to 147 038 muids for the period 1813–1815. Exports, however, remained limited. On two occasions, in 1811 and 1817, the British government refused requests to reduce duties on Cape wheat.110 But though the colonial state was concerned to raise exports, the real problem of colonial wheat lay in limited production. Output fluctuated wildly and the Colony suffered from regular periods of glut and famine.111 As the wheat harvest was collected at the end of 1795, the British authorities were concerned that colonial farmers would be ‘ruined from the richness of their produce’ and that grain would be ‘almost given away’ unless alternative markets were found.112 But wheat had always been a doubtful crop – wheat farmers struggled to meet local demand, let alone satisfy an export market. Wheat had to be imported periodically as output frequently fell short of demand.113 Poor transport connections meant that it was largely confined to the Cape and Stellenbosch districts. Even in the eighteenth century, soil depletion in these districts had led to declining returns. In the 1820s disease made its appearance in the wheat crop, with the result that the Colony became more dependent on imports – between 1820 and 1826, while 33 421 muids were exported, 57 812 muids had to be imported.114 In 1820 wheat accounted for only 8 per cent of colonial exports and by 1834 this figure had dropped to less than 4 per cent.115 Probably the most significant problem with wheat production was to be found in the limitations of the slave economy. Already towards the end of the VOC’s reign a scarcity of slaves was evident, as prices had increased sharply in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Average prices for male slaves had increased from 195 rixdollars for the period 1773–79 to 345 rixdollars during the years 1791–95.116 No slaves were brought into the Colony between 1793 and 1795. ‘Of all the difficulties which the Colony labours under,’ Craig noted in 1797, ‘there is none which presses harder upon it than the want of slaves.’117

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The problem for the Colony was probably not so much the shortage of slaves, but the limited productivity of slave labour. As the most recent research on the slave trade during these years has shown, in the years prior to the final closing of the slave trade in 1808 the respective British and Batavian governments had gone some way towards alleviating the shortage of slave labour. About 2 900 slaves were brought into the Colony between 1795 and 1803 and close to 4 300 slaves were imported during the years 1803–1808. Indeed, more slaves were brought into the Colony in the years 1803–1808 than during any equivalent period under VOC rule.118 But wheat continued to be a difficult and inconsistent crop and failed to become the export that the Colony sought.119 Although Caledon had attempted to get wool production off the ground, it was in wine instead that the Colony found salvation. More so than his predecessor, Cradock was determined to secure a market for Cape agricultural produce.120 In 1811 he issued a series of measures designed to improve the Cape wine industry as a way of reducing the Colony’s trade deficit and increasing its revenue. The Colony suffered from its reputation for exporting bad quality wine, a consequence of the combination of slipshod methods of production and the practices of wine merchants who, as one observer saw it, procured wine ‘from every part of the Country, spoil it by mixture, and ruin the credit of our Wines among foreign nations’.121 In return for Cradock’s ‘support and patronage’ of the industry, wine farmers were expected to improve the quality of their product. To further this end, Cradock established the office of the Wine Taster in 1812. But by far the largest boon to the wine industry came in 1813 when as a result of Cradock’s representations duties on Cape wines imported into Britain were reduced to a third of those formerly imposed.122 These measures were effective and in the following years wine production at the Cape expanded rapidly. Following the reduction in duties on Cape wine, substantial amounts of capital were invested in the wine industry. Wine farmers readily responded to Cradock’s measures. Between 1811 and 1813 the number of acres planted with the vine expanded by 33 per cent.123 In this period 1.5 million vines were planted each year, and although expansion slowed down after 1813, it continued apace with an average of between 800 000 and one million additional vines planted each year. As a consequence, wine output

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increased by 151 per cent between 1809 and 1823, the latter year being the peak in the growth of the industry.124 By 1815 Cape wine had firmly established itself in English markets and by 1817 it was selling on a large scale. Indeed, the wine industry went some way towards rescuing the Colony from insolvency. In 1821 wine exports amounted to close to 63 per cent of all colonial exports and by 1822 Cape wine represented 10.4 per cent of all wine consumed in Britain.125 This growth in the wine industry was accompanied by the rise of a new entrepreneurial English merchant class. These merchants, with their close ties to world markets through the City of London, were at the vanguard of revitalising the restrictive colonial economy left behind by the VOC. Based in Cape Town, merchants such as J.B. Ebden, Hamilton Ross and Antonio Chiappini were the closest that the Cape Colony had to a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie.126 Unsurprisingly, they became heavily invested in the government-sponsored wine industry. They bought wine directly from farmers, invested in storage warehouses, and promoted the cause of Cape wine in London.127 For the most part, however, they were not involved in extending credit directly to the farming community. Although there was some intermarriage with the Dutch population, they remained an exclusive, tightly-knit and selfcontained community. In time, they came to displace the older families of Dutch merchants.128 More than anything else, the colonial state’s patronage of the wine industry represented its support of and alliance with the Cape gentry. Very small numbers profited from the boom in the wine industry. Wine production was largely confined to the Cape and Stellenbosch districts and became even further concentrated as the boom took off. The share of these two districts increased from 86 per cent of wine produced in 1814 to nearly 93 per cent in 1823. In fact, in the latter year, wine production was concentrated on 374 estates in these two districts. These farms contained 23 million vines, representing about three quarters of the colonial total, and produced 85 per cent of the colony’s wine.129 Moreover, the boom was the preserve of a few closely connected families. As Rayner has demonstrated, ‘the bulk of production was controlled by a small number of colonial families’.130 In 1825, nineteen intermarried families controlled about 41 per cent of wine production in the Colony.131 These families, including the Van der Byls, Myburghs

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and Morkels, were the direct descendents of the eighteenth-century gentry whose lives had been marked by conspicuous consumption. ‘Twenty years ago’, George Thompson wrote in 1827, ‘the wine growers were considered the most thriving and productive class of agriculturists; next to them the corn farmers; and the graziers were placed lowest in scale.’132 Most significantly, the leading wine families were closely tied to those in office. Not the least was J.A. Truter, who was connected through marriage to the wine farming family of the Van der Byls. Almost all of Truter’s colleagues on the Court of Justice had similar interests in wine production.133 The wine boom could not have taken place without intensified exploitation of slave labour. During these years wine farmers came to own numbers of slaves disproportionate to the numbers owned by other farmers. Whereas three quarters of slave-owners owned fewer than eight slaves, during the boom years wine farmers on average held sixteen slaves each.134 In 1823 they held about 18 per cent of the Cape slave population, and in this year the leading 21 wine-farming families owned 3 557 slaves between them. This figure constituted about two thirds of all slaves engaged in wine production. In 1824, 72 per cent of the leading slaveowners in the Colony came from the wine-farming districts.135 Alongside these families, colonial officials shared an interest in slaveownership and in the wine industry by extension. In 1826/7 eight of the nine members of the Court of Justice owned 133 slaves between them; Truter alone owned no fewer than 49 slaves.136 The interpenetration of interest in wine, slave ownership, and office extended to lower levels of the colonial administration. J.W. Stoll, the landdrost of the Cape district (1815–27), who had so liberally stolen from colonial coffers, was connected by marriage to wealthy wine farmers in his district. So was Daniel Johannes van Ryneveld, landdrost of Stellenbosch district from 1814.137

The ambiguities of British rule It was one of the great ironies of British rule at the Cape that the colonial state’s support of the wine industry coincided with the introduction of radical policies aimed at improving the plight of colonial slaves and initiating a free market in labour. The increased demands placed on slaves came into sharp conflict with British attempts to ameliorate the

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working and living conditions of the existing slave population. But developments in metropolitan Britain resulted in changes larger than the Cape’s local rulers may have wanted. In 1808 Britain declared illegal the trans-oceanic slave trade and in subsequent decades embarked on an extensive campaign to prevent all other European nations from engaging in the trade. At the Cape, this measure sent the prices of slaves sharply upwards, from an average of £75 per male slave in 1808 to £150 by the mid-1820s.138 Moreover, the coincidence of the wine boom and the end of the slave trade led to widespread demand for slaves in rural districts, further pushing up their prices.139 ‘The loss of a single slave’, Truter wrote in 1825, ‘is reckoned a very serious loss by eight out of ten individuals in the Colony.’140 More than 40 per cent of the Colony’s slaves were sold between 1816 and 1826.141 Many of these slaves were transferred from Cape Town, sending the institution into terminal decline in the Colony’s main urban centre.142 The end of the trade in slaves and the consequent rise in slave prices led to a widespread shortage of labour, including in the pastoral eastern districts where the use of Khoisan labour predominated.143 Although the period after the end of the slave trade witnessed the beginning of a natural increase in the slave population as the gender imbalance between male and female slaves began to even out, the annual rate of growth of 0.8 per cent was not sufficient to cope with the increased demand.144 In the Western Cape, where the vast majority of slaves were to be found, the slave population increased by a mere 1 270 during the peak years of the wine industry – from 26 127 in 1813 to 27 397 in 1823. For the Colony as a whole, the slave population grew from 30 319 in 1813 to 33 197 in 1823.145 But the slave population declined as a percentage of the total colonial population – from about 40 per cent in 1808 to less than 30 per cent in 1823.146 Thus the marginal increase in the size of the slave population, the absence of alternative sources of labour or advances in the technology of wine production, and the labour shortages caused by an increase in the prices of slaves meant that a virtually stagnant and aging slave population bore the burden of the state’s answer to the colonial trade deficit and its alliance with the Dutch elite. Rayner has calculated precisely the burden on slaves; the average adult male slave on wine farms in the Cape district produced 2.9 leaguers of wine in 1823 compared to only

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0.6 leaguers in 1814, an increase of more than 400 per cent. Such an increase in output meant that the same slave had to tend 11 137 vines in 1823 compared to the figure of 6 534 in 1814.147 Truter’s assertion that the increased value of slaves brought on by the abolition of the slave trade had led to ‘a more rational and humane treatment’ of slaves has therefore to be regarded as no more than ruling class rhetoric.148 Like slaveholders elsewhere, those at the Cape made maximum use of the opportunities provided by export staple agriculture in slavery’s final years. These increased productive efforts of colonial farmers came up against the greater determination of the colonial government to improve the living conditions of colonial slaves in the wake of the closure of the slave trade. In 1812 Cradock abolished the statute forbidding the sale of Christian slaves in the belief that slave-owners had in the past been discouraged from educating their slaves in the basics of the Christian religion. The following year the government limited to thirty-nine the number of lashes that slaves could receive in punishment. From the 1820s, however, the British government fully committed itself to an official policy of ‘amelioration’. Amelioration, as was noted in a most succinct expression of metropolitan thinking, was meant to improve, gradually, both the moral and temporal conditions of Slaves in our colonies; that is to change the present . . . manner of their labour, to put them more under the protection of the law, to institute marriage among them, and to secure it from violations, to give them religious instruction and after all this has been done, to confer upon them one civil privilege after another, as they shall be found capable of bearing it, till at length they shall rise insensibly to the rank of free peasantry.149 This policy, Rayner has argued, ‘represented more than a rhetorical commitment to the protection of slaves’. In trying to transform slavery into ‘some approximation of a free market in labour’ the Colonial Office placed defined limits on the amount of labour that could be extracted from slaves.150 Slaves were granted specific rights in law aimed at improving their physical well-being and limiting the amount of physical punishment that could be inflicted on them. Because both

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these aims hinged on gendered understandings of an ideal colonial labour hierarchy, particular attention was given to promoting the stability of the slave ‘family’ and the well-being of slave women.151 Between 1823 and 1831, thus, several pieces of legislation were passed to give effect to these aims, the most significant of which were Ordinance 19 of June 1826 and two Orders-in-Council of February 1830 and November 1831 respectively. To limit the amount of labour that could be extracted from their slaves, slave-owners were prohibited from putting them to work in ‘garden or field labour’ for more than ten hours during the winter months and for more than twelve hours during the summer, ‘except during Ploughing or Harvest seasons, or on other extraordinary occasions of unavoidable necessity’. In 1830 such work was defined as sowing, reaping, pruning, gathering, wine-making, irrigating, cattle-tending and other farm work. Punishment was not to exceed 25 ‘stripes’ and could not be repeated within 24 hours. Slave-owners were further obliged to provide their slaves with ‘sufficient and wholesome food’ and ‘good and sufficient clothing’. In an attempt to protect the slave ‘family’, slave men and women were granted the right of marriage. At first, this was confined to baptised slaves, but later measures conferred the right on all slaves. The sale in separate lots of husbands, wives, and children under the age of ten was prohibited. Women slaves were not to be publicly flogged; instead they were to be punished by solitary confinement ‘in any dry and proper place’ for no more than three days, or by whipping ‘privately on the shoulders, to such moderate extent as any child of free condition may be’. Ordinance 19 made provision for the appointment of a Guardian of Slaves. This measure was of considerable importance, for it interposed the colonial state firmly within the master-slave relationship. It was, as Rayner has noted, ‘the sharpest embodiment of the British State’s interventionist policies’.152 Assistant Guardians were to be appointed in rural areas. Slaves could lodge complaints with these functionaries who were obliged to investigate such complaints and represent the slaves in criminal actions against masters. In 1830, when the name of the office of Guardian was changed to ‘Protector of Slaves’, slave-owners were told that they would henceforth have to keep written records of

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punishments inflicted on slaves; these ‘Punishment Record Books’ were required to be submitted to the Protector’s office biannually. It is not surprising that the slaveholders put up considerable resistance to the new measures. The inhabitants of Mosselbanks Rivier refused to accept copies of Ordinance 19 when it was offered to them by their veldcornet, Nicolaas Mosterd, now owner of Wolwedans. 153 Complaints about the Ordinance were heard far and wide. They were encouraged by De Zuid Afrikaan, a newspaper run by the Dutch elite in Cape Town. But slave-owners also had the support of John Fairbairn’s Commercial Advertiser which claimed that the Ordinance would cause ‘discontent and division between the Master and the Slave’.154 It was the requirement to submit slaven boekjes that particularly incensed the slaveholders.155 Major Rogers, the Protector of Slaves, noted that the stipulation to fill out these punishment records had sent the countryside into ‘a state almost of insurrection’. The slaveholders in the country districts were prepared ‘to resist to the last any attempt to enforce the penalties against them’.156 On 11 April 1831, a ‘mob’ of Stellenbosch farmers violently protested against the measure.157 ‘Nearly the whole of the Slave Holders [had] resolved not to take out the Punishment Record Books,’ Rogers noted in his report of the first half of 1831. Only seventy-six out of 3 024 slaveholders in the Cape and Stellenbosch districts submitted their records. Those Stellenbosch farmers who did attempt to submit their returns were ‘hooted at and pelted’. The rioters had the tacit support of Faure, the Resident Magistrate of Stellenbosch, who refused to meet with the Assistant Protector of Slaves. Faure ‘did not think proper to use any means himself, either by personal influence . . . or otherwise, for the preservation of the peace’.158 As a consequence, the unrest continued for four successive days. Mindful of the violence of the slaveholders’ protest, and bowing to his own class prejudices, Major Rogers ‘thought it not decorous to prosecute any of the known Defaulters’ and expected ‘with earnest and anxious hopes that the obnoxious and vexatious clauses of the Order in Council will be repealed’.159 Governor Cole, no friend of the Order-in-Council, dismissed Faure from his post. Faure, he found, had been ‘actuated partly perhaps by timidity, but in a great measure by a similarity of sentiment with those who were hostile to compliance with the law’.160 This situation might

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have been avoided had the government paid any attention to a Cape Town newspaper at the time of Faure’s nomination to his post. The Colonist noted at the time that the district of Stellenbosch was ‘the very seat of Mr. Faure’s family, his friends and connections’.161 Faure, Cole believed, had to be replaced by an Englishman, ‘if possible unconnected in any way with the inhabitants, and free from local prejudices’. The incident at Stellenbosch and Faure’s dismissal was symptomatic of the rupture that ‘amelioration’ had brought to the alliance between the Dutch elite and the British colonial government. Those who were charged for their violent conduct in Stellenbosch were defended in court by the editor of De Zuid Afrikaan, Christoffel Brand, whose father, J.H. Brand, had been one of those most loyal to the British at the time of conquest.162 Somerset had predicted a rupture of this kind, and, in an attempt to maintain the loyalty of those he had so assiduously wooed, issued a proclamation in 1823 designed to offset the most radical thoughts of the Colonial Office.163 He justified his proclamation on the grounds that Cape slavery differed materially from the plantation slavery of the West Indies, and on the need to respect the property and authority of the Colony’s slave-owners. ‘Slaves are the only property of any value in this colony,’ he wrote. ‘Land is of none in comparison and . . . it was necessary to balance any Interference not only with the most valuable property of Individuals, but with their feelings and authority.’164 The proclamation, which fell foul of officials in the Colonial Office, had significant limitations. Most of the provisions – such as the right of marriage and the protection of familial relationships – were limited to baptised slaves, a minority of the slave population.165 After initial dismay, the Dutch elite found that they had little to fear from Somerset’s proclamation. As Chief Justice Truter noted in 1825, those slave-owners ‘who had perused and attentively considered that proclamation, did not find therein that the master was injured in the services which he might reasonably expect from his slave’. Most of all, the slaveowner’s ‘right of property in the slave was left undisturbed, while the advantages . . . did not materially encroach upon the rights of the master’.166 But even Somerset’s limited proclamation had dangerous consequences, as the ruling classes learned at their peril. In 1825 a number of slaves and Khoisan servants on the farm Houd den Bek in the Bokkeveld region of Worcester district, led by the charismatic slave

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Galant, drew inspiration from the legislation, rose in rebellion and killed three white settlers, including Galant’s master, W.N. van der Merwe. Galant’s object was nothing less than freedom. He probably did not have the same learning as Hendrik Hendrikse, a leading figure amongst the Griqua who pioneered the expansion of the trekboer economy, but he nevertheless knew that freedom had to be fought for. Repeatedly frustrated by the unwillingness of the local magistrate to sympathise with his complaints, Galant believed that slave-owners were illegally retaining slaves in bondage. The rebellion had little hope of succeeding. In the end, Galant and his co-conspirators were rounded up, tried and executed, but the rebellion, which ultimately claimed very few settler lives, shook the Colony to its foundation.167 Galant’s rebellion was more than enough to convince slave-owners that British rule would encourage slaves to seize their own liberty. ‘The black clouds of dangers hover over our heads . . . The murder from the dagger of the incited Slaves, animated with a spirit of freedom, is aimed at the heart,’ a number of Stellenbosch slaveholders wrote in ‘Fear and anxiety’.168 Andries van der Byl, heemraad of Stellenbosch, claimed that two or three days after the promulgation of Ordinance 19 he had overheard a ‘riotous conversation’ taking place among seven or eight slaves in the village of Stellenbosch. One of the slaves was alleged to have said that ‘on the 1st of August we are all free . . . I’ll stand as a man’.169 Slave-owners were probably not above putting words into the mouths of slaves, but Cape slaves could not have failed to hear the noise, largely spread by their own masters, of strident metropolitan anti-slavery activity, fostered by evangelical revival, as well as rumours of the revolutionary success of the slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint Domingue. In the aftermath of Galant’s rebellion, thus, Truter was less sanguine about the limited impact of ‘amelioration’. Certainly, he saw no need for Ordinance 19 and the office of Guardian of Slaves; it could do no more than ‘open a door to many “frivolous complaints” ’, he argued.170 Moreover, Truter claimed, slaves who were injured in their persons or property had the same legal recourse ‘as any free man’. This was of course untrue, but like many other people, Truter was motivated by his conviction that ‘the terrible prospect of general disturbance of tranquillity & good order [was] with reason to be apprehended’. Believing that a ‘general emancipation was intended by Government,’ the slaves

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looked ‘upon their masters as the obstacles in the way of their freedom.’ With this view Somerset concurred.171 For the Colony as a whole, therefore, the consequences of such a state of affairs could only be calamitous. The possible outcomes of the impact of the new legislation were ‘incalculable’; it would lead, Truter wrote, to ‘insubordination, dissoluteness & actual resistance’.172 And resist the slaves did. If slave-owners resolved to resist the new measures, it was only because the slaves gave it specific meaning. In the course of the 1820s and 1830s, scores of slaves made their way to law courts across the Colony to complain about what they deemed unreasonable living and working conditions, sexual exploitation, and being separated from loved ones. Above all else they wished to put an end to the physical punishments that they suffered. They ‘extensively availed themselves’ of the right to ‘appeal . . . against the undue exercise, or what they may deem such, of domestic authority’, Acting Governor Wade noted in 1833. 173 Frequently slave-owners had to travel great distances to local authorities, at considerable cost that included the loss of the labour of their slaves while cases were in process. Slaves were certainly not familiar with chapter and verse of the ameliorative legislation, but they displayed a keen awareness of having rights in law, even though they supposedly never mixed ‘with any less ignorant than themselves’.174 They believed that the functionaries of the colonial state would intervene on their behalf. More often than not these beliefs were misplaced, for the officials who were meant to ‘protect’ them were no revolutionaries. In the Colony’s courts, slaves had to battle against overwhelming odds in having their voices heard. When, after being beaten, Titus appeared in the Graaff-Reinet court in 1826, his fellow slave, September, who was in a position to corroborate his testimony, found himself ‘frowned into silence’ by his master.175 Colonial policy was deliberately aimed at arriving at ‘amicable’ settlements in conflicts between masters and slaves. For the most part, this consisted of the withdrawal of slave complaints.176 Yet slaves continued to make their way to law courts to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them by the new legislation. Such was the Graaff-Reinet slave Damon’s confidence in the legislation that he told his master, on being ordered on a day in 1827 to grab hold of an ox: ‘You can do that yourself and if you so much as lay a finger on me I’ll go and complain.’177

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‘Amelioration’ represented by far the largest challenge to their authority the Colony’s slaveholders had yet to face. The Dutch settlers had hitherto regarded the master-slave relationship as sacrosanct, even though the treatment of slaves by owners had always been under the nominal control of the state. Now, what they had always regarded as one of their most basic rights – the liberty to administer ‘domestic correction’ without a second thought – had to be explained to colonial authorities. Above all, amelioration meant the ‘substitution of Magisterial for domestic authority’.178 It is not surprising that the years of ‘amelioration’ were seen as ones of increased ‘insolence’ on the part of their slaves. Even Wade recognised, however, that in the minds of slaveholders, ‘insolence’ was ‘any thing short of a servile submissiveness’.179 The real significance of ‘amelioration’, however, is to be found not in whether slaves were successful in having their complaints heard – the vast majority were not – but in its ambiguity and unintended consequences. While, on the one hand, ‘amelioration’ provided slaves with the means by which to resist their day-to-day subjugation, it did, on the other hand, institutionalise such forms of resistance. It is worth looking at another Graaff-Reinet case in detail. In 1827, one Van Straten beat his slave Aron for cleaning some wheat ‘very negligently’. Van Straten further threatened to beat Aron again the following day. 180 Aron complained to the Assistant Guardian at Graaff-Reinet, not so much of the punishment that he received, but rather to prevent the further punishment that his master had threatened to carry out.181 He further stated that he had ‘every reason to be satisfied with the general treatment of his master towards him’. His master had apparently pardoned him on a previous occasion when he had lost some sheep that were under his care. Certainly, Aron could not have had ‘every reason to be satisfied’. No slave could. But it was not his intention to alienate the Assistant Guardian. He was probably only too aware of colonial prejudices and figured that a demonstration of loyalty might produce a more desirable outcome. Aron told the court that he was prepared to drop his case and return to his master’s service if the latter promised not to carry out the beating. A situation of this nature was inconceivable in the period before amelioration. Indeed, in the eighteenth century fear of punishment commonly induced slaves to desert.182 Aron’s complaint

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represented the institutionalisation of slave resistance and his complaint did indeed bear fruit. In court he procured a promise that Van Straten would not punish him for the same offence again. ‘Amelioration’ had consequences that metropolitan law-makers could not have foreseen, for frequently owners had to answer to courts for matters not directly covered by the new legislation. In 1826, for example, the slave woman Eva, belonging to the Graaff-Reinet settler, B.G. Liebenberg, claimed her freedom on the grounds that her master had promised her freedom if she consented to sexual intercourse.183 Before the Assistant Guardian, Eva ‘stated that her master has had carnal connection with her and that she consented to this intercourse because her master as an allurement promised to grant her her freedom’. On these grounds she requested ‘that her master may be compelled by law to discharge her from slavery as he refused to do it voluntarily’.184 In court Liebenberg readily admitted to having had sexual intercourse with Eva and promptly signed a certificate of manumission. He could hardly have denied the charge, considering the testimony that had been brought against him.185 On Eva’s side was the colonist Willem Schultz who testified that he had seen Eva and Liebenberg in bed together. Eva had no witnesses to corroborate her claim that a promise of freedom had actually been made. Nevertheless, to Liebenberg the case could only have brought great dishonour. He agreed to ‘voluntarily manumit’ Eva ‘to prevent an action of such nature against him to the dishonour of himself and his family’.186 For Eva, the very institutions of slavery had brought her freedom. Such were the consequences of ‘amelioration’.

Colonial crisis and colonial reform In the same year that Governor Somerset issued his proclamation of half-measures that won him the continued support of the Dutch elite, a Commission of Inquiry began a thorough investigation of Cape affairs. The Commission, appointed in the aftermath of a debate in the British House of Commons on Cape slavery, was given the widest possible brief. Headed by W.G. Colebrooke and J.T. Bigge, it was instructed to report on the state of slavery at the Cape, the Colony’s finances, property relations, civil administration and judicial affairs. For the Cape Colony, the Commission’s investigations, which were not completed until 1831, had profound and lasting consequences. Its immediate result was

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Somerset’s downfall. His successor, the acting Governor Major-General Richard Bourke, recognised the fallout as nothing short of a ‘kind of revolution’.187 In the course of their investigations the Commission exposed the shambles of much of the Colony’s civil and financial administration. In sum, the Commission broke the corrupt cabal that was the colonial government.188 The most important recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry were in the realm of the judiciary. Following on its findings, the Colony’s entire judicial system – for so long the very basis of the gentry’s power – was rewritten. The boards of landdrosts and heemraden were abolished and replaced with Resident Magistrates and Civil Commissioners. As Peires has convincingly argued, for the gentry and their clients the abolition of the boards meant the loss of ‘the essential determinants of their material prosperity’.189 It was not without reason that De Zuid Afrikaan complained a few years later that the boards of landdrosts and heemraden had been ‘so useful and important for the wants of the Farmers’.190 No wonder that the trekboers who left the Colony in the 1830s re-established such courts as soon as they could.191 The Commission also ensured that the judiciary was for the first time made independent of the executive by the appointment of judges from Britain. Although Roman Law was to be retained, the Commission recommended the gradual assimilation of English law into the Colony. Judicial business was henceforth to be conducted in English. The office of the Fiscal was abolished and an Attorney General was appointed from England. A Supreme Court was established, with jurisdiction in both criminal and civil matters. Most significantly, Truter, Somerset’s arch supporter, was left out of these new arrangements and retired from public life. Sir John Wylde, formerly the Deputy Judge Advocate in New South Wales, was appointed as the Chief Justice of the new Supreme Court. 192 If, as Peires has argued, the most immediate causes of the Great Trek can be traced directly to the recommendations of the Commission, the wider origins of the movement are to be found in a much broader colonial crisis that had at its heart the issue of slavery and Khoisan labour.193 The deliberate removal of themselves and their households from British rule by frontier trekboers that got underway in the latter half of the 1830s, was quite distinct from earlier migrations driven by

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population growth and property relations that encouraged expansion.194 Slave amelioration and the slaves’ immediate exploitation of the fissures created combined with the most decisive intervention yet of the British government in servile colonial labour. This was Ordinance 50, passed in July 1828, the same year in which the judicial recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry were put into effect. If liberal historians have overstated the influence of humanitarian thought (and in particular the role of Dr Philip) in ensuring the passage of Ordinance 50, they did not fail to see its long-term significance. ‘With the passage of Ordinance 50,’ Marais wrote, ‘the Cape Colony turned a sharp corner.’195 Marais recognised that the Ordinance could not be seen separately from the abolition of chattel slavery that was to follow. For Marais, Ordinance 50 established the Cape’s non-racial ‘tradition’. That ‘tradition’ was, of course, rooted in material interests and would last only as long as these interests were served.196 But there can be little doubt that the challenges posed to settler authority by slave ‘amelioration’, Ordinance 50, and the evident and widespread inspiration that slaves and Khoisan drew from these measures, fed into a ‘general psychosis’ that resulted in the Great Trek.197 As Timothy Keegan has argued, the reforms of the period undermined the lines of patriarchal authority that had thus far characterised trekboer households and ‘must have seemed like an attack on the ver y foundations of Boer society’.198 There is no doubting the revolutionary potential of Ordinance 50. It struck at the heart of the frontier settler household, for it recognised that the Khoikhoi had been reduced to a position of near-slaves. The Ordinance was widely spoken of as the ‘emancipation of the Hottentots.’ It removed many of the legal disabilities of Caledon’s Code of 1809 and in theory at least attempted to place ‘Hottentot’ labourers on an equal legal footing with white settlers. Ordinance 50 in effect did away with the legal category of ‘Hottentot’, for those Khoikhoi not under contract were no longer threatened with the charge of vagrancy. Although the legislation reinforced some of the restrictions of the ‘Hottentot Code’, in general, it sought to address the abuses of the contract system that prevailed and to bring the Khoikhoi more firmly within the ambit of colonial law. Oral contracts were limited to one month’s duration; written ones were not to exceed one year and children could not be

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‘apprenticed’ without their parents’ consent. Clerks and Justices of the Peace were to register new contracts (tasks that were earlier in the hands of veldcornets) and ‘domestic’ punishments were outlawed.199 In its particular consequences at local level, Ordinance 50 has not received the scholarly attention that it deserves.200 It is clear that there was immediate dislocation in the labour market. A Select Committee found that the measure had resulted in ‘some temporary disorder’ that, however, did not require ‘more than the ordinary means of coercion’.201 Many Khoikhoi withdrew from the labour market and settled on Crown land or vacant settler-owned land, a phenomenon defined as ‘squatting’. It is not surprising that increased complaints of stock theft were heard in the years immediately after 1828. Almost immediately there were clamours for legislation to outlaw ‘vagrancy’, ‘an early and enduring feature of Ordinance 50’s aftermath’.202 The objectives of Ordinance 50 and the broader recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry were not easily implemented. The Supreme Court showed little interest in putting into practice the egalitarian ethos of the Ordinance and the justices of the Court, John Wylde and William Menzies, were conservatives who believed in the differential punishing of black and white subjects. Things were even harder at local level, where the institutions of the colonial state were thin on the ground. Neither Justices of the Peace nor Resident Magistrates were required to travel outside of the towns or villages in which they were based. In the absence of veldcornets, thus, the law did not reach wards and farms in remote rural districts. Duly has gone so far as to argue that Ordinance 50 simply did not regulate relations between Khoikhoi and white settlers. In his view, ‘the ineffectiveness of the ordinance was of more importance than its intended purpose.’203 But the fact that Khoisan servants to a large extent disappear from the post-1828 historical record, as Malherbe’s research has shown,204 is itself revealing. It suggests that such servants enjoyed much greater freedom of movement than was the case under the regulations of the Caledon Code of 1809 and that they were successful in placing themselves beyond the purview of the colonial state. Van Ryneveld, for example, was unable to tell whether most of the ‘excesses’ committed in the aftermath of Ordinance 50 (by which he meant the theft of sheep and cattle) were the work of ‘Bushmen or Hottentots’.205

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In a real sense, then, Ordinance 50 did regulate relations between masters and servants, mainly because the context in which masters and servants now met each other had been radically altered. As Duly has himself pointed out, for settlers the largest problem was that servants who remained in their employ showed an aversion to the long-term contracts that had previously been the norm. Instead, they chose shortterm, oral contracts that typically did not exceed one month’s duration and which had to be regularly re-negotiated.206 As a consequence, servants were in a position to command higher wages and they certainly refused to work merely for food and clothing, a situation into which they had previously been forced.207 More than a decade after the passage of the Ordinance, the Governor, Sir George Napier, complained that those settlers on the eastern frontier suffered ‘infinitely more inconvenience from the shortage of labour and from the idleness and caprice of their servants’ than those in the Western Cape.208 The slaves in the Colony’s western districts, however, would soon follow the lead of the labouring population in the east.

‘A vortex of misery’: the end of the slave economy If settlers in the east were feeling the effects of Ordinance 50, those in the west were witnessing the terminal decline of the slave economy. In 1825, a year before the passage of Ordinance 19, the British government suspended preferential duties on Cape wines. As wine prices collapsed, the Cape economy was plunged into crisis. Between 1828 and 1834 annual wine output declined by close to 25 per cent in the Cape District and by nearly 50 per cent in Stellenbosch.209 The ‘golden times’ of the first two decades of the nineteenth century had come to an end, as one observer, who was left to clean up a bankrupt Franschoek wine farm, put it.210 The great increase in the value of wine farms and slaves that accompanied the boom of the 1810s and early 1820s was dramatically reversed. Wine farms, as well as the slaves working them, lost as much as two-thirds of their former value.211 Jacobus Johannes van Reede van Oudtshoorn, for example, purchased his farm, Witteboomen, at the height of the boom for the sum of 40 000 guilders; in 1833 the farm was valued at a mere 50 000 guilders.212 Zandvliet, the Stellenbosch wine estate of Isaac Cornelis de Villiers, was purchased at a high of

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126 000 guilders and reduced to 65 000 guilders in 1832.213 A number of bankruptcies occurred as a result of such declines. In sum, the ‘former prosperity of wine farmers . . . [had] completely vanished’ and for the most part they found themselves ‘hurried away in [a] vortex of misery’.214 Wheat farmers suffered in equal measure. Although some were able to realise returns of 6 per cent per annum, this was no more than what was normally required to meet interest payments on mortgage loans.215 One of the added problems facing wheat farmers was declining yields in the face of increased soil depletion. Alexander van Breda claimed that he knew of farms ‘which formerly produced 1,000 muids [of grain], but now have become so exhausted that they produce only 400’.216 Grain farmers, De Zuid Afrikaan editorialised in 1831, had for years been suffering from a succession of crop failures. 217 Farmers in the wheat-producing fieldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier were amongst those experiencing difficulties in the years leading to emancipation. Some of the longest-standing residents and largest slaveowners of the area suffered bankruptcy at this time. Between 1821 and 1834 Nicolaas Everhardus Mosterd, who farmed his Mosselbanks Rivier estate with about twenty-one slaves, suffered the failure of eleven out of thirteen wheat crops. These losses cost him about 5 000 rixdollars.218 Hendrik Cornelis van Niekerk, owner of 54 slaves, a farm in Worcester and three farms in Mosselbanks Rivier – Blaauw Blomskloof, Spenglaar’s Drift and Hoornbosch – had his insolvent estate liquidated in 1827.219 William Proctor, large wheat farmer and owner of another Mosselbanks Rivier farm, Drooge Valey, claimed in 1826 that the low price of wheat meant that his farm could not produce a sufficiently remunerative return on the capital he had invested. In his first two years of farming, he claimed, he had lost in excess of £1 500.220 Proctor, who was declared insolvent in 1829,221 was no stranger to good times. With his cornmill, racing horses, piano and mahogany furniture, he had played the part of the English country gentleman.222 If slave-owners were caught up in a ‘vortex of misery’, these times were no less uncertain for the slaves. The changing fortunes of their owners had direct consequences for the slaves, as many were sold to new owners during these years of recession. In 1827, for instance, Piet (about 48 years old at the time) and Saartje (about 34 years old), two of Hendrik Cornelis van Niekerk’s 54 slaves, became the property of

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Nicolaas Everhardus Mosterd of Wolwedans when the former was declared insolvent.223 When Mosterd in turn faced bankruptcy, Piet was transferred to one Ockert Tobias van Niekerk; in 1831 Piet was once again transferred, this time to W.F. Bergh of Cape Town.224 Saartje remained registered with Nicolaas Mosterd until 1835 when she was transferred to J.F. Serrurier of Cape Town.225 Between 8 February and 10 May 1827 the bankrupt Tobias Mosterd of Klipheuvel, Mosselbanks Rivier, transferred seventeen of his slaves to different individuals.226 Among the slaves transferred were Lea and her child, Rebecca, as well as Camonie and her children, Rachel and Goliath. 227 They became the property of Mosterd’s son, Nicolaas Gerhardus Mosterd, who also took title to Klipheuvel.228 Until 1835 these slaves remained the property of Nicolaas Gerhardus Mosterd, when they were transferred under court order to one T.S. Smith of Cape Town. 229 In the years leading to emancipation, thus, the slave economy was reeling from a number of setbacks. The fall in wine prices in the 1820s placed limits on the extent to which slave labour could be profitably utilised.230 Wine farmers, moreover, proved unable to move their slaves to other forms of profitable employment and wheat farmers were scarcely better off. The consequences were widespread bankruptcies amongst slaveholders and great insecurity for their slaves. Ultimately, the continued use of slave labour, in both town and countryside, proved incompatible with the political and social transformations initiated by British rule. For all their rhetoric, slaveholders in the western districts learned to accept the coming of emancipation. This was not before they had mounted a vigorous intellectual defence of their social system. As Andrew Bank has warned, the slave-owners’ ‘acceptance of the inevitability of abolition from around 1833 should not obscure the magnitude of their resistance’.231 In the 1820s and 1830s, largely in response to the liberal humanitarianism of John Philip and the London Missionary Society, the Dutch intelligentsia engaged in a conservative construction of the South African past, in effect giving birth to South African historiography.232 In Cape Town individuals such as Truter, Johannes de Wet and Abraham Faure led the way in defending colonial settlement. In the countryside, their efforts were complemented by the conservative

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thinking of G.W.A. van der Lingen, head of the Dutch Reformed Church in Paarl and mentor to S.J. du Toit, who would later emerge as a leading figure in the creation of Afrikaner ethnic consciousness.233 In the end, however, their inability to make slavery pay had probably helped to convince the slave-owners that it was not worth fighting for. They were intensely aware of the fact that slavery was disintegrating around them. They also knew that they were guaranteed the labour of their slaves for a period of four further years under the scheme called ‘apprenticeship’. Unlike their counterparts on the eastern frontier, they resolved to remain under British rule. On the eve of emancipation, the veldcornet of Mosselbanks Rivier, F.H. Scheundorff, wrote that only one of the farmers in his ward had decided to leave the confines of the Colony. The others had ‘not as yet such an intention’, although they expected ‘not to have a single tenant left’ on their farms on the day of emancipation.234 In December 1833 Wade, the acting Governor, assured his superiors in Britain that, even though the Colony’s slaveholders viewed the coming of emancipation ‘with utter detestation in its whole extent,’ there was ‘no cause to apprehend . . . any openly avowed hostility to the Bill [to emancipate slaves], still less anything partaking of systematic resistance to it’.235 Instead, as emancipation approached, slave-owners and merchants rallied around the issue of slave compensation. The payment of compensation to colonial slave-owners was at the centre of the British Parliament’s abolition plan.236 Slaveholders therefore had reason to cheer when it became clear that compensation was assured.237 Indeed, by November 1833 De Zuid Afrikaan wrote that the ‘mode and amount of compensation’ was ‘the only matter of much anxiety among the slave owners’.238 Whatever breaches had been opened in earlier years between slave-owners and English-speaking humanitarians, they were united on what R.L. Watson has called the ‘hegemony of property’.239 On this matter the most important colonial newspapers, De Zuid Afrikaan and the South African Commercial Advertiser, the respective voices of Dutch slave-owners and English-speaking merchants, spoke in unison.240 In the debate on slavery that took hold in colonial newspapers in the early 1830s, ‘there was essential agreement across the spectrum from John Philip to the Afrikaner slave-owners themselves’.241 John Fairbairn, the leading editor of the Commercial Advertiser, argued strongly in favour of

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the award of compensation money, a concern that was ‘inextricably bound up with his perception of the need for the appeasement of slaveowners in the interests of stable, united colonial rule’.242 There was, he wrote, ‘but one way, consistent with justice, of making slaves freemen – by redeeming them with money’.243 It was not hard for the slave-owners to take on the language of property and liberal humanitarianism. ‘The Slaves are our goods and our property, to be ours in the most absolute sense,’ they wrote in 1832.244 But the slave-owners also had motives that were more mundane than such high-minded statements of abstract principle. For Cape slaveholders, as for those in the British West Indies, compensation for the alienation of private property was essential to liquidate debts that had been taken on to underwrite the expansion of earlier decades. The wine boom of the 1810s had been financed by credit. Private individuals as well as public institutions such as the Orphan Chamber and the government-controlled Lombard Bank provided many loans.245 Although the extent to which slaves had been used to provide security on loans has probably been overstated,246 slave property was nevertheless heavily mortgaged. Since 1731, when the first loan on security of slave property was recorded in the Colony,247 slaves had provided an important source of loan collateral. By 1834, it was estimated that £400 000 had been loaned out in this way and De Zuid Afrikaan figured that nearly half of the compensation due to the Colony would go towards paying off existing debt.248 Thus for slave-owners compensation was regarded as essential. As their nervous creditors began to call in loans, slave-owners were faced with the spectre of widespread insolvency. In a letter to the paper one ‘H.N.’ from Stellenbosch claimed that his ‘greatest property’ consisted of mortgaged slaves and that his creditors were calling in their loans or demanding alternative security that he could not provide. Under these circumstances, he explained, he would have no alternative but to declare himself bankrupt.249 It is not surprising, therefore, that the Colony experienced a large number of bankruptcies on the eve of slave emancipation – 115 and 146 in the years 1833 and 1834 respectively.250 While the Commercial Advertiser tried to convince its readers that the bankruptcies were not related to slave emancipation, De Zuid Afrikaan was less certain.251 As much as the paper provided a medium through which slave-owners and

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the Dutch intelligentsia could argue the case for the humane treatment of their slaves and the supposed mildness of slavery at the Cape compared to the plantation systems of the Americas, they had no doubt about the fact that their wealth and prosperity were ‘chiefly dependent on the value and productiveness of their Slave property’.252 It was little wonder, then, that they viewed the coming of emancipation and the uncertainty of adequate compensation with such trepidation.

Conclusion In the four decades leading to the emancipation of slaves, the Cape Colony experienced momentous change. The conquest of the Colony by Britain at the end of the eighteenth century led to the incorporation of the Colony into a metropolitan system vastly more dynamic than what had gone before. At first, the Dutch slaveholders had much to be satisfied with. It was under British rule that the ‘Bushmen’ of the northern frontier were annihilated. Those not killed or illegally enslaved were pushed beyond colonial boundaries where they perished in large numbers at the hands of the forward column of the trekboer economy, the Griqua, led by Adam Kok and his secretary, Hendrik Hendrikse, the latter’s learnedness only matched by his evident brutality.253 This diverse group of people, made up of runaway slaves and those Khoisan who refused to serve in the trekboer economy, went some way towards completing the work that the trekboers had started. And as the servile Khoikhoi of the Eastern Cape went into rebellion and threatened to roll back the tide of colonial conquest, it was the British military that ensured the defeat of the rebels and continued colonial rule. The ‘Hottentot Code’ of 1809 brought finality to the conquest of the Khoikhoi and went some way towards ensuring a stable supply of labour. Inclusion into the British Empire brought significant riches to those slaveholders closest to Cape Town. The British ruled their new colony through the old ruling class, the urban elite of Cape Town and the gentry of the countryside. These individuals remained in their civil and judicial posts through which they could continue to dispense justice and patronage and enjoy ample opportunities for graft. For the mass of rural slaveholders in the Western Cape, British protection of the wine industry proved a great boon. By extracting more labour from the slave population, the Colony’s slaveholders could greatly increase their wealth. To be sure, the gentry had to make some compromises, particularly in

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the way that they ruled the countryside and controlled the servile population. In part, these compromises were forced on them by the British administration in their attempts to limit the violence that was so pervasive in their new colony. But the compromises were also forced by the servile population when they rose in rebellion at the end of the eighteenth century and made the limits to their servility known. British rule also pulled in contradictory directions as the interests of the Colony did not always sit well with the demands of the metropole. The end of the slave trade in 1808 endangered the continuance of a boom economy. So did the introduction of measures to improve the lives and working conditions of slaves. And Ordinance 50 of 1828 brought the first ‘emancipation’ to the Colony. The immediate result of this new legislation was to break the fragile modus vivendi that had existed between master, slave, and servant. On the numerous farms throughout the countryside the balance of power had been tilted slightly in the favour of slaves and servants. In 1825 some of the slaveholders’ worst fears materialised as a number of slaves and Khoi servants in the district of Worcester sought to realise their freedom. The rebellion signalled the end of the tacit alliance that had been brokered between the British colonial government and the Dutch elite. Not long thereafter a Commission of Inquiry struck a fatal blow at what remained of the power of the gentry. In the eastern districts, the trekboers left the Colony in large numbers. The slave-owners of the Western Cape resigned themselves to the end of slavery, campaigned for adequate compensation and hoped for better times.

Notes 1. CA 1/GR 8/24, Testimony of Petrus Arnoldus Pienaar before W.C. van Ryneveld, 23 May 1835; 1/GR 16/54, Van Ryneveld – Bell, 17 June 1835. 2. PRO CO 48/26, Enclosure no. 2 in Sir J. Cradock’s Despatch no. 182, 15 April 1814. 3. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, pp. 1ff. 4. PRO CO 48/13, Cradock – Landdrosts, Circular, 20 April 1812, pp. 327ff. 5. CA 1/GR 16/16, Stockenström – Commission of Inquiry, 9 August 1826, no. 4359. 6. J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1968), p. 21; Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, pp. 68–90.

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7. Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, p. 68. 8. CA CO 2559, Van de Graaff – Lt. General Grey, 25 April 1807; CA CO 2560, Van de Graaff – Caledon, 1 April 1807, v.d. Graaff – Caledon, 15 August 1807. 9. CA CO 2564, Stockenström – Bird, 5 August 1808, no. 12. 10. PRO CO 48/2, Caledon – Castlereagh, 25 June 1808, no. 52. 11. D. Moodie, The Record or a Series of Official Papers Relative to the Condition and Treatment of the Native Tribes of South Africa (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1960), Collins Report, Part V, p. 37. 12. CA 1/GR 16/11, Stockenström – Bird, 7 February 1822, no. 2109. 13. CA 1/GR 16/11, Stockenström – Bird, 7 February 1822, no. 2109; CA 1/GR 16/ 11, Stockenström – Bird, 14 February 1822, no. 2115. 14. J. Philip, Researches in South Africa, 2 volumes, (London: James Duncan, 1828), volume 2, pp. 45, 273. 15. Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, p. 153. 16. PRO CO 48/13, Report of Commission of Circuit – Cradock, 28 February 1812, pp. 239ff; Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, p. 153. 17. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Aboriginal Tribes, British Settlements, South Africa, 1837. 18. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Aboriginal Tribes, British Settlements, South Africa, 1837. 19. CA 1/GR 16/15, Stockenström – Bird, 5 June 1822. The smous Jacobus Theron was explicit in figuring that his ‘trade would be greatly facilitated by procuring as Servants some of the Bushman’s Tribes with whom he occasionally traded as Servants of the Colonists’. RCC, 20, Memorial of Jacobus Theron to Earl Bathurst, p. 81. 20. PRO CO 49/63, Returns of all Commandos or Expeditions against the Bosjesmen which have taken place . . . since 1797, 16 October 1824, folio 165ff. 21. PRO CO 48/13, Report of Commission of Circuit – Cradock, 28 February 1812, folio. 239ff. 22. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge upon the Hottentot and Bushman Population, 28 January 1830, p. 315. 23. CA GH 1/GR 16/6, Stockenström – Bird, 5 May 1817, no. 697. 24. CA GH 1/GR 16/11, Stockenström – Bird, 5 June 1822, no. 2265. 25. RCC, 3, Dundas – Yonge, 20 February 1800, pp. 48–54. 26. N. Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), p. 291. 27. RCC, 3, Dundas – Yonge, 20 February 1800, pp. 48–54. 28. V.C. Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan in the Eastern Districts of the Colony before and after Ordinance 50 of 1828’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997, p. 98. 29. A. Atmore and S. Marks, ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 3, 1974, pp. 109–10. 30. S. Newton-King and V.C. Malherbe, The Khoikhoi Rebellion in the Eastern Cape, 1799– 1803 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1981), p. 10. 31. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 114. 32. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 115. 33. RCC, 3, Answers to Questions proposed by Sir George Yonge relative to the District of Graaff-Reinet, 24 February 1800, pp. 57 ff.

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34. RCC, 3, Yonge – Dundas, 5 January 1801, p. 369. 35. The 1837 Parliamentary Select Committee Report on ‘Aboriginal Tribes’, which was heavily influenced by missionary testimony, reported that the Caledon Code did much ‘towards riveting their chains, as it had the effect of placing them under the control of any inhabitants of the colony, who never wanted frivolous pretexts to detain them at compulsory and unpaid labour.’ Commissioner Bigge was of the view that the Caledon Code created a ‘perpetual obligation in the Hottentots to enter into service.’ The ‘great majority . . . remained in a state of servitude to the white inhabitants of the colony.’ RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge upon the Hottentot and Bushman Population, 28 January 1830. 36. Philip, Researches, volume 1, p. 148. 37. Eric Walker wrote of the 1809 proclamation: ‘In short, all those Hottentots who could not find their way to a mission reserve, enlist in the Cape Corps or get away to join the banditti in the Orange river valley, were left to work as pass-bound serfs on such terms as a farmer field-cornet might approve or an isolated magistrate allow.’ The Great Trek (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1934), p. 79. See also Marais The Cape Coloured People, p. 127. 38. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, pp. 116–18. 39. PRO CO 48/4, Caledon – Castlereagh, 12 October 1809, folio 247. 40. PRO CO 48/13, Circular, Cradock to Landdrosts, 20 April 1812, p. 327. 41. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, pp. 116–18; L.C. Duly, ‘A Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance of 1828’, in M. Kooy (ed.), Studies in Economics and Economic History: Essays in Honour of Professor H.M. Robertson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972), p. 28; Elphick and Malherbe, ‘The Khoisan to 1828’ in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 41. 42. RCC, 3, Dundas – Yonge, 20 February 1800, pp. 48 ff. 43. Court pleading of F.R. Bresler at the trial of R.H. Brits, 28 May 1801, in A. Du Toit and H. Giliomee, Afrikaner Political Thought, Volume 1, 1780–1850 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1983), pp. 49–50; J.S. Marais, Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1944), p. 74. 44. RCC, 4, W.S. van Ryneveld, ‘A Plan for Amending the Interior Police in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope’, 31 October 1801, pp. 88–96. 45. RCC, 4, W.S. van Ryneveld, ‘A Plan for Amending the Interior Police in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope’, 31 October 1801, pp. 88–96; H. Giliomee, ‘Die Administrasietydperk van Lord Caledon, 1807–11’, Archives Yearbook for South African History, 29, 1966, p. 274. 46. S. Newton-King, ‘The Labour Market of the Cape Colony, 1807–1828’, in S. Marks and A. Atmore (eds.), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London: Longman, 1980), p. 177. 47. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge upon the Hottentot and Bushman Population, 28 January 1830. 48. RCC, 35, Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry upon the Police at the Cape of Good Hope, 10 May 1828. 49. Elphick and Malherbe, ‘Khoisan to 1828’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 41. See also Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 124. 50. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge upon the Hottentot and Bushman Population, 28 January 1830.

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51. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge upon the Hottentot and Bushman Population, 28 January 1830. These figures do not include the districts of Stellenbosch and Worcester, where no births were recorded, and includes Graaff-Reinet only from the year 1821. 52. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge. 53. RCC, 35, Report of J.T. Bigge. 54. RCC, 30, Memorial of the Directors of the London Missionary Society, 22 January 1827, p. 155. 55. RCC, 4, W.S. van Ryneveld, ‘A Plan for Amending the Interior Police in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope’, 31 October 1801, pp. 88–96. 56. G. Cory, The Rise of South Africa (London: Green and Co., 1910), volume 1, p. 210. 57. Newton-King, ‘Labour Market’, p. 180. 58. Read claimed that Francis Dundas ‘begged’ Van der Kemp to take in those Khoikhoi who were in arms: SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 5, Folder 1, Jacket B, Read – Cradock, 23 January 1812. 59. SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 5, Folder 1, Jacket B, Read – Cradock, 23 January 1812. 60. PRO CO 48/12, Extracts from the Letters and Journals of the Missionary James Read, Relating the Murders and Numbers of Hottentots, 9 January 1811, folio 119; SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 3, Folder 5, Jacket B, James Read, 30 August 1808. 61. SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 4, Folder 4, Jacket B, Bird – Van der Kemp and Read, 28 February 1811; SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 5, Folder 1, Jacket C, Cradock – Read, 31 March 1812; SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 5, Folder 1, Jacket E, Bird – Read, 6 August 1812. 62. Cory, Rise of South Africa, volume 1, pp. 213–16. 63. Cory, Rise of South Africa, volume 1, pp. 215–16. 64. Mr. Justice Cloete, cited in Cory, Rise of South Africa, volume 1, pp. 218–19. 65. PRO CO 48/13, Circular, Cradock to Landdrosts, 20 April 1812, folio 327ff. 66. PRO CO 48/22, Denyssen – Cradock, 16 March 1813, folio 171ff. 67. RCC, 10, D. Denyssen contra Jacobus van Reenen, 11 September 1812, pp. 10ff. 68. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, pp. 1ff. 69. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, pp. 1ff. 70. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, pp. 1ff. 71. PRO CO 48/26, Memorial of Jacob van Reenen to Sir John Cradock, 29 September 1812, folio 16ff. 72. RCC, 1, Craig – President and Members of the Court of Justice, 7 January 1796, p. 300. 73. RCC, 1, Court of Justice – Craig, 14 January 1796, pp. 302–7. 74. RCC, 1, Craig – President and Members of the Court of Justice, 4 February 1796, p. 324. 75. PRO WO 1/324, Craig – Dundas, 27 December 1795, pp. 551–73; PRO WO 1/ 325, Craig – Dundas, 10 July 1796, pp. 403–9. 76. L.C. Duly, British Land Policy at the Cape, 1795–1844: A Study of Administrative Procedures in the Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968), p. 23. 77. PRO WO 1/325, Craig – Dundas, 29 August 1796, pp. 575ff. 78. RCC 1, Craig – President and Members of the Court of Justice, 7 January 1796, p. 299; PRO WO 1/325, Craig – Dundas, 29 August 1796, pp. 575ff.

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79. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 116. 80. SOAS, CWM, Incoming Correspondence, Box 4, Folder 1, Jacket D, James Read, 7 November 1809. Read also claimed, probably with some exaggeration, that General Dundas, the governor of the first British administration, had told him that if he had remained in the Colony longer he would have ‘hung half the colonists’. 81. M. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves: the Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806–1834’, Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1986, p. 95. 82. Duly, British Land Policy, p. 103; RCC, 14, List of forty-one Grants made in perpetual Quit Rent by Lieut. General Sir R.S. Donkin, p. 442. De Zuid Afrikaan in an initial obituary wrote of Stoll that he ‘was distinguished for his unparalleled energy and fidelity, his integrity and sincerity’. When the fraud became known, however, the paper retracted ‘some part of the unqualified praise . . . bestowed upon the deceased’. ZA, 8 August 1834, 29 August 1834. 83. See p. 66. 84. J. B. Peires, ‘The British and the Cape, 1814–1834’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, pp. 491–2. 85. Ross, Beyond the Pale, p. 29. 86. Cited in Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 94. 87. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 102. 88. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, p. 1; C.G. Botha, ‘Sir John Andries Truter, 1763–1845’, South African Law Journal, May 1918, pp. 1–20. 89. Truter – Stockenström (Sr.), 13 March 1811, in Du Toit and Giliomee, Afrikaner Political Thought, p. 100; Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 117. 90. Address of Chief Justice J.A. Truter on the Occasion of the First Assembly of the Court in the New Court House, 19 January 1815, in Du Toit and Giliomee, Afrikaner Political Thought, p. 101. 91. PRO WO 1/325, Craig – Dundas, 29 August 1796, pp. 575 ff. 92. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, pp. 1ff. 93. RCC, 10, Cradock – Bathurst, 15 April 1814, D. Denyssen contra Jacobus van Reenen, 11 September 1812, pp. 10ff. 94. Botha, ‘Sir John Andries Truter’, p. 5. 95. PRO CO 414/9, Enclosure K, Case of Truter and slave Marie. 96. PRO CO 48/30, Truter – Bathurst, 28 March 1815, folio 44ff. 97. PRO CO 48/30, Truter – Bathurst, 28 March 1815, folio 44ff. 98. RCC, 10, Truter – Somerset, 28 March 1815, pp. 287–9. 99. CA CO 238, Truter – Somerset, 6 March 1825. 100. CA CJ 816, Sentence in case of Landdrost of Graaff-Reinet contra Louis Daniel Nicolaas Smit, 5 December 1822. 101. CA 1/GR 16/2, Stockeström – Bird, 22 January 1822. 102. PRO CO 48/120, Report on Criminal Law & Jurisprudence, 18 August 1827. 103. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 79. 104. W.M. Freund, ‘The Cape under Transitional Governments, 1795–1814’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 328. 105. PRO WO 1/326, Macartney – Dundas, 10 July 1797, pp. 375–86. 106. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 8–9.

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107. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 8a, Table 1.1. 108. RCC, 1, F. Kerstens, ‘Memorandum on the Condition of the Colony’, pp. 173–4. 109. Newton-King, ‘Labour Market’, p. 173; D.J. Van Zyl, ‘Die Geskiedenis van Graanbou aan die Kaap, 1795–1826’, in Archives Year Book for South African History, 31, 1968, p. 205. 110. Van Zyl, ‘Geskiedenis van Graanbou’, pp. 208, 224; V.T. Harlow, ‘Cape Colony, 1806–1822’, in E. A. Walker (ed.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, volume VIII: South Africa, Rhodesia and the High Commission Territories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 236. 111. PRO WO 1/326, Macartney – Dundas, 10 July 1797, pp. 375–86. 112. PRO WO 1/324, Craig – Dundas, 27 December 1795, pp. 551–7. 113. PRO WO 1/326, Craig – Dundas, 27 February 1797, pp. 85–94; Van Zyl, ‘Geskiedenis van Graanbou’, pp. 203–8, 232–3, 248–50; Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 237–8; W.W. Bird, State of the Cape in 1822 by a Civil Servant (Cape Town: Struik, 1966), pp. 104–6. 114. Bird, State of the Cape, p. 95; Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 236. 115. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 31, 236. 116. J.C. Armstrong and N. Worden, ‘The Slaves, 1652–1834’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 140. 117. PRO WO 1/326, Craig – Dundas, 14 January1797, pp. 1–13. 118. Compare M.C. Reidy, ‘The Admission of Slaves and “Prize Slaves” into the Cape Colony, 1797–1818’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997, pp. 4–6, 68, with Freund, ‘Cape under Transitional Governments’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, pp. 337–8. 119. Van Zyl, ‘Geskiedenis van Graanbou’, p. 249. 120. Harlow, ‘Cape Colony, 1806–1822’, pp. 234–5. 121. RCC, 1, F. Kerstens, ‘Memorandum on the Condition of the Cape Colony’, p. 173. 122. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 12–14; Harlow, ‘Cape Colony, 1806–1822’, p. 235. 123. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 14. 124. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 15–16. 125. Harlow, ‘Cape Colony, 1806–1822’, p. 235; Freund, ‘Cape under Transitional Governments’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 329. 126. T. Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996), pp. 48–9; on Hamilton Ross, who was heavily invested in the Cape’s wheat industry, see R.L. Watson, The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990), pp. 143–4. 127. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 52. 128. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 48; Freund, ‘Cape under Transitional Governments’, p. 328. 129. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 32. 130. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 97. 131. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 97. 132. G. Thompson, Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1967–1968), p. 91. 133. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 96. 134. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 59. 135. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 98.

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136. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 96. 137. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 100. 138. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 163; E. Walker, A History of South Africa, (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1928), p. 153; Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 208; Shell, Children of Bondage, pp. 122–3; PRO CO 48/19, Report from the Members of the Commission of the Long Circuit, enclosed in Sir John Cradock’s Despatch no. 56, 11 August 1813. 139. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 209. 140. CA CO 418, Truter – Somerset, 25 May 1825. 141. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 209. 142. A. Bank, The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806–1843 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1991). 143. Newton-King, ‘Labour Market’, pp. 178–9. 144. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 38–41. 145. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 58a. 146. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 37. 147. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 66. 148. CA CO 238, Truter – Somerset, 6 March 1825. 149. Clarkson, cited in J. Walvin, England, Slaves and Freedom, 1776–1838 (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 151. 150. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 247. 151. P. Scully, Liberating the Family?: Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997), pp. 35– 8. 152. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 274. 153. CA 1/STB 9/18, Daybook of landdrost, 17 August 1826, p. 533. 154. Cited in A. Bank, ‘Liberals and their Enemies: Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820 to 1850’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995, p. 149. 155. D.P. Faure, My Life and Times (Cape Town: Juta and Co., 1907), p. 3. 156. Cited in Watson, Slave Question, p. 137. 157. CA GH 26/65, Cole to Goderich, 3 July 1831; See also J. Mason, ‘Slaveholder Resistance to the Amelioration of Slavery at the Cape’, Paper Presented at ‘Western Cape – Roots and Realities’ Conference, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, July 1986. 158. CA GH 26/65, Cole – Goderich, 3 July 1831. 159. PRO CO 53/52, Report of Protector of Slaves, January – June 1831. 160. CA GH 26/65, Cole – Goderich, 3 July 1831. 161. The Colonist, 3 January 1828. 162. H.C. Botha, ‘Die Rol van Christoffel J. Brand in Suid Afrika, 1820–1854’, Archives Yearbook for South African History, 1977, p. 30; Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 110. 163. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 160. 164. PRO CO 48/62, Somerset – Bathurst, 1 February 1824, no. 71, pp. 26 ff. 165. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 161–5; Keegan, Colonial South Africa, pp. 58–9. 166. CA CO 238, Truter – Somerset, 6 March 1825; Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 163. 167. The most vivid historical account of the rebellion is R. Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London: Routledge, 1983), pp. 105–16. For a sophisticated

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168. 169.

170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188.

189. 190. 191. 192.

193. 194. 195. 196.

197. 198. 199.

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gendered analysis of the event, see P. van der Spuy, ‘ “Making Himself Master”: Galant’s Rebellion Revisited’, South African Historical Journal, 27, 1996, 1–28. RCC, 27, Memorial of Slaveholders of Stellenbosch to Landdrost and Heemraden, 10 July 1826, pp. 109–16. RCC, 27, Memorial of Slaveholders of Stellenbosch to Landdrost and Heemraden, 10 July 1826, p. 115; CA 1/STB 9/18, Daybook of landdrost, 12 July 1826: ‘nu is onze tyd op den 1e Aug zyn wy alle vry, February wat zegt jy daarvan, ik staat my as man’. CA CO 418, Truter – Somerset, 25 May 1825. PRO CO 48/64, Somerset – Bathurst, 26 April 1825, no. 166, pp. 314ff. PRO CO 48/64, Truter – Somerset, 25 March 1825. CA GH 23/10, Wade – Stanley, 6 December 1833, no. 9a. CA GH 23/10, Wade – Stanley, 6 December 1833, no. 9a. CA 1/GR 7/12, T. Muller v Titus, 8 November 1826, folios 540–58. W. Dooling, ‘Slavery and Amelioration in the Graaff-Reinet District, 1823–1830’, South African Historical Journal, 27, 1992, esp. pp. 89–91. CA 1/GR 2/21, Damon v J. Scholtz, 30 January 1827. CA GH 23/10, Wade – Stanley, 6 December 1833, no. 9a. CA GH 23/10, Wade – Stanley, 6 December 1833, no. 9a. CA 1/GR 17/22, Aron of P. van Straten, 23 March 1827, no. 17. CA 1/GR 7/15, Aron of P. van Straten, 24 March 1827, folios 211–16. Ross, Cape of Torments, p. 34; N. Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 123. CA 1/GR 17/24, Eva of B.G. Liebenberg, 13 November 1826, no. 10. CA 1/GR 17/24, Eva of B.G. Liebenberg, 13 November 1826, no. 10. CA 1/GR 17/20, Eva of B.G. Liebenberg, 30 October 1826. CA 1/GR 17/24, Eva of B.G. Liebenberg, 13 November 1826, no. 10. H. King, Richard Bourke (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 87. Peires, ‘The British and the Cape’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, pp. 494– 9; King, Richard Bourke, pp. 87–94; Walker, History of South Africa, p. 163; Duly, ‘Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance’, p. 45; Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 58. Peires, ‘British and the Cape’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 502. ZA, 20 May 1831. Walker, History of South Africa, p. 205; Walker, Great Trek, p. 82. King, Richard Bourke, pp. 89–92; Peires, ‘British and the Cape’, pp. 499–503; Duly, ‘Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance’, pp. 41–3; Botha, ‘Sir John Andries Truter’, p. 17. Peires, ‘British and the Cape’, in Elphick and Giliomee (eds.), Shaping, p. 499. Van der Merwe, Noordwaardse Beweging, esp. pp. 206–30. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, pp. 156–8. S. Trapido, ‘ “The Friends of the Natives”: Merchants, Peasants, and the Political and Ideological Structure of Liberalism in the Cape, 1854–1910’, in Marks and Atmore, Economy and Society, pp. 247–74. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 189. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 188. Duly, ‘Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance’, pp. 29–36; Newton-King, ‘Labour Market’, p. 197.

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200. For a detailed and thorough account, see Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan’. 201. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Aboriginal Tribes, British Settlements, South Africa, 1837. 202. Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan’, p. 229. 203. Duly, ‘Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance’, pp. 36, 43, 46. 204. Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan’, p. 199. 205. Cited in Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan’, p. 232. 206. Duly, ‘Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance’, pp. 36–7. 207. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 185. Although Malherbe has questioned Marais’s insistence that servants received higher wages in the aftermath of Ordinance 50, Marais’s evidence is fairly conclusive. It is true that he did not consider the wages of female servants separately and that the cost of labour for individual female servants probably did not increase. Nevertheless, such labour costs had never been calculated separately by trekboers and servants alike. In other words, Khoisan servants commonly rendered their labour as households (including, of course, the labour of children) rather than as individuals. For trekboers, the cost of labour delivered by such households had clearly increased. See Malherbe, ‘The Cape Khoisan’, pp. 241–2. 208. Cited in Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 183. For a less optimistic interpretation of the consequences of Ordinance 50, see Keegan, Colonial South Africa, pp. 104–6. 209. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 96. 210. CA MOIB 1/19, Records in insolvent estate of Jacob Daniel de Villiers, 14 October 1831. 211. CA MOIB 1/19, Records in insolvent estate of Jacob Daniel de Villiers, 14 October 1831. 212. CA MOIB 1/25, Records in insolvent estate of Jacobus Johannes van Reede van Oudtshoorn, 9 April 1833. 213. CA MOIB 1/21, Records in insolvent estate of Isaac Cornelis de Villiers, 18 June 1832. 214. CA MOIB 1/20, Records in insolvent estate of Daniel Johannes Bosman, 31 March 1832. 215. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 239–40. 216. CA AC 6, Minutes of evidence of Alexander van Breda before Council of Advice, 9 January 1827. 217. ZA, 7 October 1831. 218. CA MOIB 1/38, Records in insolvent estate of N.E. Mosterd, 21 July 1835; CA SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folios 237, 238. 219. CA MOIB 2/297, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik Cornelis van Niekerk, 5 June 1827. 220. CA AC 6, Minutes of evidence of William Proctor before Council of Advice, 13 December 1826. 221. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 240; RCC, volume 29, p. 491; RCC, volume 21, p. 102. 222. CA MOIB 2/505, no. 21, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of William Proctor, 10 May 1839; CA M3 1974, Map of Malmesbury. 223. CA MOIB 2/297, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik Cornelis van Niekerk, 5 June 1827; SO 6/99, Stellenbosch, folio 26; SO 6/ 95, Stellenbosch, folio 238. 224. CA SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folio 238; SO 6/99, Stellenbosch, folio 62; SO 6/13, Cape Town, folio 140.

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225. CA SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folio 238. 226. CA MOIB 2/275, no. 83, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Tobias Mosterd, 10 May 1827; CA SO 6/94, Stellenbosch, folios 98, 99. 227. CA SO 6/94, Stellenbosch, folio 98; SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folio 204. 228. DO, Transfer Deed no. 103, 11 November 1825. 229. CA SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folio 204. 230. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 208–11. 231. Bank, ‘Liberals and their Enemies’, p. 152. 232. A. Bank, ‘The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography’, Journal of African History, 38, 1997, 261–81. 233. Bank, ‘Liberals and their Enemies’, pp. 238–60. 234. CA CO 2775, F.H. Scheundorff – D.J. van Ryneveld, 28 June 1838, Enclosed with no. 65. 235. CA GH 23/10, Wade – Stanley, 6 December 1833, no. 9a. 236. K.M. Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados, 1823–1843 (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. xvii. 237. ZA, 9 August 1833, 20 December 1833. 238. ZA, 8 November 1833. 239. Watson, Slave Question, esp. pp. 182–95. 240. Botha, ‘Rol van Christoffel J. Brand’, p. 32. 241. Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 113. 242. L. Meltzer, ‘Emancipation, Commerce and the Role of John Fairbairn’s Advertiser’, in N. Worden and C. Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), p. 174. 243. Cited in Keegan, Colonial South Africa, p. 113. 244. Cited in E. Hengherr, ‘Emancipation and After: A Study of Cape Slavery and the Issues Arising from it, 1830–1843’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1953, p. 29. 245. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 211. 246. In his report upon slavery which was completed in 1831, Commissioner Bigge wrote that slaves afforded ‘to the Slave Owners . . . greater facility than any other species of property for raising money upon mortgage’. Cited in Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 189. 247. Shell, Children of Bondage, p. 109. 248. ZA, 23 May 1834; Hengherr, ‘Emancipation and after’, p. 15; Meltzer, ‘Emancipation, Commerce’, p. 179. 249. ZA, 5 December 1834, Letter from H.N., Stellenbosch, 22 November 1834. 250. B.J. Liebenberg, ‘Die Vrystelling van die Slawe in die Kaapkolonie en die Implikasies Daarvan’, M.A. thesis, University of the Orange Free State, 1959, p. 187. Liebenberg has argued that these bankruptcies were not related to emancipation, but to the Colony-wide severe economic recession (pp. 188–9), as if slavery and slave labour were somehow extraneous to the Cape economy. 251. Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, pp. 187–9. 252. ZA, 9 August 1833, Editorial. 253. See R. Ross, Adam Kok’s Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 24–5; CA LG 9,

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Commission of Enquiry into reports of cruelty towards native tribes beyond the Orange River, March 1830. W.C. van Ryneveld, the Civil Commissioner of GraaffReinet district, wrote of Hendrikse that he knew ‘him to be a determined enemy of the Bushmen and his hatred towards that unfortunate Race appears to be so deeply rooted that will never be eradicated and something must therefore be done to protect the Bushmen against the inhuman conduct of this Griqua’. CA CO 373, Van Ryneveld – Stockenström, 15 May 1830.

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CHAPTER THREE

Negotiating Emancipation

It cannot . . . be safely overlooked that the Farmers as a Class have . . . exhibited absolute fear of the colored people and that the latter have in a similar ratio gained confidence in their numbers and their power. (Governor John Montagu, 1851)1

W

ith the coming of emancipation, members of the British Parliament settled on the idea of ‘apprenticeship’ to provide a bridge between slavery and freedom. Appalled as many abolitionists were by the horrors of slavery, there were few who supported unconditional emancipation. Emancipation was to free slaves only from enforced bondage, not from the obligation to labour. ‘Apprenticeship’ would thus provide an opportunity during which slaves could be ‘trained’ for the rights and responsibilities that came with freedom. But there were few who saw the new intermediary period as anything other than indentureship, and colonial legislatures were granted some room for deciding on the duration of this stage. At the Cape, the period was to last from 1 December 1834 to 1 December 1838.2 ‘Apprenticeship’ marked some radical departures from earlier decades. Most importantly, slave-owners lost the right to punish their former slaves. This task was to be carried out by newly-appointed stipendiary magistrates who were henceforth to administer relations between masters and apprentices. In an attempt to provide impartial justice freed from the influence of colonial values and prejudices, these functionaries were specifically to be appointed from outside the Colony.3 The Acting Governor, T.F. Wade, understood that ‘apprenticeship’ meant the ‘entire substitution of the authority of the Magistrate for 112

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that of the Masters’, but did his best to assure slaveholders that the colonial state had not forgotten their interests. The legislature, he wrote, had not ‘abolished the domestic authority of the Master, or decided upon the emancipation of the Slave’ without concern for ‘the prevention and punishment of insolence and insubordination on the part of the Apprentices towards their Employers’. These measures, together with the ‘frequent and punctual visitation’ of estates by the new magistrates, Wade hoped, would satisfy the slaveholders and result in the slaves ‘cheerfully performing the services which [their masters] may lawfully require of them’.4 But this was wishful thinking. To the slaves, ‘apprenticeship’ provided continued opportunities to whittle away at their bondage. Although the role of stipendiary magistrate was not synonymous with that of the Protector of Slaves, slaves attempted to make use of the new magistrates in much the same way. Masters who asserted the right to punish their apprentices were hauled before the law courts. Occasionally they were fined. In remote districts such as Graaff-Reinet, special magistrates had to hear frequent complaints of ill-treatment.5 As a consequence, a number of special magistrates incurred the ire of the majority of Dutch slave-owners. The special magistrate of the district of Swellendam complained of being ‘grossly insulted’, and the official at Uitenhage was accused of being a ‘slave magistrate.’6 The new magistrates had much to do, mainly because emancipated slaves refused to allow ‘apprenticeship’ to be equated with slavery. They responded to their new circumstances with what slave-owners characteristically called ‘insolence’ and ‘insubordination’. Isaac van der Merwe of the remote district of Worcester claimed that after 1 December 1834 he was ‘not sure of [his] life.’ His former slaves ‘were all in disorder’ and he considered them to ‘have been in open resistance to [his] lawful commands’. 7 Most notably, the period was marked by the continued disintegration of slavery, of which increased desertion was an important marker. In both town and countryside, numerous slaves, convinced that they were being illegally held in bondage, left their owners in December 1834 and succeeding months. Many did not return. In remote districts some were able to evade capture for lengthy periods of time.8 At the time of final emancipation in 1838 many slaves were still at large. For slave-owners,

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thus, ‘apprenticeship’ provided an important rehearsal for what was to follow. De Zuid Afrikaan greeted the freeing of slaves and the arrival of ‘apprenticeship’ with ‘feelings of the sincerest satisfaction’, comfortable in the knowledge that emancipation had not ‘impaired that good feeling’ which existed between the masters and their former slaves. But there were few who fooled themselves into believing that the freed slaves and ‘Hottentot’ servants would work without compulsion. 9 For these reasons the Dutch elite campaigned vigorously for ‘vagrancy’ legislation. The more hopeful had visions of a representative assembly.10 Throughout the period of ‘apprenticeship’ the main issue that concerned colonial society was that of a ‘vagrancy’ law. As early as May 1834 the Governor, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, presented a draft vagrancy ordinance to the Legislative Council. Although the measure was aimed at the ‘emancipated’ Khoikhoi, it also looked forward to the ending of slave ‘apprenticeship’. It wished to see the freed slaves tied to their former masters ‘as if this Act [of Emancipation] has not been made’.11 The Bill that was passed in September 1834 was rejected by the British government, largely as a consequence of the continued pressure of Dr Philip and the humanitarian lobby who pointed to the conflict with Ordinance 50. The latter Ordinance could not be repealed without the sanction of the British government. In December 1838 the former slaveowners were left without the vagrancy law that they desired. As a consequence, they predicted the worst. Three years before emancipation, A.J. Louw, fieldcornet of Koeberg, one of the most important grain-producing regions in the Colony, forecast that the slaves would all desert their former owners on receiving their freedom.12 In the year before emancipation, J. van Reenen, fieldcornet of Groenekloof, Malmesbury district, sowed only 60 per cent of the wheat he normally put into the ground. It was, as he claimed, the ‘conviction, obtained by experience, that [he] should not have sufficient hands for gathering [the] grain’, that prevented him from sowing more.13 The slave-owners’ fears were not unfounded. On 1 December 1838 the Colony’s 38 000 slaves (see Table 3.1) were set free. Final emancipation plunged the Colony headlong into a period of heightened class conflict. Emancipation, unlike ‘amelioration’ and ‘apprenticeship’, was bold and permanent. At a stroke the ownership of one human being by another was ended.

Source: CA SO 3/12

Totals

2 435

2 701 4 719

1117 12 41 78 134 211 823 205 144 118 286

50+ 836 10 49 98 184 168 729 316 150 110 309

1–6 1 339 14 76 153 332 277 1 146 495 236 188 503

6–18

Females

733 15 43 76 165 124 539 274 133 81 203 2 165

614 12 45 84 144 144 472 200 140 82 228 1 953

664 10 30 62 118 130 382 183 112 71 191

744

254 5 14 18 37 53 166 67 36 40 54

18–25 25–35 35–45 45–50

Age Category (Years)

4 338 2 959 4 759 2 386

620 1 703 7 13 24 61 32 70 69 195 110 205 507 1 157 147 326 78 122 37 104 113 382

2 236 3 169 1 744

641 11 32 82 125 134 591 214 97 78 231

18–25 25–35 35–45 45–50 752 10 25 54 130 155 639 227 113 88 242

6–18

749 1 379 12 17 36 72 103 152 190 321 155 287 636 1 138 286 507 126 206 106 169 302 471

1–6

Age Category (Years)

Males

Number of slaves registered at the Cape of Good Hope, 31 August 1833.

Cape Town & District Albany Beaufort Clanwilliam George Graaff Reinet Stellenbosch Swellendam Somerset Uitenhage Worcester

District

Table 3.1:

1 949

716 10 23 45 111 94 481 174 63 63 169

50+

38 257

12 117 158 571 1 107 2 255 2 247 9 406 3 621 1 756 1 335 3 684

Totals

Negotiating Emancipation 115

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The freed slaves left their masters en masse.14 The day of emancipation was followed almost immediately by a large-scale withdrawal of labour from the wheat and wine estates of the Western Cape. ‘It is known to every person who has had any experience in the colony, who is not naturally blind, deaf, or dumb, that the whole of the late apprentices, with but few exceptions, left their late employers immediately on their final emancipation,’ declared a group of ‘Colonists’ in a letter to De Zuid Afrikaan.15 Reports of labour shortages were heard far and wide.16 Emancipation exposed the fragile nature of the paternalism of Cape slavery, if indeed paternalism ever had any material reality.17 Like slaveholders elsewhere, Cape settlers were shocked to discover that ‘those very slaves and apprentices, who have been best treated, and were considered actually as members of the family, were the first to leave their masters.’18 P.J. Kotze bemoaned the fact that one of the labourers to leave his service ‘was a boy who I treated better than an ordinary labourer’.19 The thirty labourers on the farm of A.J. Louw of Koeberg all left on the day of emancipation. In January 1840 Louw claimed that he ‘and other principal rich corn farmers, could not get any laborers in the ploughing seasons’ and instead of having six or seven ploughs at work as he normally had, he now had no more than two.20 All but one of S. van der Spuy’s slaves deserted him.21 The South African Commercial Advertiser noted in 1839 that ‘Farmers of all sorts, wine, corn, and cattle farmers in most, if not in all the western districts of the Colony, find their operations checked by the disappearance of their ordinary laborers. It has become difficult to secure even domestic servants.’22 P.J. Kotze claimed in 1840 that he had become so ‘dispirited’ by the insubordination of his labourers that he had put his farm up for sale.23 In sum, great disorder raged on the rural estates of the Cape in the immediately post-emancipation years. Since the day of emancipation, a group of Stellenbosch farmers declared in 1840, ‘almost all of the apprentices have left their former Masters, unwilling to engage themselves for agricultural labor’. The labour shortage, they further claimed, existed ‘in every branch of agiculture, the cattle farmer not excepted’.24 Little more than a year after emancipation, the Commercial Advertiser found that the ‘only complaint’ against the former slaves was that they were ‘slow to engage as servants or laborers’.25 At the end of 1839 the Colony

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was a very different place from what it had been a year earlier. As Governor Napier reported: A large supply of labour was withdrawn from the country districts by the flocking of many of the emancipated slaves to the towns and villages, where they readily procured employment for themselves, education for their children and the society of their equals; others, partly to show that they were free agents, and partly from a natural desire of change, left their late proprietors either to hire themselves to others, or to wander about in idleness, just as it suited the caprice of the moment, while others, who had amassed some small capital during their apprenticeships, settled themselves down on small plots of ground, which produce sufficient to satisfy their moderate wants.26 Yet the options of the former slaves were limited. A few frontier slaves were able to join groups such as the Griqua beyond the Colony’s borders; others managed to gain access to tiny plots of land, while many crammed into Cape Town’s newly-created slums. Indeed, this was the city’s first experience of mass inward migration. Here the freed slaves took up in ‘low apartments, twelve feet square’, where ‘as many as twenty human beings have been discovered lodging, feeding, and sleeping’.27 Cape Town’s new demographic makeup, together with sudden outbreaks of disease (measles in 1839 and smallpox in 1840) which spread rapidly in these unsanitary living conditions, prompted colonial authorities for the first time to consider residential segregation.28 Many of the slaves who left their former masters, however, went to the numerous mission stations scattered around the Western Cape. John Marincowitz estimates that in the decade after emancipation, roughly 6 000 of the 25 000 former slaves in the rural Western Cape moved to the mission stations and that a further 1 000 settled on public land.29 In 1839 the missionary institutions at Elim and Genadendal were reported to be ‘full, almost to an overflow’. 30 Even before emancipation, life on the mission stations was structurally insecure. The mission station at Caledon experienced crop failures for three successive years preceding emancipation.31 On the day that the slaves

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were emancipated, the resident missionary there noted that continued drought had forced the residents of his station to ‘be much from home to earn their living, more so than in former years, and others together with their wives and children have taken refuge to farmers that live at a distance of 50 or 70 miles’.32 A widespread measles epidemic struck at almost the same time. From Paarl it was reported in 1839 that a ‘general gloom pervades the villages: the emaciated appearances of such as have had the disease, and the terror depicted on the countenance of such as are expecting it, give the place the aspect of a village of the plague.’33 ‘Most of the families are dependent upon the labour of one man’, observed the missionary at Swellendam, ‘and in case of his illness they will necessarily be destitute.’34 Nor did the missionary institutions enjoy the support of the colonial state. When the South African Missionary Society applied for a piece of Crown land adjoining their station at Zoar, Napier wondered whether it would be ‘expedient to congregate large numbers of the labouring population at Institutions where their energies are certainly not called into operation’. As Napier saw it, the government’s task was to induce the ‘emancipated classes . . . to spread over the country and become the tenants of the farmers’.35 The problem with the mission stations, he feared, was that the Colony’s labouring population could, ‘by the cultivation of a small portion of land and the grazing of a few head of cattle’ satisfy their subsistence needs. But mission stations provided slaves with more than just their subsistence needs. It was on these stations, as Pamela Scully has shown, that slaves could most readily formalise unions and partnerships, the legitimacy of which slavery had always denied. A Marriage Order-inCouncil issued by the Colonial Office became law in the Cape Colony on 1 February 1839. The Marriage Order, which came about as a consequence of missionary pressure in many of Britain’s slave colonies, specifically sought to validate the de facto marriages of former slaves: it legitimised marriages that had been solemnised by a Christian minister prior to emancipation and it granted slaves who considered themselves married but had not gone through a formal ceremony one year within which to register their marriages and have their children legitimated. In the years immediately following emancipation, hundreds of freed slaves made their way to mission chapels to participate in formal marriage

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ceremonies. Such ceremonies were a ‘rite of emancipation’ and a demonstration of ‘participation in the world of the free’.36 For freed slaves, marriage was an important step on the road to citizenship. As Steven Hahn has pointed out in the context of the United States, the fact that freed slaves sought to give legal formality to their marriages must be seen as ‘among the first political acts that simultaneously rejected the legacy of enslavement and celebrated the vitals of freedom’.37 Obstacles continued to be placed in the way of freedom, however. The freed slaves continued to suffer terrible land hunger. An Order-inCouncil of 1838 prohibited unauthorised ‘squatting’ on Crown land. Government permission could be obtained, but this was rarely granted. The Western Cape was a very well settled and conquered area at the time of emancipation and it is significant that the few applications from slaves to settle on vacant land came from the more remote regions of the Colony.38 When a number of freed slaves applied to the resident magistrate at Worcester for permission to settle on government land, that official noted that ‘such a strong prejudice’ existed amongst the inhabitants of the district against locating the freed slaves on government land that he was ‘reluctant to suggest any plan for that purpose’. ‘The prejudice of the inhabitants,’ he continued, ‘appears to . . . originate from the [fact that] they . . . still foster a hope that by some means or other the coloured class may come under their former control.’39 A black peasantr y, therefore, failed to emerge in the postemancipation Western Cape. In the Eastern Cape this was a real possibility.40 But even here peasant production was largely restricted to the Kat River settlement and Crown land.41 In short, most of those who remained in the countryside remained dependent, John Philip noted in 1839, ‘[for] the chief part of their livelihood by serving the farmers’.42 Many of the residents of Caledon mission station were in 1843 ‘dispersed over a large tract of the country among the farmers’.43 The reason for this was simple: the slaves, the resident missionary at Pacaltsdorp astutely noted, ‘went out from their bondage emptyhanded’.44 A few slaves were able to accumulate modest means during the years of ‘amelioration.’ But not many would have been as fortunate as Lodewyk who, at the time of emancipation, ‘by the indulgence of his late masters and by his own industry’, owned two span of oxen, two horses and about forty head of cattle. 45 Lodewyk was clearly an

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exception. ‘Except at the missionary institutions’, wrote an official in January 1851, ‘very few of the colored people own or occupy any property but are principally laborers living on the farms of their employers.’46 Yet the former slave-owners remained insecure. In the second half of 1851 there existed, in the words of the colonial governor, an ‘alarming . . . state of distrust between Master & Servant, the colored race and the Whites’.47 The occasion was the discussion of a bill which sought to remove ‘squatters’ from Crown lands. In the later months of 1851 panic and hysteria gripped the farmers of the western districts as they came to believe that a rebellion of the labouring population was imminent. In particular, the farmers feared that the dispossessed Khoikhoi were planning to reclaim conquered land. These fears were fuelled by the return to the western districts of Khoikhoi levies who, in the process of putting down the Kat River rebellion in the Eastern Cape, became convinced of the government’s intention to withdraw land grants from mission stations and to resurrect the aborted vagrancy legislation of 1834. But it was a sign of the extent to which freed slaves and ‘emancipated’ Khoikhoi had coalesced into a single underclass – people now called ‘Coloured’ – that farmers believed that the rebellion was planned to start on 1 December, the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves. White farmers claimed to have seen Coloured labourers going out for shooting practice; others claimed to have overheard conspiracies to kill whites. By 1 December many farmers had abandoned their properties. 48 But the planned rebellion existed only in the hysterical imaginations of white farmers, similar, in fact, to the rumours that had swept through Swellendam district in the 1780s. There is no evidence to show that a rebellion had in fact been planned.49 But so deep were the fears that the colonial government, anxious to ‘tranquillise the minds of both parties,’ withdrew the ‘Squatters Bill’ in its entirety. To have forced the issue, the Governor, Sir John Montagu argued, would have led to ‘permanent estrangement’ between masters and servants.

A negotiated settlement And estrangement there was in abundance. Life in the countryside was never the same after emancipation. Even though most slaves returned to work for the farmers, they did not do so on the latter’s terms. Above

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all else, emancipation granted the slaves what they had been most denied under slavery – mobility and freedom to choose employers. To a greater or lesser extent, ex-slaves continued to enjoy such mobility to the end of the century. Indeed, it was this, and the fact that the ex-slaves demanded higher wages than the farmers were prepared to pay, that led to continued agitation for a strict vagrancy law. A decade after emancipation De Zuid Afrikaan still complained that there could be no doubt, even ‘in the mind of even the most superficial observer’, that the farmers’ difficulties were to be attributed to ‘the want of efficient labor, arising from the absence of a vagrant law, of a law properly regulating the mutual obligations of masters and servants’.50 A vagrancy law had in fact been passed several years earlier. This was Ordinance 1 of 1841, which came into effect in December 1842. The Ordinance, which effectively repealed Ordinance 50 of 1828, was harsh – it provided criminal sanctions for breach of contract and rigidly defined the duties of servants with penalties for refusal to work, insolence, damage to property and so forth. It determined that contracts, if unspecified, were to be good for one month; if specified, they could not exceed a period of one year. Written contracts could be made for up to three years if certified before a magistrate. In the specific case of ex-slaves, oral contracts were limited to a maximum of three months duration and written contracts to one year. The specific legislation with regard to former slaves was dropped in January 1849.51 But Ordinance 1 of 1841, like Ordinance 50 that went before, was hard to implement. Certainly some masters were able to use it to their advantage. One Malmesbury labourer who was taken to court by his employer in 1849 was condemned to forfeit his wages and to be imprisoned for nine days with hard labour.52 Another labourer, Piet, who left the service of his employer, Jan Blatt, to whom he was said to be contracted for one month, was sentenced to return to Blatt and complete the terms of his contract. Failure to do so would have resulted in fourteen days imprisonment with hard labour.53 In 1855 Herman Esau was sentenced to six days imprisonment – ‘four at hard labour and the two last on rice water’ – for not fulfilling the terms of his contract. 54 For the most part, however, masters and former slaves were left to battle it out on their own. The freed slaves continued to assert their

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mobility long after emancipation. Consider, for example, an incident that occurred in 1852, involving Jagers, a resident of Groenekloof mission station in the district of Malmesbury, and his employer Hendrik Bester. Bester’s labourers were customarily allowed to return to the mission station on Saturday afternoons and were expected back at work the following Monday morning. On one occasion Jagers showed up for work only on the Tuesday morning, probably as a result of the hangover he suffered; after all, part of his remuneration was a wine allowance. After being ‘reprimanded’ Jagers returned to work, but left Bester’s service the following day (Wednesday) and engaged himself in the service of another farmer.55 What angered farmers most was the indiscriminate way in which labourers could leave their service. In 1855, Jacob Samuel van Reenen complained that Herman Esau had ‘promised’ to do some threshing for him. When Van Reenen went to Groenekloof mission station to collect Esau he received the answer that he would not come.56 This was one incident in many. Time after time, farmers complained that labourers left ‘without any previous notice.’57 It was, of course, not simply the fact that slaves would not work, but that they would not work at the wages that farmers were prepared to pay. P.J. Kotze, who claimed that all six of his slaves remained in his service on 1 December 1838, found that they behaved in a good and orderly manner during the first two or three months, at a reasonable rate of wages, but the longer they remained with me, the more money I had to pay them, and I was less satisfied about their work. Now, they earned more money, instead of being encouraged thereby, they became lazier, went to work later in the morning, left off sooner in the evening, and did not perform half the work they were wont to do . . . I soon lost one after the other.58 Thus the freed slaves forced compromise and negotiation upon their former masters. Observers noted that farmers could obtain labour ‘to any extent . . . the moment they offered what are now considered fair wages’.59 The freed slaves knew that they could earn better wages by day labour, rather than by engaging themselves for long periods.60 At the

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end of 1840 the average wages for the Colony ranged from fifteen to twenty shillings per month, in addition to such bonuses as food and clothing.61 One farmer claimed that he paid his labourer thirty shillings per month in addition to maintaining his wife and four children, the eldest of whom was a girl of about six or seven years.62 In a letter to De Zuid Afrikaan in 1849 ‘A Wine Farmer’ of Stellenbosch admitted that ‘Labour is more dear than scarce, for the farmers sow, plough and reap almost as before, and it is seldom that the harvest remains on the land.’63 There was a clear upward trend in wages earned by farm labourers in the decade between 1838 and 1848.64 In addition to higher wages, farmers were compelled to make a number of other concessions. Some farmers were forced to allow exslaves to cultivate plots for themselves in order to encourage labourers to stay on their farms.65 ‘Some of those farmers who best understand their own interests,’ declared a government official in 1841, ‘have begun to locate their servants upon their estates, thus giving them an interest in the soil and also the habits of settled life.’66 Jacobus Maree of Caledon claimed that he offered his five labourers (a couple and their three children) 300 rixdollars per annum in wages ‘with leave to sow one muid of wheat for himself, and offered him a horse’. Some freed slaves, while maintaining tenuous links with the mission stations, were able to obtain plots of land on rent.67 The arrival of representative government in 1853 gave white settlers much greater latitude to correct what they considered to be the inadequacies of Ordinance 1 of 1841. In 1856 the Cape legislature, ‘essentially a Parliament of masters’,68 passed a revised Masters and Servants Act. This Act prescribed harsher penalties for desertion, absenteeism and breaches of contract.69 The Act of 1856, Rayner writes, ‘encapsulated the triumph of the masters in the post-emancipation struggle to enrol the force of the state on their side’.70 But the courts of law, it is important to remember, were as important an arena of struggle as any other. Even eighteenth-century Roman-Dutch law was not an unambiguous instrument in the hands of the master class.71 The rule of law sometimes secured significant victories for under-classes. The law could be hegemonic precisely because it allowed for ambiguity and contradiction. And as we have seen, in the 1820s and 1830s large numbers of slaves, emboldened by amelioratory legislation, won small but significant victories by actively making use of colonial courts.72

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In the post-emancipation period, therefore, labourers continued the tradition of taking masters to court. Carolus Davids, who had worked for Jacob van Reenen for 13½ days and left because he found his working conditions intolerable, successfully went to court to claim the 13.4 rixdollars due to him.73 Davids told the local magistrates court that he left the service Van Reenen’s service because our victuals always came too late. The meals were generally served out ½ hour too late and in the evenings we did not get our supper before 8 or 9 o’clock in the evenings . . . A week before I left, I told Def[endant] that I would leave, if things are not going on better. Before leaving I asked Defendant to settle with me. When Van Reenen refused to pay the wages due, Davids had recourse to the courts in order to claim it.74 Repeated court appearances in order to enforce dubious civil agreements could hardly have been convenient for the farmers. One was told by the Malmesbury magistrate that he was not to ‘enter into any verbal agreement with any labourer, without the presence of a competent witness’.75

Debt ‘bondage’, labour tenancy and the emergence of wage labour There is some evidence of an increased incidence of labour tenancy in the post-emancipation years, a trend to which Mason has drawn attention.76 One of the features emphasised about the Swellendam farm Klipfontein, when it was put up for sale in 1847, was that it had ‘no want of Labourers’. This was because many clean, sober, industrious men with their families have been allowed to erect small cottages . . . and to cultivate Plots of Ground, and who devote a portion of their time to the Proprietor of the farm, in lieu of paying rent so that indeed labour costs nothing, and is always procurable at a short warning. 77 Labour, of course, did not cost ‘nothing’; its procurement involved considerable compromise on the part of the former slaveholding class.

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It is possible that agreements of labour tenancy with white dependants emerged as a direct response to the dislocations caused by emancipation. One of the earliest post-emancipation examples comes from the district of Paarl, where the wheat farmer Sievert Rossouw entered into an agreement with one Herbit to assist him in ploughing. Herbit was to employ his own labourers and oxen and in return was granted a plot of land upon which he could sow two muids. Rossouw also let a portion of his farm to one Ockert van Niekerk. An outbuilding was let to Jacobus Louw for the sum of 150 rixdollars per annum and Louw was allowed to keep a certain number of cattle, ‘and was as likely to sow a certain part of the land’.78 It is perhaps no accident that P.H.W. Neethling let a portion of his Mosselbanks Rivier farm Middelburg to J.M. Louw in 1837, a year before the ending of ‘apprenticeship’. For the sum of 200 rixdollars per annum Louw was permitted to graze 30 oxen and 20 horses along with Neethling’s cattle. This contract was renewed in 1840 (with an increase in annual rent to 350 rixdollars) and again in 1843 (the rent this time increased to 475 rixdollars). What is clear, however, is that labour tenancy was just one of the many outcomes of the uncertainty that prevailed during the post-emancipation decade. It was certainly not the most dominant. The post-emancipation outcome was highly varied. As one official complained in 1843, ‘almost every district has its own peculiar custom in regard to the payment of the agricultural population’.79 But in virtually every instance, wages formed a crucial component of the settlement. One example from Mosselbanks Rivier has to serve for many. In 1847 Gert Joubert sued his employer, William Proctor, for £8.14.6, the wages of nearly eight months labour.80 Joubert’s wages were not determined at a fixed rate and he had been able to obtain different rates of pay for different tasks. Proctor, however, produced a counter-claim of £11.18.0 – £10.6.3 was for cash he had advanced Joubert at various times and the remaining balance was said to be the amount that Joubert owed him for the purchase of such items as tobacco, sugar, snuff, and clothing from the farm store. It is not at all clear who was indebted to whom. Proctor, we noted earlier, was at one time a large-scale slaveowner of Mosselbanks Rivier and had gone bankrupt in 1829. If Proctor

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is to be believed, it would appear that he had paid Joubert cash in excess of the wages agreed upon, and that he acted in good faith by supplying Joubert with goods on credit from the farm store. Joubert clearly saw the case differently since he was the one who had initiated the law suit. Proctor’s case was not an isolated incident. In attempts to attract labour, it was common for farmers to advance money and goods to freed slaves in the post-emancipation years. ‘Retail shops’ were established on most farms, one observer noted in 1840, and ‘the servants of course are expected to purchase and frequently allowed to get in debt, pledging their services as security’.81 Two decades later the Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury commented on the continued practice in his district. It was common, he noted, for money to be advanced ‘to the labourers many months before harvest time; the coloured labourers in general are almost always in debt’. But this was ‘a very bad practice’ since the labourers ‘from the circumstance of having to work for money already spent . . . become careless in their work, improvident in their habits, and are continually trying to evade their contract’.82 Since farmers for the most part did not keep any records it is particularly difficult to determine the exact structure of wages and debt. In one rare instance, however, a farmer recorded in detail the wage agreements with his labourers for the years 1841–43 (see Table 3.2). Klipfontein, the Malmesbury wheat farm of Johannes Wynand Louw, was a ‘well-known fertile Corn Farm . . . able to compete with any of its size, generally [produced] a plentiful crop of grain in proportion to the seed sown’.83 On 29 March 1841 Louw employed Moos and his two children, Jan and Jacobus, at the monthly rates of 6.5.2 rixdollars, 4 rixdollars and 3 rixdollars respectively. Over a two-year period the wage bill amounted to 343.7.4 rixdollars. This excluded casual harvest labour since Moos was employed at 2 rixdollars per day for thirteen days harvest labour in 1841, while his two sons jointly received the same amount. In 1842 Moos, with his two sons, worked for twelve days during the harvest period at the same rate of pay. Thus, over the period of two years, the total wage bill for Moos and his two sons came to 443.7.4 rixdollars (about £33). Table 3.2 illustrates a number of features of the Cape’s postemancipation labour market. It suggests that wage labour relations had

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Table 3.2: Astract of day-book kept by Johannes Wynand Louw in the years 1841 and 1842. Type of payment made to Moos Cash 1 mare Tangerines Snuff 3 sheep skins

Rxds 53 25 0 0 0

Sk

St

2 0 3 2 6

4 0 0 4 0

Paid to Izaak de Villiers on behalf of Moos for the following goods: Linen 8 moleskins 1 piece ‘voerchits’ 3 cloths 4 lbs coffee Snuff 1 packet cotton 1 packet ‘rugaren’ 1 packet ‘rugaren’ 3 lbs sugar 2 basins 1 packet needles

11 7 3 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 3 5 2 4 2 2 6 1 2

0 0 0 2 2 4 0 0 0 0 2 0

Cash Cash Cash Skins Cash Cash Cash Cash Cash Cash 2 ‘schepsel’ wheat Cash Cash Cash Cash Cash 1 packet needles 1 load oats 1 mare

5 1 13 9 3 2 2 0 53 4 3 5 0 2 1 1 0 0 20

0 5 5 0 0 6 2 2 2 0 2 5 2 0 0 0 2 1 0

0 2 2 0 0 2 4 4 4 0 0 2 4 0 0 0 0 2 0

Total

296

7

4

Balance

147

0

0

Source: CA MOIB 2/588, #46, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes wynand Louw, 15 May 1844

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become generalised. Out of thirty-seven transactions listed involving Moos, cash payments accounted for sixteen, and, moreover, involved the largest sums of money. Moreover, Moos was not indebted to Louw; on the contrary, the reverse was the case. The detailed record-keeping, although rare, suggests a method of farming very different from that which had existed under slavery. Louw was one of the casualties of emancipation and had his insolvent estate liquidated in 1844. Apart from Moos and his two children, eleven adults and three other children had claims upon the estate. Significantly, these wage claims were recorded along with all the other creditors. It was not clear who was the debtor and who was the creditor in the above case. The consequences of the attempts on the part of landowners to immobilise rural labourers through debt – what has been called ‘debt bondage’ in other contexts – were more complex than has hitherto been realised. If the above cases suggest anything, it is that the existence of such relations could be as much a symptom of the weakness of a landowning class as of its strength. Wage labour, cash advances and plots of land were all aspects of the negotiated settlement that went into the making of emancipation. The freed slaves and their servile brethren, the Khoisan, had no less a say in the ‘meaning of freedom’ than their counterparts in the rest of the emancipated world.84 For the rural workforce of the Western Cape, emancipation meant mobility, wage labour and the freedom to choose employers.

Networks of indebtedness and patronage The compromises that freed slaves forced upon their masters threw agrarian society into crisis. The immediate post-emancipation decade was one of considerable economic difficulty for former slave-owners. Their condition was compounded by the unhealthy state of the slave economy in its terminal years, the pall of bankruptcy that hung over individual slave-owners and their loss of local power in the wake of the recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry. In addition to the loss of labour incurred by emancipation, former slave-owners faced a number of simultaneous calamities seemingly unrelated to emancipation – drought, horse-sickness and falling prices (apart from the immediate post-emancipation harvest when shortages resulted in an increase in wheat prices).

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Yet the slave-owners, by and large, survived the crisis of emancipation. The reasons for this survival, for not being separated from the land, are to be found, not primarily in the coercive capacities of vagrancy legislation, but more profoundly in the particularities of the social structure which endured after emancipation. Specifically, it was the way in which slave-owning society was structured around local moral communities of debt and credit, ruled over by local gentries, that provided slave-owners with their most effective safety nets in the recurring crises of the 1820s and 1830s. Credit was essential to the operation of virtually every slaveholding estate and there could have been few individuals who stood outside local networks of credit and debt. It is worth examining how the system operated in the eighteenth century. As we have seen, the rules of partible inheritance meant that most had to start their farming careers with high levels of mortgage debt. It was common for one heir to have to take out a mortgage loan to satisfy the inheritance claims of co-heirs in the event of the death of a parent. In the eighteenth century mortgage loans were mainly provided by private individuals and VOC officials, the latter themselves being prohibited by the Company from directly engaging in agricultural production. A small core of professional moneylenders, known as nachtwerkers, lived in Cape Town.85 Lawyers and notaries commonly combined money-lending with their respective professions. Cape Town-based merchants frequently extended credit to farmers. But as important in the credit market were members of the borrower’s kinship group. Most significantly, networks of credit most often operated in a market where individuals met each other face-toface. Widows in particular were an important source of mortgage loans. Such loans were especially, but not exclusively, made to sons. In a great many cases individuals had to solicit the assistance of more than one person when purchasing a farm.86 Typically money was borrowed at the rate of 6 per cent per annum. Short-term loans, moreover, were as important as mortgage credit. Few farming operations were able to survive without them. Farmers close to Cape Town were able to obtain such credit from resident shopkeepers. But the overwhelming majority of farmers obtained loans of this kind from neighbouring farmers within their own localities. The former heemraad of Stellenbosch, Johannes Albertus Meyburgh, had no

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fewer than forty-eight debtors at the time of his death in 1790.87 In 1791 twelve different individuals were indebted to the estate of Sophia Margaretha Myburgh, widow of notable Pieter Gerhard van der Byl.88 At the same time Elisabeth Theron had nine outstanding loans, three from one person.89 Only rarely did settlers die without any debtors or creditors.90 Clearly, the extension of credit was closely tied to the dominance of the gentry over Cape economy and society. In most cases, it was the poor who borrowed from the wealthy. Some members of the gentry were regular lenders of money. For example, Hendrik Cloete, who in 1773 was the owner of no fewer than 51 slaves (44 adults and 7 children), loaned 1 000 guilders to Philip Wouter de Vos in 1761 and loaned him a further sum of 2 000 guilders in 1762. He also loaned sums of money to Hendrik Nieuwenhuysen in 1766, to Dirk Coetze in 1767, and the sum of 5 000 guilders to Coenraad Hendrik Fyt in 1773.91 But the extension of credit by the wealthy to the poor was more than just a reflection of the economic dominance of the gentry. In general, as far as unsecured debt was concerned, debtors were not unduly pressured to repay loans within set periods of time, and some loans remained unpaid for up to 20 years.92 Furthermore, all those who borrowed money on mortgage security needed at least two individuals to stand surety. Standing surety for kin and neighbours was an affirmation of community interdependencies and represented a willingness to share in the risks of an inherently unstable occupation. Such risks became an abiding theme of later Afrikaner folklore.93 Above all, credit was a marker of community reciprocity from which market forces were often excluded. It was this fact that gave credit its moral dimension. As Mentzel noted, sureties rarely took legal action against insolvent debtors ‘since the sureties are usually near relatives of the principal debtor and out of personal consideration for him they might not take action but be content to wait for his demise and then recover from his estate’.94 These moral ties of credit survived the collapse of the VOC and remained clearly visible in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The recession of the 1820s revealed the strengths and limitations of such a system and prefigured what would follow on repeated occasions later in the century. In the first instance, interlocking and familial networks of credit meant that bankruptcy did not necessarily result in

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loss of land. The manner in which land (and slaves) circulated amongst local communities during these years clearly reveals some of the consequences of a tightly-knit credit market. Despite widespread distress, it is clear that landed property and slaves rarely left narrowly circumscribed boundaries of kinship and community. Numerous Mosselbanks Rivier farmers experienced difficulties in the years leading to emancipation. Amongst them was Hugo Hendrik Mosterd, since 1819 the owner of Wolwedans. 95 When, in 1825, Mosterd’s estate was liquidated as insolvent, ownership of Wolwedans passed to his uncle, Nicolaas Everhardus Mosterd.96 It is quite likely, therefore, that Hugo Hendrik remained on the farm. The Mosterds were well-represented in Mosselbanks Rivier. A similar tale can be related for the nearby farm Klipheuvel, since 1785 farmed by Tobias Mosterd. Tobias Mosterd, too, went bankrupt in the course of the recession of the 1820s, upon which ownership of Klipheuvel passed to his son, Nicolaas Gerhardus Mosterd.97 It was not necessarily the best thing, however, for near-bankrupt kin to take over properties. In both these instances, the new owners of Wolwedans and Klipheuvel were in turn forced into the insolvency court just a few years after having acquired their respective properties.98 But the Mosterds persevered and managed to find ways – often of dubious legality – to hold onto their property. Just three days before his slaves were attached by court order, Nicolaas Gerhardus Mosterd registered a mortgage bond in favour of his namesake, Nicolaas Mosterd (Jan’s son).99 It was through networks of kin and community, in short, that the slave-owners remained on the land during the recession that followed the collapse of the wine boom. The recession of the 1820s and 1830s failed to level economic and other differences in slaveholding society. Patterns of credit and debt were too closely tied to local networks of gentry patronage. As a consequence, slave-owning society on the eve of emancipation remained marked by significant inequality. The two largest scale slave-owners in the Colony were T.J. Dreyer and A. van Breda, each owning 83 slaves. But also close to the top of the list of large slave-owners were the familiar names of the Stellenbosch wine-producing elite. Pieter van der Byl of Eerste Rivier and Pieter Myburgh of Hottentots Holland held 82 and 71 slaves respectively. Helena Morkel and P.A. Myburgh jointly owned 68 slaves.100

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On the eve of emancipation, moreover, slave ownership in the Colony was distinguished by marked regional variations. In the wheatgrowing regions of Mosselbanks Rivier and Zwartland each slave-owner held on average £1 001 and £647 worth of slave property respectively; in Moddergat, a predominantly wine-growing area, slave-owners each held on average £972 in slave property. Slave-ownership in regions such as the Bokkeveld and Riviersonderend was less widespread owing to the heavy use of Khoisan labour in these areas. In the remote Bokkeveld the average holding was valued at £611, while slave-owners in the fieldcornetcy of Riviersonderend each held on average slave property valued at only £382. The mean holding of slaves in Moddergat was 11.21, in Mosselbanks Rivier 10.5 slaves, in the Zwartland 7.53 and in the Bokkeveld 7.22. In Riviersonderend the mean holding of slaves on the eve of emancipation stood at 4.6.101 It is clear, furthermore, that in each region there was a distinct concentration of slave-ownership and each fieldcornetcy had its own core of leading families. At the time of emancipation Nicolaas van Wielligh and the widow of Floris Smit, both of Mosselbanks Rivier, owned thirty-one and thirty-five slaves respectively.102 Albertus van Niekerk, Frederik Hermanus Scheundorff and Nicolaas Mosterd owned 25, 23 and 21 slaves respectively.103 Collectively these five Mosselbanks Rivier slave-owners (out of a total of 23 slave-owners in the fieldcornetcy) owned 135 (out of 242) slaves. In other words, about 22 per cent of the slave-owners owned nearly 56 per cent of all the slaves, or 56.52 per cent of the slave wealth, in the fieldcornetcy. On the other hand, a rough egalitarianism existed among the remainder of the slave-owners in the fieldcornetcy. Nearly 48 per cent of slave-owners owned slave wealth valued at under £500 and nearly 61 per cent owned slave wealth under £1 000. The wine-growing fieldcornetcy of Moddergat was an area of substantial slaveholder wealth and displayed a similar pattern of concentration. Frans Roos, with his nine slaves valued at £855, was typical of the ward.104 As in Mosselbanks Rivier, there was a broad mass of middling slaveholders. Fully 65.8 per cent of the slaveholders in the ward owned slave property valued at under £1 000. But this region was also home to some of the largest scale slave-owners in the Colony. Tieleman Roos and Pieter Laurens Cloete Jr., descendants of elite

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eighteenth-century wine-farming families, each owned 43 slaves.105 Daniel Brink and Frans Rossouw (deceased when this evaluation was made) owned 38 slaves each. Thus, the four largest slave-owners in Moddergat (10.5 per cent of the slaveholders in the region) owned nearly 37 per cent (157) of the slaves in the fieldcornetcy. On the northern reaches of the Colony, in the Bokkeveld, the concentration of slave wealth was extreme. Here one family, the Van der Merwes, dominated and 12 individuals (or 19.4 per cent of the total number of slaveholders) of that name put in compensation claims for 148 slaves, or 33 per cent of the slaves in the fieldcornetcy. Jointly their slaves were valued at £12 418.106 Carel Johannes van der Merwe alone owned 44 slaves valued at £3 387, or nearly 9 per cent of the slave wealth in the fieldcornetcy.107 At the same time, 79 per cent of all slaveholders in the fieldcornetcy owned slave wealth valued at under £1 000, while 61.3 per cent of the slaveholders each owned slaves valued at under £500. As could be expected, the largest slave-owners were also the largest landowners. This is abundantly clear in the wine-growing fieldcornetcy of Moddergat. Pieter Laurens Cloete, one of the largest slave-owners in his region, also owned some of the most valuable land in the district. In 1845 his two farms, Zandvliet and Geduld were jointly valued at £3 650.108 In 1842 he had purchased Geduld, Noodhulp and Stockholm from the estate of Elisabeth Meyburgh, widow of Daniel Brink, who with 38 slaves had also been one of the largest slave-owners in the region at the time of emancipation.109 Tielman Roos and Jacobus Rossouw, amongst the largest slave-owners in Moddergat, were also substantial landowners in the area. Their estates, Vredenburg and Blaauwe Klip, were amongst the most highly valued in 1845.110 At emancipation, thus, each fieldcornetcy had its own hierarchy – its own clearly identifiable stratum of wealthy landowners, small-scale slave- and landowners, as well as those who owned neither land nor slaves. The Van der Merwes of the Bokkeveld, Van Wielligh, Mosterd and Scheundorff of Mosselbanks Rivier, Cloete and Roos of Moddergat were clearly the leading figures in their respective neighbourhoods. It stands to reason, therefore, that emancipation did not affect all slaveowners equally. Those with the largest number of slaves would have considered themselves as amongst the largest losers. At the same time

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the wealthy would have had greater resources to withstand the dislocations of emancipation. Most importantly, however, credit and patronage served to bind all in networks of reciprocity, as the fallout of slave compensation clearly revealed. Specifically, it was the manner in which compensation was mediated through local patterns of inequality and networks of debt that allowed the slave-owning class as a whole to stay on the land.

The fruits of compensation The slave-owners of the British Empire, unlike their counterparts in Brazil or the southern United States, could count on one further boon: monetary compensation for the alienation of their human property. In the British parliamentary debates on the abolition of slavery, there was near universal agreement on the sanctity of private property. Abolition would not occur without compensation. The Abolition Act made allowance for a sum of £20 million to be paid to slave-owners throughout the Empire. Of this amount, a total of £1 247 000 made its way into the Cape Colony.111 For the Cape economy as a whole, compensation payments clearly had positive consequences. It resulted in a minor economic boom and saw the birth in Cape Town of a ‘local commercial bourgeoisie’ that included many Dutch speakers.112 In the years immediately following the payment of compensation claims, the Colony’s money market was completely saturated. For a few years Cape Town was transformed into a ‘vast Stock Exchange’ as numerous companies were floated to soak up the surplus money. One of these companies was the Cape of Good Hope Bank, the Colony’s first private bank.113 Compensation payments also resulted in a rapid burst in the extension of credit and the clearing off of old debt. It allowed for the subdivision of land, the extension of agriculture and the granting of new mortgage bonds (even though the Commercial Advertiser claimed that the restriction to 6 per cent of the rate of interest on money loaned prohibited the flow of compensation money into new mortgages).114 In the years 1838 and 1839 the number of deeds passed ‘was unusually great owing to parts of the arrears having been brought up . . . consequent upon the introduction of compensation money,’ the Registrar of Deeds noted.115

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It is thus no longer possible to uphold an older conservative historiography that saw emancipation as an economic disaster and compensation payments as hopelessly deficient.116 But while it is clear that emancipation and the subsequent influx of compensation money proved a great bonus to Cape Town and its merchants, the consequences of emancipation on the rural economy and individual slave-owners are harder to ascertain. Predictably, the farmers complained that the compensation payments were not enough and hardly represented the true value of their human property.117 The lawyer Henry Cloete reckoned that the Colony as a whole should have received a sum closer to £3 000 000 than the £1 200 000 that was awarded it. He claimed that he received £47 or £48 for slaves that just a few years earlier would have commanded £500 or £600.118 Although Cloete had clearly exaggerated his case,119 there was indeed a large discrepancy between the appraised value of slaves and the sums of money that the slave-owners eventually received. Whereas the average field labourer was valued at £132.18.5½, slave-owners received on average only £54.0.6¾ for each such slave.120 For large slave-owners this could involve significant losses. One of the largest slave-owners in Mosselbanks Rivier, Nicolaas van Wielligh, had his 35 slaves initially valued at £3 307.10.0, but was eventually awarded only £1 243.16.11 as compensation.121 Fredrik Scheundorff’s 23 slaves were valued at £2 051; in the end he stood to receive only £698.122 A number of farmers who were declared insolvent in the immediate post-emancipation years claimed such losses as contributory factors in their insolvency. To Daniel Petrus Russouw the difference of £475 between the amount paid for his slaves and the compensation received was an ‘immense loss’. Abraham Barend du Toit of Malmesbury spent more than £800 on the purchase of his slaves and received only £200 in compensation. Willem Adolph Krige of Paarl similarly lost in excess of £500. 123 Furthermore, as we have seen, much slave property had been heavily mortgaged in the decades leading to emancipation, further reducing the compensation payments made to slave-owners. Some, such as Jan Jurgen Kotze and Hermanus Bosman of Malmesbury district, even mortgaged their claims to the compensation money.124 As one of the most vocal of Malmesbury’s farmers wrote a decade after emancipation:

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The manner in which [emancipation] was carried out was the basest robbery ever committed upon defenceless man . . . Even at the rate of valuation, which was below the real cost of the slaves, two thirds went to the capitalists (the mortgagees) and thus all the hard earnings of the poor farmer, the whole in most instances of his real property, was wrested from them, so that they were from that moment literally ruined. It has been an unavailing struggle since that period.125 Yet it is unclear how general this pattern of indebtedness was and how much debt had been redeemed by the time of emancipation. The claims of the former slave-owners cannot be taken at face value and they clearly overstated the extent to which they were mortgaged. More research is needed on the effects of compensation money on the rural slaveholding economy.126 For now, a few individual examples will have to suffice. It is certainly clear that the consequences of compensation were uneven. As has been noted earlier, the Mosselbanks Rivier notable, Nicolaas van Wielligh, stood to receive £1 243 in compensation for his slaves. There is no record of his ever passing mortgage bonds on any of his slaves and Van Wielligh as a consequence probably enjoyed the bulk of compensation money paid to him.127 In fact, Van Wielligh himself owned mortgages on slave property. On the other hand, Fredrik Scheundorff, who lived nearby, had mortgaged his slaves extensively in the decades leading to emancipation. By the time of emancipation he had outstanding mortgages on his slave property alone to six different individuals.128 In 1823 he had borrowed 7 000 guilders from one Abraham de Smidt and mortgaged his slaves Mentor, December and Mafteld.129 In 1831 Andries Brink loaned Scheundorff the sum of £300 on mortgage security of ten of his slaves.130 That same year Scheundorff borrowed a further sum of £300 from Catharina le Roes and mortgaged his slaves Jacob, Africa, Phillis, Pedro, Joumat, Mentor and Matfeld.131 In 1832 he borrowed £75 from Roelof A. Zeederberg, mortgaging his slave Abraham, and in 1833 he again borrowed from Andries Brink, this time the sum of £125 on mortgage of his slave Jacob.132 Thus, when compensation claims were paid out, Scheundorff received only £369 of the £698 awarded to him (he originally claimed £2 051) while the balance went to seven other individuals as payment in a ‘litigated claim’.133

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But of crucial importance to the survival of the Cape’s slave-owning class was that, unlike in the British West Indies, mortgages on slave property and compensation claims were for the most part held locally. The local nature of credit agreements, in other words, did much to keep compensation payments within the slaveholding community. Undoubtedly, numerous mortgage creditors, such as the wealthy Andries Brink, were merchants resident in Cape Town. But then there were individuals such as Jan Jurgen Kotze who mortgaged his claim to the compensation money of 33 slaves to his father, Johannes Jacobus Kotze.134 As noted earlier, one of the mortgage holders on slave property in the ward of Mosselbanks Rivier was Nicolaas van Wielligh. Apart from the fact that his claim to the compensation money of £1 243 was uncontested, he received an additional sum of £137.7.11 from the claim of neighbouring farmer M.W. Theunissen. When Theunissen bought the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Leeuwekuil for £625 in 1830, it was Van Wielligh who had put up a loan of £325.135 Theunissen and Van Wielligh were not only neighbours, but also kin. Van Wielligh had at one time been married to Theunissen’s relative, Elisabeth Johanna Theunissen.136 For notable individuals such as Van Wielligh, thus, compensation proved a great boon. It was no doubt this windfall that allowed him to pay off a substantial amount of his mortgage debt in 1839, some of which stretched as far back as 1807. The loans included mortgages he had incurred on his farms Leeuwedans and Oliphantsfontein.137 It is highly likely that Oliphantsfontein, scene of the death of the slave August, was purchased in expectation of the compensation money. For Van Wielligh’s debtors, such as M.W. Theunissen, compensation would have proved less of a windfall. But even those slave-owners who were not as well off as Van Wielligh were able to use compensation payments to clear some of their debt. In 1839 Fredrik Scheundorff who, as we have seen, had extensive mortgages on his slaves, fully paid off two ‘general’ mortgages of 1 000 guilders and £75, contracted in 1825 and 1826 respectively, a mortgage of £75 on his slave Frits, contracted in 1827, and a mortgage of £75 on his slave Abraham, contracted in 1832.138 There can be no doubt, therefore, as Worden has suggested, that compensation payments alleviated the economic strains of the immediate post-emancipation years.139 It is clear that compensation money did much to reduce the incidence of bankruptcy during these years. Out of

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55 cases of insolvency throughout the Colony in 1839, only three are certainly farmers resident in the Western Cape. They were Siewert Weid Rossouw, Johannes Jacobus van Dyk, both farmers in the Paarl region, and Nicolaas Jonas of the Cape District.140 In 1840, out of 104 cases of insolvency throughout the Colony, only seven were identifiable as farmers resident in the Western Cape.141

The limits of compensation The beneficial effects of compensation were short-lived, however. By the end of 1839 it was clear that the effects of compensation would be temporary. The ‘superabundance of money was accidental,’ wrote the Commercial Advertiser. ‘It was merely a number of pieces of money thrown into the Colony in return for the abolition of a law, for a change in the relation of master and servant.’142 Since the compensation money ‘could not find employment, it sought consumption’.143 By January 1842 the Cape’s share of the compensation money was ‘finally disposed of’.144 The initial surplus of money sowed the seeds of later distress. As money flowed into the Colony in the years immediately around emancipation, interest rates were reduced and loans could be obtained at the rate of 4 or 5 per cent as opposed to the normal rate of 6 per cent per annum. As is usual in such times, many overextended themselves and landed property acquired an ‘unprecedented although fictitious value’.145 Wheat farms were in 1839 ‘very high in prize [sic]’.146 But the gradual depletion of available money resulted in an increase in the rate of interest. Thus, in November 1838, Jonas van der Poel, one of the largest lenders of money on mortgage security in the Colony, placed an advertisement in the Government Gazette informing his debtors who had borrowed money at 4 per cent per annum, that from 1 January 1840 they were to pay at an increased rate of 5 per cent.147 The general increase in interest rates had the effect of ‘depreciating again . . . the fictitious value of landed property’.148 This situation accelerated the number of insolvencies and the general difficulty in which farmers found themselves. Between 1841 and 1843 at least 63 farmers in the Western Cape were declared insolvent; in 1841 alone 26 were declared bankrupt. And in these years the single largest cause of insolvency was the fall in the value of landed property following a general increase in interest rates. One such farm was Oliphantsfontein, situated in Mosselbanks Rivier, whose owner, Jacob

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Willem van Reenen, had passed bonds (one in 1839 and another in 1841) to the value of £1 875 on the farm. In 1842, the farm was sold for a mere £1 000.149 Wheat farmers, who benefited from relatively high cereal prices, were better equipped to deal with the post-emancipation years than were wine farmers. Unlike wine producers, they produced overwhelmingly for the domestic market. In 1838, 63 per cent of wheat produced in the Western Cape was consumed in the Colony.150 The Commercial Advertiser suspected that farmers were withholding their crops in order to push up prices.151 Later that year it was noted that ‘scarcely a fifth part of the usual supply’ of wheat had been brought to Cape Town from the countryside and that the Colony in fact had to import large quantities of wheat. ‘Are the Farmers keeping back their grain?’ the paper asked. ‘If so, they will be most grievously disappointed.’152 Melt van Schoor would no doubt have reflected upon the words of the Commercial Advertiser with some bitterness. The ‘good harvests and fair prices’ of the early 1840s enabled him to pay his ‘most pressing creditors’. But at the end of the decade he was forced into insolvency by ‘high wages . . . the low price of corn, and the great sum which he [was] obliged annually to pay for Interest . . . and [had] during the past year not even had the means of cultivating his farm in a proper manner’.153 That same year ‘the scarcity and expensiveness of labour’ was given as the cause of the insolvency of Servaas van Niekerk, another Koeberg wheat farmer.154 Isaak Andries van Niekerk, a Zwartland wheat farmer, claimed in 1841 that his insolvency was a result of the ‘failure of his crops and the want of hands’.155 The wine industry, as we have seen, entered the era of emancipation in a state of recession, a state from which it had still not recovered in the 1840s. ‘Instead of a benefactor, the man who introduced vine here has been in fact the greatest enemy the Colony ever knew,’ wrote the South African Commercial Advertiser in 1842. ‘And next to him was the British minister who poured the poison of protection into the Cape vineyards.’156 Whereas wheat farmers experienced a short-term rise in prices, wine farmers were faced with the ‘almost unsaleable state of [their] staple produce.’157 The depreciation of landed property following declining prices and increased interest rates was therefore especially stark ‘in the value of all

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farms whereon the vine [was] the principal object of culture’.158 ‘The sudden fall in the price of fixed property and wine and the scarcity of money was undoubtedly the cause of the surrender of the estate,’ declared the trustee in the insolvent estate of Abraham Bosman.159 George Haubtfleisch’s Stellenbosch wine farm fell in value from £700 to £375, a depreciation of 46 per cent. 160 Another Stellenbosch wine farm, Rustenburg, declined in value from £2 500 to £2 000, while the moveable property on the farm, ‘being nearly all the same’, declined from £625 to £346, thus making for an overall depreciation of about 25 per cent.161 Andries Christoffel van der Byl purchased his farm in Stellenbosch for £2 000 when he could obtain a loan at the interest rate of 4 per cent per annum. Shortly afterwards he had to pay an increased rate of 6 per cent and he found that he was unable to make his loan payments. By 1841 his farm had declined in value to £1 375 (a depreciation of about 31 per cent) and since Van der Byl, so the trustees reported, ‘did not see any prospect for the future on [the] farm he felt himself obliged to surrender his Estate.’ 162 A government official wondered in 1841 how the wine farmers could ‘with the present prices of their wine . . . exist at all, even if labour were to be had for nothing’.163 The simple truth was that they could not. In the two years preceding 1843, one commentator noted, ‘not one wine farmer had been enabled to make both ends meet unless they have had other resources than the mere production of their wine farms.’164 Andries van der Byl, another Stellenbosch wine farmer, found that after the increase in interest rates he had ‘nothing to live on’ except ‘a certain inheritance which devolved upon him out of the estate of his late parents’.165 Pieter de Villiers was forced to ‘look out for other means for the maintenance of himself and family’.166 Whatever the relative advantages of wheat farmers over wine farmers, distress was widespread. As the Commercial Advertiser reported in 1845: Numbers of the corn farmers towards the north and north-east of Cape Town, and at no great distance from it, are at this moment at the lowest point of penury; and to add to their misfortunes, during the great drought of last season, vast numbers of their stock, and most of their wagon oxen perished, so that for treading out and bringing to market the corn on the ground,

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they must depend on horses or oxen, hired or purchased on credit. In a word, there is much suffering and real misery among this class.167 That same year the veldcornets of the Zwartland, Malmesbury district, sought government assistance in alleviating the woes of their respective wards. D. Rossouw claimed that most of the residents of his fieldcornetcy were ‘in want of Bread and Seed by which they are not able to sow anything this year.’168 J.J. van der Merwe asked for government assistance ‘by giving those who are really poor a loan of such quantities of seed, oats, and wheat, as they are actually in want of in order to enable them to sow again this year. Some . . . have reaped something, but they have not the means to assist their fellow creatures, as they are obliged to pay their debts with what they have’.169 Historians who have downplayed the detrimental economic consequences for slaveholders and overstated the beneficial effects of compensation have invariably confined their analysis to too short a time-span and ignored the importance of the mobility of former slaves, mortgage indebtedness and fluctuating interest rates and land values.170 Theal, on the other hand, overstated his case when he wrote that the ‘class of planters near the Cape peninsula . . . who lived in a luxurious style . . . went entirely out of existence’.171 But there can be no doubt that many former slave-owners suffered real distress as a consequence of emancipation. Most of all, the consequences of emancipation were uneven. The gentry and those unencumbered by mortgage debt benefited from the influx of compensation money. The great bulk of slaveholders, those who had to satisfy their local and merchant creditors, would have suffered most. It was only by recourse to a place within local moral communities – to custom – that the great majority of slave-owners survived the crisis of emancipation.

The moral community resurgent The former slaveholding class did not, as Theal suggested, go ‘out of existence’. Despite the difficulties of emancipation, the class as a whole survived the post-emancipation decade, if their retaining title to their land is used as an index. At least 788 individuals who resided in the Western Cape were declared insolvent between the beginning of 1838

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and the end of 1849.172 Only 122 of these cases were persons whose occupations were given as ‘farmers’ or ‘agriculturists’. The overwhelming majority of those who went bankrupt in the post-emancipation decade were not farmers, but practised a range of occupations such as artisans, shopkeepers and merchants. Shopkeepers were particularly vulnerable during these years. One of the reasons for the insolvency in 1847 of the Cape Town shopkeeper, Hendrik Schierhout, was his inability to obtain payment from farmers to whom he had sold goods on credit. The farmers were ‘in the habit of buying at a year’s credit.’ It was ‘well known that very few farmers are able at this time of the year [August] to meet their Debts, they having purchased under condition to pay in January out of their harvest’.173 Even the Commercial Advertiser commented at the beginning of 1842 on the small number of insolvencies of the previous year, and those that did occur were not ‘of any great consequence’.174 As we have seen, farmers successfully adapted to a changed labour market and sought non-agricultural sources of income in the difficult decade of the 1840s. But above all else, as was the case during the recession of the 1820s and 1830s, it was the diffused, private, localised and community-based nature of credit that rescued the former slaveholding class. The agrarian crisis of the 1840s has to be understood against the backdrop of continued community interdependencies. One of the most significant consequences of the localised nature of credit was that it allowed for the relatively easy circulation of land and wealth within narrowly circumscribed boundaries. Credit, as we have seen, had traditionally come from a combination of sources: from Cape Town as well as from within the slaveholders’ localities, from neighbours and kin. This pattern of localised lending was still very prevalent at the time of emancipation. Table 3.3 lists the mortgage holders of all bonds passed (at the time of transfer) on twelve (out of fourteen) Mosselbanks Rivier farms from the time of emancipation to 1860.175 The single largest money-lender was Cape Town resident Jonas van der Poel, whose influence extended over Hoornbosch and Drooge Valey (intermittently farmed as one unit), Wolwedans, Leeuwedans, and Berg en Dal. Other prominent lenders were Christiaan Lodewyk Wicht and Hans Hendrik Wicht (and later his widow Aletta de Kock) who at different points held mortgages on Wolwedans and Blaauw Blomskloof. It is evident, however, that such

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

84 203 90 61 21 73 35 200 201 475 474 83 147 184 28 72 158 212 27 26 211 74 20 69 142 62 13 61 40

15 10 19 4 5 8 17 11 11 26 26 15 18 13 5 8 28 25 5 5 25 7 1 8 13 4 9 16 4

DD

1 12 8 10 9 11 3 11 11 11 11 1 2 4 12 11 5 10 12 12 10 5 6 5 6 10 7 5 4

MM 1839 1830 1841 1854 1837 1847 1820 1858 1858 1858 1858 1839 1842 1859 1850 1847 1839 1851 1844 1844 1851 1833 1841 1838 1837 1854 1830 1846 1851

YY Blanckenberg, Johannes Gysbertus Brink, Andries Brink, Andries De Kock, Aletta, widow of Christiaan Lodewyk Wicht De Kock, Johanna Catharina De Kock, Michiel Adriaan DRC, Poor Fund Du Plessis, Willem Petrus, Est of Du Plessis, Willem Petrus, Est of Dutton, William Holmes Eaton, William Harries & Thomas John Eaton Guardian’s Fund Guardian’s Fund Hiddingh, Petrus Hofstede Hope, Falkner Jordaan, Michiel Adriaan Louw, Adriaan Jacobus Louw, Jan Michiel Louw, Michiel Joseph Mechau, Gerhardus Nicolaas Mechau, Gerhardus Nicolaas Meyer, Margaretha Jacoba, widow of Willem Cornelis Arends Meyer, Margaretha Jacoba, widow of Willem Cornelis Arends Montgomery, Howard Alexander, MD Neethling, Johannes Hendrik, LL.D Proctor, John James Roux, Paul Roux, Paul, Sr. Roux, Paul, Sr.

Lender

Mortgage holders on Mosselbanks Rivier farms before 1860.

Bond #

Table 3.3:

Oliphantsfontein Blaauw Blomskloof Uitkyk Wolvedans Berg en Dal Berg en Dal, 1/2 share Drooge Vallei Blaauwe Blomskloof & Spenglers Drift Blaauwe Blomskloof & Spenglers Drift Hoornbosch Hoornbosch Oliphantsfontein Oliphantsfontein Leeuwedans Drooge Valley & Hoornbosch Berg en Dal, 1/2 share Kalbaskraal Middelburg & Jan Beversfontein Middelburg & Jan Beversfontein Middelburg & Jan Beversfontein Middelburg & Jan Beversfontein Middelburg Middelburg Hoornbosch Uitkyk Wolvedans Leeuwekuil Leeuwekuil Leeuwekuil

Property

1

1 1 1 1 1

3 1

1

625 450 400 250 250 425 ? 503 751 500 500 250 000 125 362 500 500 200 250 750 750 625 625 552 500 750 300 300 900

£

Negotiating Emancipation 143

189 2 346

347

140 27 345

51 133 15 141 134 20 190 36 14 185 186 56 202 142

31 32 33

34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

4 6 1 23 6 5 24 17 9 29 29 12 10 23

23 5 21

21

24 4 21

1

DD

Source: Deeds Office

21

30

Bond #

Table 3.3 (cont.)

9 6 10 4 6 9 7 3 7 6 6 8 12 4

4 12 1

1

7 10 1

6

MM

1855 1856 1857 1851 1856 1837 1818 1820 1830 1838 1838 1828 1830 1851

1851 1850 1855

1855

1818 1831 1855

1841

YY

Van der Poel, Jonas Van der Poel, Jonas Van der Poel, Jonas Van der Poel, Sophia Susanna Van der Spuy, Marthinus Jonas Van der Westhuizen, Albert F. Van Oudtshoorn, William Ferdinand van Reede Van Reenen, Jacob Van Wielligh, Nicolaas Wicht, Cristiaan Lodewyk Wicht, Cristiaan Lodewyk Wicht, Hans Hendrik Wicht, Hans Hendrik Zeederberg, J.R. & 2 others

Van der Poel, Cornelis, Est of late widow Van der Poel, Jonas Van der Poel, Jonas

Steytler, Johan George

SA Association as executors of estate of late Johannes Henoch Neethling Smuts, Susanna, widow of Cornelis van der Poel Spengler, Wolfgang Steytler, Johan George

Lender Middelburg Leeuwedans Spenglers Drift Hoornbosch & Drooge Valley & right & title to Munniksdam Hoornbosch & Drooge Valley & right & title to Munniksdam Leeuwedans Drooge Valley & Hoornbosch Hoornbosch & Drooge Valley & right & title to Munniksdam Leeuwedans Berg en Dal Wolvedans Leeuwedans Berg en Dal Berg en Dal Leeuwedans Drooge Vallei Leeuwekuil Wolvedans Wolvedans Blaauw Blomskloof Blaauw Blomskloof Leeuwedans

Property

4 000 1 125 1 325 1 500 350 700 500 ? ? 325 250 1 250 178 373 450

1 500 400 3 000

1 000

250

325

£

144 Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

Negotiating Emancipation

145

individuals did not dominate mortgage lending in the fieldcornetcy and a wide spectrum of individuals appear as bondholders. Jonas van der Poel, for instance, appears on only five out of the fifty-one mortgage bonds. While Paul Roux’s name appears thrice, the bonds were all held on one farm, for he had effectively transferred the mortgage loan from one owner to the next. Formal lending institutions, such as the Guardian’s Fund and the South African Association, appear only rarely. All in all, out of fifty-one mortgage bonds passed on twelve Mosselbanks Rivier farms before 1860, thirty-six different parties appear as lenders. Furthermore, as we have seen, those who stood surety for borrowers were also neighbours and kin. In 1846 the Mosselbanks Rivier notable Nicolaas van Wielligh stood surety for Daniel Retief and Philippus Albertus Myburg for the amounts of £826 and £750 respectively.176 George Wolfgang Spengler, owner of the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Spenglaar’s Drift, stood surety for Nicolaas Mosterd, owner of Klipheuvel, on separate occasions in the 1820s and 1830s.177 When, in 1837, Johannes Andries Basson of Malmesbury borrowed £650 from Petrus Johannes Lochner on mortgage security of his farm, Vogelstruysfontein, he had as sureties his brothers Nicolaas and Willem Basson.178 Wouter Wium of Stellenbosch stood surety for his son-inlaw Christiaan Ackermann when the latter borrowed the sum of £562 from J.J. Haupt.179 This incestuous lending of money could also have detrimental consequences and the difficult decade of the 1840s foreshadowed what was to come later. As had happened in the 1820s and 1830s, the insolvency of one affected many others and soon, like a pack of cards, bankruptcy knocked down one farmer after the other. The trustees of the insolvent estate of Jacob de Villiers of Stellenbosch found that the creditors, ‘his nearest relatives’, were ‘the greatest sufferers’. De Villiers claimed that his insolvency was itself caused by the fact that he had lost £2 750 by standing surety for others.180 The only cause of the insolvency of Jacobus Esterhuysen of Stellenbosch, so the trustees of his estate reported, was the fact that he had stood surety for his brother-in-law, J.A. Snyman, for the sum of £1 696.14.6, and he had ‘no one to blame but himself, for the unpleasant situation . . . for he must have known that his Brother in Law was in difficulties from which he could never

146

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

extricate himself at the time he accepted for him’.181 Wouter Wium’s insolvency was ‘entirely to be ascribed’ to his having stood surety for his son-in-law, Christiaan Johan Godlieb Ackermann for an amount of £562.10.0. He was summoned to pay this amount when Ackermann went bankrupt, but since he found himself ‘totally unable to meet the demand saw himself obliged to surrender his Estate’.182 But mostly, these ties of community benefited the slaveholding class as a whole. In the first instance, members of such local communities could in times of crisis depend on personal consideration. Secondly, there was little point in pressing debtors who happened to be neighbours and kin. Jacob van Reenen of Oliphantsfontein in the ward of Mosselbanks Rivier was ‘known to most of the creditors’ and the trustees of his insolvent estate could report ‘with confidence . . . that it was not from want of any personal industry and hard work . . . that he has become so reduced in circumstances’.183 With the insolvency of Sievert Rossouw, a wheat farmer of Paarl, the trustees ‘could candidly confess to the satisfaction of the Insolvent that they have always known him to be an industrious and hardworking man, and they therefore recommend him to the generosity of his creditors’.184 Christiaan Ackermann, a Stellenbosch wine farmer, was with his insolvency in 1842 ‘thrown helpless on the world with his wife and 7 children and [had] only the sympathy of his creditors to appeal to’.185 As the Cape Argus reported in 1857: Creditors do not like, in a small community, to refuse a man’s certificate [of rehabilitation]: they are, generally speaking, influenced by all sorts of motives but the proper ones. They regard a man’s family and his connections. In many cases they know if they withhold their signatures, they will lose all the patronage of the insolvent’s friends.186 Most importantly, local lending and surety-standing militated against the passage of land into the hands of outsiders. Thus in about 1834, when F.X. Jurgens faced bankruptcy, his Mosselbanks Rivier farm, Oliphantsfontein along with his slaves, were purchased out of his insolvent estate by his father, Jurgens Sr., the chief mortgage creditor. Jurgens Sr. in turn sold the farm to Nicolaas van Wielligh, one of the largest slave-owners of Mosselbanks Rivier.187 The primary mortgage

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147

creditor of Stellenbosch wine farmer, Abraham Pieter de Villiers, who was declared insolvent in 1845, was his kinsman Jacob Isaac de Villiers, and the farm was bought out of the insolvent estate by another relative, Abraham Pieter de Villiers.188 In one instance a tenant was able to purchase the Malmesbury farm of his insolvent landlord.189 Clearly, the moral community of the eighteenth century had survived.

The ‘usury question’ The slaveholders’ moral community, however, did not survive the crisis of emancipation unchallenged. One of the chief consequences of compensation money, and perhaps of more profound importance than the decline and subsequent rise of interest rates, was that it opened the door to an assault on one of the cardinal rules by which credit circulated amongst local communities. For moneylenders, the scarcity of specie following the dissipation of compensation money necessitated what they called ‘free trade in money.’ For the slaveholding community, on the other hand, the extension of credit was guided by a strong moral code. Probably the most important element in this code was that interest should not be charged at a rate higher than 6 per cent per annum. ‘In the eyes of many,’ wrote the Commercial Advertiser in October 1839, ‘usury laws were divine . . . six per cent was somewhere mentioned in the Bible; that it was a moral law.’ The former slave-owners, moreover, were ‘conscientiously wedded to their own code’.190 Borrowers of money regarded those who charged higher rates of interest ‘as little better than atheists’.191 The understanding that interest rates should have a ceiling – one of the concessions of patronage forced upon the wealthy by the poor – had sufficient moral authority to be called ‘custom’. To borrowers, the practice of ‘not taking more than 6 per cent on all mortgages and all monetary transactions’ was the result of ‘custom . . . sanctioned by a duration of nearly two centuries’.192 As far as the defenders of ‘free trade in money’ were concerned, the origins and sanctity of ‘custom’ were more ambiguous, however. The Attorney General, the Colony’s chief legal officer, claimed to be unaware of any law limiting the rate of interest.193 Thus the Commercial Advertiser concluded that ‘it was natural to infer that it either never existed, or was asleep, or dead, or should be so’.194 Interest rates, the merchants argued before the Legislative Council in the classical language of free

148

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trade, were to be determined by risk. In ‘new countries’ such as the Cape Colony, they argued, risks (and profits) were high. Exorbitant interest rates, the merchants added, had in fact long existed in the Colony and the supposed ceiling on interest rates had not prevented the ‘most extensive and shameful usury’. It was ‘a matter of public notoriety’, one claimed, that moneylenders had in the past got away with charging rates in the region of 12–15 per cent per annum. The bill to allow ‘free trade in money’ would do no more than open the market to the ‘respectable capitalist, the man with a conscience’.195 It soon became clear that the battle lines were drawn between former slave-owners and merchants. As one spokesman put it, ‘why should the interests of the agriculturists throughout the Colony be sacrificed to those of the rich merchant?’196 The debates around interest rates were tied up with the consequences of compensation payments. These debates served as the origins of a long lineage in conservative historiography that charged merchants as the prime beneficiaries of slave compensation payments. There was a direct connection, the spokesmen for the slaveowners claimed, between compensation money, merchant enrichment and increased interest rates. ‘Into whose hands did the Compensation Money pass? Into the hands of the merchants, who passed it again in remittances to the mother country,’ wrote Advocate Musgrave, the slaveholders’ spokesman. The removal of the ‘benevolent restriction’ on interest rates, he added, would give the merchant ‘permission to oppress the agriculturist’.197 In the end, the bill to allow ‘free trade in money’ failed to pass. The flood of petitions and objections from the slaveholding community convinced the Governor, Sir George Napier, that the Colony was not ready for it. Clearly the quest for ‘free trade in money’ was too closely tied up with slave emancipation and the Governor vetoed the bill in the face of strong opposition from his Attorney General. There were too many people, Napier argued, who viewed the bill ‘with apprehension and distrust’. Its passage would have defeated his ‘endeavors to quiet and reconcile the feelings of the different classes of which the community was composed’.198 The British government had put an end to slavery in the Cape Colony; the colonial state had no interest at this stage in replacing the former slave-owners with a new class of landowners. As a consequence, the slave-owners remained on the land.

Negotiating Emancipation

149

Conclusion The end of slavery in 1838 arrived at a time when the slave economy of the Cape Colony was in terminal decline. Emancipation made for a fully-fledged agrarian crisis. In theory emancipation granted the freed people a level of mobility that slavery did not allow. The slaves put the theory to the test. The day of abolition was followed almost immediately by a large-scale withdrawal of their labour on the part of the freed slaves. For the freed slaves, emancipation was above all about mobility. Although an independent peasant existence was not an option for the overwhelming majority of freed people, the post-emancipation social structure was a fundamentally new one. In the end, the most common form of surplus extraction that prevailed was wage labour. And the former slaves were able to extract rates of wages higher than the margins of profitability of many farmers allowed. Harvest labour paid particularly well and the former slaves and servants could earn significant incomes in short periods of time. Although the colonial state passed legislation to limit the mobility of the former slaves, the practice of the rule of law meant that the former slave-owners did not always have it all their own way. In short, the post-emancipation settlement was born of negotiation. These difficult times took their toll on quite a few farmers. Wine farmers were hardest hit since emancipation came in the middle of a prolonged slump of the wine industry. Wheat farmers could count temporarily on high cereal prices. Slave compensation payments alleviated initial difficulties, but at the same time paved the way for later troubles. The years immediately after emancipation saw a decrease in interest rates because of the surplus of money in the Colony; the subsequent increase in rates left many unable to make their mortgage payments. However, a system of credit that was structured around familial and community networks meant that for the most part the former slaveholders were able to avoid bankruptcy and loss of land. The carefully constructed moral community, that itself did much to alleviate the crisis of emancipation, survived these troubled years. But the years around emancipation saw the first major assault on the moral community of slaveholders. For the next two decades the Colony debated what came to be called the ‘usury question’ as the Legislative Assembly struggled – and failed – to pass a bill to allow for ‘free trade in money’. The main differences were between merchants

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and farmers, between those who were the primary lenders and borrowers of money respectively. As opposing parties fought it out in the colonial press and the Legislative Assembly, each sought legitimacy in biblical authority, Roman-Dutch law and the past. For now, the former slaveholding class remained resilient. As they parted company with their slaves, they could take temporary comfort in the fact that the defeat of the bill for ‘free trade in money’ would ensure their survival as a class.

Notes 1. PRO CO 48/320, Montagu – Merivale, 27 December 1851. 2. N. Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom: the Apprenticeship Period, 1834–1838’, in N. Worden and C. Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), pp. 118–21. 3. Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’, pp. 130–1. 4. ZA, 10 January 1834, Circular from Acting Governor Wade to Public Functionaries, Clergy and Others throughout the Colony, 7 January 1834. 5. B.J. Liebenberg, ‘Die Vrystelling van die Slawe in die Kaapkolonie en die Implikasies Daarvan’, M.A. thesis, University of the Orange Free State, 1959, p. 41. 6. Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’, pp. 130–1. 7. Cited in Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’, p. 137. 8. Worden, ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’, pp. 136–7; E. Hengherr, ‘Emancipation – and After: A Study of Cape Slavery and the Issues Arising from It, 1830–1843’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1953, p. 74. 9. De Zuid Afrikaan, 5 December 1834. 10. The issue of representative government had already come to the fore during the ‘amelioration’ years. Many of the ‘evils and grievances’ of Ordinance 19 would have been avoided, De Zuid Afrikaan argued in 1831, if the Colony had had its own ‘Legislative Representative Body.’ ZA, 20 May 1831. 11. Cited in Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, pp. 40–1. 12. ZA, 31 January 1840. 13. ZA, 24 January 1840. 14. M. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves: the Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806–1834’, Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1986, pp. 314–15. 15. ZA, 20 March 1840. 16. ZA, 27 March 1840. 17. Robert Shell and John Mason have in different ways written that an ‘ideology of paternalism’ and the ‘metaphor of the family’ were integral to slaveholder authority at the Cape; Shell, Children of Bondage, pp. 206–46; Mason, Social Death and Resurrection, pp. 69–101. The extent to which the slaves themselves took on the language and ideology of paternalism, however, remains unclear. It is certainly clear

Negotiating Emancipation

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

151

that paternalism at the Cape was always very shallow and became more so in the early decades of the nineteenth century as the law increasingly presented itself to slaves as a countervailing source of authority. For the law as such a source of authority in the eighteenth century, see W. Dooling, Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c.1760–1820 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1992), pp. 80–2. Moreover, neither Mason nor Shell addresses the extent to which Khoisan servants, who after all frequently lived and worked alongside slaves, were the subjects of such paternalistic overtures. On this score, Newton-King’s research is most revealing. Throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, the Khoisan of the Great Escarpment suffered ‘no . . . sense of moral collapse’ that might have sprung from virtual enslavement. Instead, they became ‘the enemy within’ and fought European hegemony ‘tooth and nail’. Settler attempts to turn Bushman war captives into docile servants met with utter failure. It was ‘naked force’, primarily, that characterised relations between trekboers and servants on the northeastern frontier. There is no shortage of evidence to show, as we have seen in Chapter 1, that such violence was to be found in abundance in the more settled arable southwestern districts of the Colony; see also Newton-King, Masters and Servants, pp. 116–49 (quotations are from pp. 125, 129). ZA, 21 February 1840. ZA, 7 February 1840. ZA, 31 January 1840. ZA, 31 January 1840. SACA, 20 February 1839. ZA, 7 February 1840. CA CO 4007, Memorial of Wine and Corn farmers and other farming and interested persons of the District of Stellenbosch convened as a Public Meeting at Stellenbosch, 28 January 1840, no. 49, p. 176. SACA, 1 January 1840. PRO, CO 53/75, Napier – Secretary of State for the Colonial Departments, 27 December 1839. Extracts from SACA in Grahamstown Journal, 18 April 1839, cited in Hengherr, ‘Emancipation – and After’, p. 79. Hengherr, ‘Emancipation – and After’, pp. 80–1. J.N.C. Marincowitz, ‘Rural Production and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838– 1888, with Special Reference to the Wheat Growing Districts’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985, p. 33. For a richly detailed account of the movement of former slaves to mission stations and the space that these institutions provided, see E. H. Ludlow, ‘Missions and Emancipations in the Southwestern Cape: A Case Study of Groenekloof (Mamre), 1838–1852’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. CA CO 2784, Caledon, 19 February 1839. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 2, Jacket D, Report of Resident Missionary, 1 December 1838. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 2, Jacket D, Report of Resident Missionary, 1 December 1838. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 3, Jacket C, 15 April 1839.

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34. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 3, Jacket C, Swellendam, 15 April 1839. 35. CA GH 23/13, Napier – Russell, 6 October 1841, no. 101. 36. P. Scully, Liberating the Family?: Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997), pp. 109–20. The quotations are from p. 110. 37. Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, p. 166. 38. CA CO 4001, Memorial of Lodewyk, 16 January 1839, no. 153; CA CO 2788, Truter – Bell, 12 February 1839. 39. CA CO 2788, Truter – Bell, 12 February 1839. 40. C. Crais, The Making of the Colonial Order: White Supremacy and Black Resistance in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1865 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1992), pp. 74–6. 41. Crais, The Making of the Colonial Order, p. 86. 42. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 3, Jacket C, Philip – Napier, 14 August 1839. 43. SOAS, CWM, Box 19, Folder 3, Jacket C, 1 November 1843. 44. SOAS, CWM, Box 16, Folder 4, Jacket C, Report of Resident Missionary, Pacaltsdorp, 2 December 1839. 45. CA CO 4001, Memorial of Lodewyk, 16 January 1839, no. 153. 46. CA GH, 23/20, Smith – Grey, 21 January 1851, no. 13. 47. PRO CO 48/320, Montagu – Merivale, 27 December 1851. 48. E. Bradlow, ‘The “Great Fear” at the Cape of Good Hope, 1851–52’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22, 3, 1989, pp. 401–21. 49. See Bradlow, ‘The “Great Fear” ’, pp. 418–20. John Marincowitz, by contrast, argues that plans for an insurrection had indeed been put into place by the Coloured population. See J. Marincowitz, ‘From “Colour Question” to “Agrarian Problem” at the Cape: Reflections on the Interim”, in H. Macmillan and S. Marks (eds.), African and Empire, W.M. Macmillan: Historian and Social Critic (London: Temple Smith, 1989), p. 155. 50. ZA, 28 September 1848. 51. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, pp. 321–2; Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, p. 107; Hengherr, ‘Emancipation – and After’, pp. 95–7; J.S. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1968), p. 199. 52. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Haupt vs Joseph Arends, 16 August 1849. 53. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Blatt vs Piet, 5 November 1849. 54. CA 1MBY 1/1/8, Jacob Samuel van Reenen vs Herman Esau, 19 February 1855. 55. CA 1/MBY 1/1/7, Bester vs Jagers, 20 December 1852. 56. CA 1/MBY 1/1/8, Jacob Samuel van Reenen vs Herman Esau, 19 February 1855. 57. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Haupt vs Joseph Arends, 16 August 1849; CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Haupt vs Ferdinand Pedro, 19 July 1849. 58. ZA, 7 February 1840. 59. SACA, 23 March 1839. 60. CA CO 2788, Truter – Bell, 12 February 1839. 61. CA GH 28/17, Enclosure no. 2 of Despatch no. 85, 26 August 1841. 62. ZA, 7 February 1840. 63. ZA, 21 May 1849. 64. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, pp. 194, 198–9.

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65. ZA, 27 March 1840. 66. CA GH 28/17, Enclosure no. 2, of Despatch no. 85, 26 August 1841, Report called for by the Secretary for the Colonial Department. 67. SOAS, CWM, Box 19, Folder 3, Jacket C, Report of Resident Missionary, Caledon, 1 November 1843. 68. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 205. 69. Marais, The Cape Coloured People, p. 199. 70. Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’, p. 323. 71. Dooling, Law and Community, esp. p. 69–82. 72. W. Dooling, ‘Slavery and Amelioration in the Graaff-Reinet District, 1823–1830’, South African Historical Journal, 27, 1992, 75–94; J.E. Mason, ‘The Slaves and their Protectors: Reforming Resistance in a Slave Society, the Cape Colony, 1826–1834’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 1991, 103–28. 73. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Carolus Davids vs Jacob van Reenen, 3 December 1849. 74. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Carolus Davids vs Jacob van Reenen, 3 December 1849. 75. CA 1/MBY 1/1/6, Haupt vs Ferdinand Pedro, 19 July 1849. 76. Mason, Social Death and Resurrection, pp. 260–1. 77. ZA, 21 October 1847. 78. CA MOIB 1/50, Records in insolvent estate of Sievert Weid Rossouw, 30 May 1839. 79. CA GH 28/21, Enclosure to Despatch no.55, 18 April 1843, Report upon the Blue Book for the year 1842. 80. CA 1/MBY 1/1/4, Gert Joubert vs William Proctor, 7 January 1847. 81. CA CO 2791, J Miller – Secretary of Government, 30 April 1840. 82. CA 1/MBY 5/3/12, n.d., emphasis added. 83. CA MOIB 2/599, no. 48, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Wynand Louw, 15 May 1844. 84. E. Foner, Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). 85. O.F. Mentzel, A Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, 3 volumes (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1921 and 1925), volume III, p. 85. 86. G20-57, Report of Commissioners Relative to the Expediency of Abolishing the Existing System of Preferent Credit by Means of General Bonds, April 1857. 87. CA 1/STB 18/34, Inventory of J.A. Meyburgh, 9 April 1790. 88. CA 1/STB 18/34, Inventory of S.M. Myburgh, 8–9 November 1791. 89. CA 1/STB 18/34, Inventory of E. Theron, 21 December 1791. 90. For example, CA 1/STB 18/34, Inventory of Pieter de Wet, 23 August 1784. 91. CA 1/STB 18/68; Obligatie of Philip Wouter de Vos, 11 January 1761; CA 1/STB 18/68, 9 January 1762; CA 1/STB 18/68, Obligatie of Hendrik Nieuwenhuysen, 27 August 1766; CA 1/STB 18/68, Obligatie of Dirk Coetzee, 6 December 1767, CA 1/ STB 18/68; Obligatie of Coenraad Hendrik Fyt, 30 November 1773, no. 92; CA J 207, opgaaf of Hendrik Cloete, 1773–74. 92. See, for example, CA 1/STB 18/34, Inventory of J.A. Meyburgh, 9 April 1790. 93. The risks of debt, mortgages and loss of land to (Jewish) merchant-shopkeepers are the abiding themes in C.M. van den Heever’s Depression-era novels. They reveal a shift away from Afrikaner families’ willingness to share these risks because of concerns about the shame of indebtedness and land loss. In an evocative scene in Droogte

154

94. 95. 96. 97.

98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

117.

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

(Pretoria: Van Schaik, 1930), one of the protagonists, Oom Soois, is humiliated when a relative refuses to stand surety for him: ‘Nee, Soois, hoe dit my ook spyt, ek kan nie. My oorlee vader het almelewe gesê: “Leen of gee ‘n man liewers geld voor jy hom borgstaan!” ’ (p. 93). [No, Soois, as sorry as I am to say, my deceased father always said: ‘It is better to give money to a man before you stand surety for him!’ (My translation)] Mentzel, Geographical and Topographical Description, III, p. 85 DO, Deed no. 44, 15 July 1825; CA MOIB 2/195, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hugo Hendrik Mosterd, 22 April 1825. DO, Transfer Deed no. 72, 16 October 1835. CA MOIB 2/275, no. 83, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Tobias Mosterd, 10 May 1827; DO, Transfer Deed no. 103, 11 November 1825; CA SO 6/95, Slave registers, Stellenbosch, folio 204. DO, Transfer Deed no. 103, 11 November 1825; CA SO 6/95, Slave registers, Stellenbosch, folio 204. CA MOIB 1/38, Records in insolvent estate of N.E. Mosterd, 21 July 1835; CA SO 6/95, Stellenbosch, folios 237, 238. CA SO 9/24, Register of mortgages, M, folio, 254. 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII). CA SO 20/13; CA SO 20/16. CA SO 20/13, Compensation nos. 3753, 3765. CA SO 20/13, Compensation nos. 3760, 3768, 3769. CA SO 20/13, Compensation no. 3909. 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII), Compensation numbers, 3879, 3901. Cloete originally put in a claim for 38 slaves: CA SO 20/13, Compensation no. 3879. CA SO 20/16. CA SO 20/16, Compensation no. 3295. CA CRB 129. DO, Transfer Deed no.175, 29 December 1842; CA SO 20/13, Compensation no. 3881. CA CRB 129. SACA, 4 August 1841. L. Meltzer, ‘Emancipation, Commerce and the Role of John Fairbairn’s Advertiser’, in Worden and Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains, p. 198. SACA, 12 September 1838, cited in Hengherr, ‘Emancipation – and After’, p. 69; Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, p. 195. SACA, 4 August 1841; 7 April 1838; J. Baikoff, 1838–1938: The History of the Board of Executors (Cape Town: Board of Executors, 1989). CA DOC 2/1/1/1, Registrar of Deeds – Secetary of Government, 6 April 1842, folio 105. Theal, for example, wrote of the ‘widespread misery that was occasioned by the loss of two millions’ worth of property’. G. McCall Theal, History of South Africa, the Cape Colony from 1828 to 1846, Natal from 1824 to 1845, and Proceedings of the Emigrant Farmers from 1836 to 1847, vol II (London: Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., 1908), cited in Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, p. 184. CA CO 4007, no. 49, Memorial of wine and corn farmers and other farming and

Negotiating Emancipation

118.

119. 120. 121.

122.

123.

124. 125. 126.

127.

128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

134.

155

interested persons of the District of Stellenbosch convened as a Public Meeting at Stellenbosch, 28 January 1840. H. Cloete, Three Lectures on the Emigration of the Dutch Farmers from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and their Settlement in the District of Natal (Pietermaritzburg: J. Archbell and Son, 1852). Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, pp. 152, 186. 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII). CA SO 20/13, Appraisement of slaves for Stellenbosch, 1834–1835, Compensation no. 3765; 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII), Compensation no. 3765. CA SO 20/13, Appraisement of slaves for Stellenbosch, 1834–1835, Compensation no. 3768; 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII), Compensation no. 3768. CA MOIB 1/53, Records in insolvent estate of Charl Jacobus de Villiers, 7 February 1840; CA MOIB 1/56, Records in insolvent estate of Abraham Barend du Toit, 13 August 1840; CA MOIB 1/59, Records in insolvent estate of Jacobus Johannes Luttig, 4 February 1841; Records in insolvent estate of Jacob Louis de Villiers, 9 February 1841; Records in insolvent estate of Willem Adolph Krige, 27 February 1841; CA MOIB 1/62, Records in insolvent estate of Willem Johannes Esterhuysen, 12 July 1841; CA MOIB 1/64, Records in insolvent estate of Jacob de Villiers, 18 March 1842; CA MOIB 1/68, Records in insolvent estate of Daniel Gerhardus Cilliers, 16 February 1843; Records in insolvent estate of George Stephanus Haubtfleisch, 9 March 1843; CA MOIB 1/71, Records in insolvent estate of Joel Daniel Herholdt, 5 September 1843; CA MOIB 1/80, Records in insolvent estate of Daniel Petrus Rossouw, 12 January 1846. (All dates refer to the date of the order of sequestration.) DO, DR, K, 510; DO, DR, B, 1180. ZA, 19 October 1848. For the consequences of compensation payments to individual slave-owners in the British Caribbean see, K.M. Butler, The Economics of Emancipation (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). DO, DR, W, folio 536; 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII), Claim no. 3765. DO, DR, S, 319, 599, 675. DO, DR, S, 535. DO, DR, S, 675. The slaves were Samira, Frits, Clarinda, Jeptha, Camonie, Juliana, Francina, Grietjie, Machonie and Goliath. DO, DR, S, 675. DO, DR, S, 675. 1837–1838, Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, Returns of Sums Awarded by Commissioners of Slavery Compensation (no. XLVIII), Claim no. 3768, pp. 265, 329. DO, DR, K, 510.

156

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

135. DO, Transfer Deed no. 12, 9 July 1830; Mortgage Bond no.14, 9 July 830. 136. CA MOIB 2/761, no. 134, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Nicolaas van Wielligh, 15 December 1851. 137. DO, DR, W, 107, 196, 536. 138. DO, DR, S, 599, 675. 139. N. Worden, ‘Adjusting to Emancipation: Freed Slaves and Farmers in Mid-nineteenthcentury South-Western Cape’, in W.G. James and M. Simons (eds.), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town: David Philip, 1989), p. 38. 140. GG, January 1839 – December 1839; GG, 31 May 1839; 12 July 1839; 8 November 1839. The occupations of sixteen people are not known, but of these, thirteen lived in Cape Town, one in Swellendam, while the other two lived in the Cape District. Nicolaas Jonas may well have been black. 141. GG, January 1840 – December 1840. Twenty-two cases of insolvency were reported in the Eastern Cape and in sixteen cases the district was not stipulated. In nineteen cases the occupations of insolvents in the Western Cape were not given, but in most of these cases the individuals were resident in Cape Town. 142. SACA, 9 November 1839, emphasis in original. 143. SACA, 4 August 1841. 144. SACA, 1 January 1842. 145. CA MOIB 1/59, Records in insolvent estate of Andries Christoffel van der Byl, 15 January 1841; CA MOIB 1/64, Records in insolvent estate of Christiaan Johannes Godlieb Ackermann, 7 March 1842; CA MOIB 1/77, Records in insolvent estate of Pieter Gerhard Wium, 26 March 1845. 146. CA MOIB 1/52, Records in insolvent estate of August Joseph Reis, 10 October 1839. 147. GG, 8 November 1839. 148. CA MOIB 1/77, Records in insolvent estate of Pieter Gerhard Wium, 26 March 1845. 149. CA MOIB 2/551, no.60, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacob Willem van Reenen, 5 May 1842. 150. Marincowitz, ‘Rural Production’, p. 22. 151. SACA, 18 May 1839. 152. SACA, 27 November 1839. 153. CA MOIB 1/90, Records in insolvent estate of Melt Jacobus van Schoor, 12 February 1849. 154. CA MOIB 1/90, Records in insolvent estate of Servaas van Niekerk, 27 February 1849. 155. CA MOIB 1/61, Records in insolvent estate of Isaak Andries van Niekerk, 7 May 1841; see also CA MOIB 1/61, Records in insolvent estate of Dirk Johannes Van Dyk Stoffberg, 6 May 1841. 156. SACA, 12 October 1842. 157. CA MOIB 2/581, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Andries Christoffel Cloete, 12 September 1843. 158. CA MOIB 1/73, Records in insolvent estate of Dirk de Vos, 8 March 1844. 159. CA MOIB 1/62, Records in insolvent estate of Abraham Daniel Bosman, 12 August 1841.

Negotiating Emancipation

157

160. CA MOIB 1/68, Records in insolvent estate of George Stephanus Haubtfleisch, 9 March 1843. 161. CA MOIB 1/64, Records in insolvent estate of Christiaan Johannes Godlieb Ackermann, 7 March 1842. 162. CA MOIB 1/59, Records in insolvent estate of Andries Christoffel van der Byl, 15 January 1841. 163. CA GH 3/13, no.143, folio 358, Napier – to Stanley, 21 December 1841. 164. CA MOIB 1/68, Records in insolvent estate of George Stephanus Haubtfleisch, 9 March 1843. 165. CA MOIB 1/59, Records in insolvent estate of Andries Christoffel van der Byl, 15 January 1841. 166. CA MOIB 1/64, Records in insolvent estate of Pieter Johannes de Villiers, 10 February 1842. 167. SACA, 18 October 1845. 168. CA CO 2823, D. Rossouw – Civil Commissioner, Stellenbosch, 6 April 1845. 169. CA CO 2823, J.J. van der Merwe – Civil Commissioner, Stellenbosch, 7 April 1845. 170. See, for example, Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, esp. pp. 184–97; Mason, Social Death and Resurrection, pp. 259–63. 171. G. McCall Theal, History of South Africa, volume II, cited in Liebenberg, ‘Vrystelling van die Slawe’, p. 184. 172. These statistics were compiled from names of insolvents published weekly in the Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette. I say ‘at least’ because the place of residence of 139 individuals is uncertain. For the Eastern Cape, the figure was 299. 173. CA MOIB 1/85, Records in insolvent estate of Hendrik Schierhout, 11 August 1847. 174. SACA, 1 January 1842. 175. I have in each case started with the last transfer to be effected before emancipation. The list shows lenders in alphabetical order. 176. DO, DR, W, 964. 177. DO, DR, M, 666, 932. 178. DO, DR, B, 1156. 179. CA MOIB 1/66, Records in insolvent estate of Wouter Eduard Wium, 20 September 1842. 180. CA MOIB 1/64, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacob de Villiers, 18 March 1842. 181. CA MOIB 1/55, Records in insolvent estate of Jacobus Esterhuysen, 14 August 1840. 182. CA MOIB 1/66, Records in insolvent estate of Wouter Eduard Wium, 20 September 1842; see also CA MOIB 1/72, Records in insolvent estate of Jan Jacques Simonis, 28 October 1843; CA MOIB 1/122, Records in insolvent estate of Albertus Bernardus van Niekerk, 7 July 1858. 183. CA MOIB 1/59, Records in insolvent estate of Jacob Willem van Reenen, 23 February 1841. 184. CA MOIB 1/50, Records in insolvent estate of Sievert Weid Rossouw, 30 May 1839. 185. CA MOIB 1/64, Records in insolvent estate of Christiaan Johannes Godlieb Ackermann, 7 March 1842. 186. Cape Argus, 20 May 1857.

158

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

187. CA MOIB 1/32, Records in insolvent estate of F.X. Jurgens, 31 May 1834; CA MOIB 2/488, no. 19, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Franciscus X. Jurgens, 31 May 1836. 188. GG, 24 January 1845; CA MOIB 2/628, no. 61, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Abraham Pieter de Villiers, 28 August 1845. 189. CA MOIB 2/620, no.10, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Pieter Hendrik Woutersen Neethling, 28 February 1845. 190. SACA, 6 November 1839. 191. SACA, 9 October 1839, Editorial, emphasis added. 192. A9-1862, Petition from Certain Landowners of the District of Stellenbosch, 14 May 1862. 193. SACA, 19 October 1839, Editorial. 194. SACA, 19 October 1839, Editorial. 195. SACA, 2 November 1839. 196. SACA, 6 November 1839. 197. SACA, 6 November 1839. 198. SACA, 13 November 1839.

CHAPTER FOUR

Problems of Free Labour

The labour question started with slave emancipation, and since that time it has been the question of the country.1 (Report of Labour Commission, 1893)

A

t the time of emancipation Nicolaas van Wielligh was one of the wealthiest slaveowners in Mosselbanks Rivier. He farmed his Leeuwedans estate with 31 slaves. But about a decade after the ending of slavery, Van Wielligh was bankrupt. Undoubtedly, the loss of slaves contributed to his ruin, although, as we have seen, he had benefited in no small way from slave compensation payments. It could be argued that Van Wielligh was merely unlucky, and in some ways he was. In the years preceding his bankruptcy, drought had visited Leeuwendans on a number of occasions. His wife, Elisabeth Johanna Theunissen, died in the same year that he had to contend with the final ending of slavery. The rules of partible inheritance dictated that Van Wielligh satisfy the legitimate claims of his offspring. As a consequence, he was compelled to pass a mortgage bond to the value of £2 902 to secure the inheritance of his three children, an act that would eventually cost him his solvency.2 For some, Van Wielligh’s insolvency would have been seen as a consequence of his failure, like that of his peers, to heed calls for ‘improvements in the art of production’. Certainly at the time Van Wielligh’s farming equipment consisted of implements no more sophisticated than ploughs and harrows.3 But probably the underlying cause of the bankruptcy was excessive indebtedness (despite the fact that compensation payments had allowed Van Wielligh to clear off some old debt),4 combined with an inability to make a successful transition to the outstanding reality of the post159

160

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

emancipation years, namely, wage labour. A decade after emancipation he had still not repaid the sum of 16 000 guilders (£400) borrowed in 1818 to purchase Leeuwedans. A further sum of 13 000 guilders, obtained on ‘general mortgage’ in 1813, remained unpaid, as well as a loan of £625 undertaken in 1832.5 This kind of indebtedness was not unusual. As Table 4.1 shows, virtually every one of Van Wielligh’s neighbours had similar levels of mortgage debt. Frederik Hermanus Scheundorff who lived nearby purchased Blaauwe Blomskloof for £875 in 1830 and was able to repay his mortgages of £823 in full only in 1849.6 Shortly after acquiring this farm, Scheundorff bought Spenglaar’s Drift for £250 and mortgaged it for its full value to the previous owner.7 A few years later, in 1835, Scheundorff’s widow mortgaged the property for a further sum of £250, and both these bonds remained unpaid well after emancipation.8 Although the mortgages were repaid in March 1849, Scheundorff’s widow had in that year passed two further bonds on the farm. In effect, the mortgage debt was merely transferred from one person to the next and were only cancelled in 1858 when the property was transferred to its new owner.9 Other farms in the neighbourhood – Berg en Dal, Hoornbosch, Kalbaskraal and Wolwedans – were all transferred in the years immediately around emancipation and were all mortgaged for 100 per cent of their sale value. 10 An extreme example was the farm Oliphantsfontein which in 1839 was mortgaged for 166.67 per cent of its purchase price of £1 125.11 Although patterns of mortgage indebtedness in wine-farming regions were more varied, some farmers here nevertheless carried excessive debt burdens. For some Moddergat farmers, levels of indebtedness were not particularly onerous. Zandberg, for example, was purchased for £625 in 1831 while the purchaser needed a loan of only £300.12 No mortgage bond was found for Groenrivier which was purchased for £1 250 in 1838.13 Pieter Laurens Cloete who took transfer of Noodhulp for the price of £1 350 in 1842, mortgaged the farm for £900. 14 But in Moddergat mortgage debt could be just as heavy as in the wheat-farming veldcornetcy of Mosselbanks Rivier. The farms Rustenburg and De Groote Zalse were transferred, respectively in 1842 and 1848, with bonds equal in value to 100 per cent of their respective values.15 Keerweder, which was purchased for £2 500 in 1840, was burdened with mortgage bonds totalling £3 125, fully 125 per cent of the purchase price.16 In

161

Problems of Free Labour

Table 4.1: Mortgage indebtedness of Mosselbanks Rivier farms, c.1838. Date of Bond

Blaauw Blomskloof

10/12/1830

10/12/1830 10/12/1830 Total

875 875

450 373

51.43 42.63 94.06

Drooge Valey

17/03/1829

Hoornbosch

08/05/1838

08/05/1838

552

552

100.00

Kalbaskraal

28/05/1839

28/05/1839

1 500

1 500

100.00

Leeuwedans

24/07/1818

Leeuwekuil

09/07/1830

09/07/1830 09/07/1830 Total

625 625

300 325

48.00 52.00 100.00

Middelburg

07/05/1833

07/05/1833

950

625

65.79

Oliphantsfontein

15/01/1839

15/01/1839 15/05/1839 Total

1 125 1 125

1 250 625

111.11 55.56 166.67

04/10/1838

250

250

100.00

Farm

Spenglaar’s Drift

Price in £

Mortgage in £

Percentage of Mortgage Relative to Price

Date of Transfer

Uitkyk

30/06/1837

30/06/1837

550

500

90.91

Wolvedans

29/06/1838

29/06/1838 29/06/1838 Total

1 500 1 500

1 250 250 1500

83.33 16.67 100.00

Source: Deeds Office

short, the former slave-owners of the wine and wheat farming regions of the Western Cape entered the era of emancipation with levels of mortgage debt that were greatly in excess of what was financially sound.

Work and wages Mortgage indebtedness of this kind, however, was not new. Throughout the eighteenth century slave-owners had to cope with their particular form of partible inheritance. Rather, it was the combination of such debt with the reality of wage labour that dragged the former slave-owners to the edge of bankruptcy. One of the biggest challenges that they faced in the immediate post-emancipation decades was that of bringing down the price of labour that farm servants commanded. This problem had its origins in an agricultural regime that had been inherited from slavery. The capital structure of Western Cape wheat

162

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

and wine farms reflected a heavy dependence on manual labour. Until emancipation, agricultural equipment had always accounted for a relatively small proportion of overall capital investment. Slaves constituted the largest share of moveable property. At times, the value of slaves could even exceed that of fixed property. For example, the Mosselbanks Rivier farm Oliphantsfontein was sold for £1 000 in 1836, while the sixteen slaves on the farm were valued at £1 050.17 In 1842, after the slaves on Oliphantsfontein had been emancipated, the moveable property was valued at £672, while the farm was valued at £1 250.18 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wheat and wine production at the Cape was carried out under regimes that depended on the use of vast quantities of slave labour.19 Work dominated the lives of slaves. On wheat farms the heaviest concentration of labour was required during the sowing and ploughing seasons and especially during the harvesting and threshing months. Preparation of the land commenced in April, when large quantities of manure were put into the soil. The ploughing and sowing season followed in May and continued until the middle of July. Much labour was also needed in the months following sowing to prepare fallow land for the following season; a fallow period was essential for continued output. From September to the start of the harvest in December farmers carried their produce to Cape Town. The harvest and threshing season during the hot summer months from December to February required the most concentrated labour activity. This was a period of heavy work, ‘with crude utensils and methods’.20 Grain harvesting involved the back-breaking task of cutting the grain by sickle. Work commenced at dawn and continued until dusk, with the workers being allowed a break from noon to about 4 p.m. After dark, the grain sheaves were prepared for threshing for the following day. The grain was trodden out by horses and cleaned from the chaff by hand.21 The grain then had to be gathered, bound into sacks and stored. The seasonal cycle of labour on wine farms dovetailed with that of wheat and those who cultivated both wheat and wine had traditionally been able to put their labour force to most effective use. Between July and September, the slack period on grain farms, vines had to be pruned and cut and the soil fertilised. New vines were planted during July and August. The period of the most intensive labour activity was during the grape-picking season, lasting from late February to the end of March. This was followed by the pressing of grapes, which required the labourers

163

Problems of Free Labour

to trample the grapes with their bare feet. Wine had to be taken to the market between September and the new vintage in March.22 Until emancipation these labour systems remained largely unchanged.23 As a consequence, the largest drains on farmers’ resources, apart from interest payments on mortgages, were labour costs. It is not possible to calculate these costs with any precision. In the first instance, wages varied from region to region and fluctuated considerably throughout the year. Secondly, emancipation did not free employers from having to feed their labourers. At the end of the eighteenth century farmers kept an average of just over two muids of wheat per slave.24 Practices of this kind clearly persevered into the post-emancipation years. Farmers were compelled to give labourers all kinds of bonuses in addition to wages, and these constituted an important part of the labour bill. When the Stellenbosch farm Gustrouw was advertised for sale in 1847, one of the features stressed was that the farm was close to the coast and that by ‘employing a Fishing Boat . . . a plentiful supply of fish may be had, by which the expense of rations is materially lessened’.25 In 1860 Jacob Morkel of Tulbagh claimed that his labour bill over a period of slightly more than a year amounted to £50, but he included amongst his ‘household expenses’ of £410 ‘provisions and wine’ for the farm labourers.26 The cost of labour could therefore be considerable. In the wheatproducing world the cost of harvest labour in particular was by far the most significant. In 1860 Johannes Brand, who farmed a portion of Lucasfontein in the district of Malmesbury, produced the following account of his labour costs during the preceding year:27 Table 4.2: Labour costs of Johannes Brand, 1860. £

s

d

Harvest wages

36

7

9

Food and drink for labourers during harvest 1.5 leaguers of wine 3 oxen 15 sheep Fish (800 harders) 10 muids wheat Overseer’s wages 2 month salary for cook Wages of food carrier

11 24 11 4 13 3 2 1

5 0 5 16 10 0 0 18

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

108

1

9

Total

164

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

The cost of harvest labour alone was several times what Brand paid his landlord in rent (£20), and possibly as high as 60 per cent of his income.28 This was perhaps an exceptional example but it does highlight the relatively high cost of labour, especially when the post-emancipation Cape is viewed in comparative perspective. At the end of the eighteenth century wheat farmers in East Anglia, England, surrendered in the region of only 2.25 per cent of the value of their crops towards the cost of harvest labour; on the haciendas of eighteenth-century Mexico the figure was about 6 per cent.29 We can get a clearer sense of the weight of labour costs by examining the records of individual farms for which detailed records exist. At the time of emancipation the owner of Middelburg possessed eight slaves. In 1840, according to one farmer, an ‘ordinary farming establishment’ required at least twelve labourers ‘during the whole year’.30 In 1841 the cost of agricultural labour in the Cape district was on average thirty shillings per month.31 Had Neethling employed only three full-time labourers he would have run up a wage bill of £54 per annum, almost as much as the interest payments on his mortgage bonds.32 Thus the cost of a modest workforce of three labourers (£54) plus interest payments (£57) amounted to nearly 77 per cent of Neethling’s income of £145. Labour costs alone have amounted to at least 42 per cent of the value of the farm’s main cereal crop.33 In addition, Neethling had high mortgage payments. By 1844 he had outstanding interest payments on the mortgage loan of £325, and had run up other short-term loans (mainly in the form of promissory notes) in excess of £368.34 With an expected annual income of no more than £130 for his main wheat crop, it is not surprising that Neethling was declared insolvent only three years after having taken transfer to Middelburg.35 The records of another wheat farm, Dassenheuvel, tell a similar story. In the 1850s the farm was capable of producing 1 300 muids of wheat. Its owner, Matthys Michielse Basson, had no capital at the time that he commenced farming. As we have seen, this was very common. Dassenheuvel was mortgaged for £1 350. Basson claimed that he had an income of £400 per annum. In 1852 wheat prices averaged 13.37 rixdollars per muid (see Table 4.3). Had the farm produced 1 000 muids of wheat Basson would have earned about £445. Thus his estimate of an annual income of £400 seems reasonable. Basson further claimed

165

Problems of Free Labour

Table 4.3: Average market wheat prices, 1839–59 (Rixdollars/Muids). Year

Price

1839 1840 1843 1844 1846 1847 1852 1853 1855 1857 1859

26.90 24.19 14.25 12.39 17.20 20.23 13.37 15.30 15.69 21.19 18.06

Source: Government Gazette

that he spent £45 per annum on ‘rent and taxes.’ Under this heading he must have included quitrent, market and toll-road duties. Although he does not list the charges against his mortgage bond, interest payments on the main bond must have amounted to £81 (£1 350 x 6 per cent) per annum. ‘Servants’ wages’, Basson claimed, amounted to £110 per year, fully 27.5 per cent of his estimated income. These expenses would have left Basson with a disposable income of £164 (£400 – {£110 + £45 + £81}) per annum, clearly not enough to keep him going since he claimed that ‘other household expenses’36 (including the maintenance of his spouse and two children) amounted to £300 per annum. It is not surprising that Basson too ended up bankrupt.37 With continued recession in the wine industry, wine farmers faced similar difficulties. In 1846 the wine farm Babylon’s Toren was reported to have yielded an annual average of 150 leaguers of wine.38 In that year the price of wine on the Cape Town market was 51 rixdollars on average (see Table 4.4). Thus the owner of the farm could have bargained on an annual income of about £255. But he had run up mortgage bonds to the value of £2 260, and £135 would have had to go into servicing the interest payments, leaving him with an insufficient balance of £120 to cover the costs of labour and farm maintenance. Such high labour costs were a measure of the inability of the former slave-owning class to shape the political economy of the postemancipation Cape entirely to their own ends. The price of labour

166

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

Table 4.4: Average market wine prices, 1839–59 (Rixdollars/Leaguers). Year

Price

1839 1840 1843* 1844 1846 1847 1852 1853 1855 1857 1859

56.84 62.47 44.15 48.48 51.00 54.23 47.73 68.98 71.88 108.22 80.70

* The average for this year is based on very infrequent reporting in the Government Gazette. Source: Government Gazette

reflected the real bargaining power that labourers continued to enjoy in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Much the same can be said for the nineteenth-century Cape as has been said for eighteenthcentury Mexico: ‘working conditions may have been desperately bad, but the efficacy of [the] system of exploitation was equally defective’.39

The quest to mechanise It is not surprising, therefore, that emancipation brought the first incentives to mechanise. An interest in labour-saving machinery followed almost immediately upon the slaves leaving their masters in large numbers. First attempts at mechanisation were closely associated with complaints of ‘labour shortage’. The pressure to mechanise came from the press (both English and Dutch) and, perhaps more importantly, merchant-shopkeepers who imported agricultural machinery into the Colony and who had a direct interest in advocating its use. The stated aim of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society, behind which merchants were the driving force, was to introduce agricultural machinery into the Colony.40 As one of its members wrote in 1859, in a colony where hands are scarce, there is no point to which the efforts of the society can be turned with greater chance of positive

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and undeniable benefit than the introduction of agricultural machinery of every description – from the wool-shear and pruning-hook to the threshing-machine and corn-mill.41 In 1857 three quarters of the membership of the Society were resident in Cape Town.42 Of the six persons who attended the 1863 annual meeting, ‘all, without exception, were merchants, without one single bona fide agriculturist’.43 But the Society had representatives throughout the countryside, amongst whom were included the leading farmers of the various districts. In the course of the 1850s a number of branches were established in the rural districts.44 Merchants and shopkeepers who were stationed in Cape Town and the countryside thus facilitated access to agricultural machinery. As early as 1839 a Cape Town shopkeeper advertised for sale an imported ‘Hand Threshing Machine, Cider Mill and Press’ and added that these items were ‘well worthy the attention of Corn and Wine Farmers, particularly as labor is difficult to procure’. 45 There were obvious impediments to mechanisation. The immediate post-emancipation decade, as we have seen, was a difficult one, and while most farmers survived, not many could have had ready cash to invest in machinery. Yet there is evidence that at least some farmers mechanised in these early years, and did so at considerable expense. In 1844, for example, Anthony Keyter of Caledon had amongst his possessions a threshing machine which had cost him £100.46 Others depended on their own ingenuity: Jacob van Reenen, in a letter written to De Zuid Afrikaan in 1848, explained how he, in response to the ‘evil’ of labour shortage, had constructed his own cutting machine. Early trials of his machine, which required the labour of only ‘4 horses and 3 men’, suggested it would ‘materially’ reduce the ‘want of labourers’. The machine enabled him to reap a crop of thirteen muids of seed in four days, which ‘under the old practice’ would have taken twelve days. Van Reenen estimated that his machine saved him £151.5.0 in labour costs.47 Another example comes from Worcester. In 1850, Jacob Naude, ‘an enterprising young farmer’ from that district, succeeded in making his own reaping machine. With this machine, Naude boasted, ‘the greatest expense of the corn farmer’, namely, ‘the ruinous price of labor’, was reduced. The machine required two labourers and one horse per

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day whereas the use of sickles would have required the labour of fifteen reapers to cut the same amount of wheat in a day.48 Other former slaveholders, who clearly saw in mechanisation the answer to their labour problems, drew inspiration from such examples. M.J. de Beer visited Van Reenen’s farm shortly after the publication of his letter and found his reaping machine, ‘at once simple and easy of construction’. It was only through ‘the introduction of machinery and improved agricultural implements,’ De Beer wrote, ‘that we can hope to make ourselves independent of the . . . labouring classes, from whose idleness, insolence and insubordination we have to suffer so much’.49 These were no doubt isolated examples of mechanisation; few could have had the resources to invest in machinery during the difficult decade of the 1840s. But there is evidence of continued mechanisation as the relatively more stable decade of the 1850s progressed. The press was particularly important in advocating the adoption of mechanised implements as an answer to a highly mobile labour force. In 1853 De Zuid Afrikaan drew the attention of farmers to the ‘Bell’s Reaping Machine’ that had just been imported into the colony by the firms of Myburgh & Co., and J.B. Robertson & Co. In the Cape Colony, the paper added, where the success of agricultural pursuits depends on the whims and caprice of the labouring population, who give or withhold their services at pleasure, and who break their engagements whenever and as often as they like, well knowing the difficulties our farmers have to contend with in bringing them to justice, the introduction of mechanical aids of the nature alluded to, must be hailed as a blessing.50 The previous year a Bredasdorp farmer had written to De Zuid Afrikaan, delighted about a ‘Hassey’ machine and recommended that ‘every farmer . . . [provide] himself with one . . . as it will be a great saving to him by performing lighter work, and enable him to dispense with many labourers, from whom, moreover, he has to endure much insolence only to get in his crop’.51 Thus in 1858 the Civil Commissioner of Paarl could claim that the ‘introduction of foreign machinery, and the establishment of a branch agricultural society have effected an encouraging improvement in

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agriculture’. In Malmesbury district the reaping-machine and cradlescythe had been introduced and sixty-three threshing machines were to be found in the district in that year. That same year, H.H. Gird, notable farmer and medical doctor of Mosselbanks Rivier, noted how the ‘scarcity of hands . . . forced upon [the farmers] the necessity of adopting reaping machines to render them independent of such fickle and dishonest labourers’. He suggested that due attention be paid to the ‘Allen’s Reaping Machines’ that had just been imported into the Colony.52 Amongst the Mosselbanks Rivier farms on which threshing machines had been introduced were Blaauwe Blomskloof and Wolwedans. 53 Reaping and winnowing machines also appear to have been widely employed. 54 Lighter English and American ploughs had by 1859 completed superseded ‘the old Dutch plough’ in Piquetberg district.55 By 1860, reaping, threshing, and other machines had been introduced in Paarl ‘to an extent not known before’.56 That same year, farmers in the Caledon district were described as willing to ‘seize with avidity upon any fresh introduction which will tend to lessen the amount and cost of manual labour’.57 In 1861, ‘several’ reaping machines were introduced into the district; in Mossel Bay the American plough had ‘entirely superseded the old Dutch plough’ and threshing machines were ‘in general use’.58 By 1860, therefore, the process of mechanisation on wheat farms was well under way. In that year the Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury District reported that threshing machines were widely diffused throughout the district.59 The investment of capital in machinery could involve considerable outlays of capital and this was reflected in the capital structure of wheat farms. In 1863, for example, the Malmesbury farmer Weybrand Thuynsma was the owner of a threshing machine valued at £120, accounting for fully 16.2 per cent of all his moveable property.60 The threshing machine was by far Thuynsma’s most valuable moveable piece of property. One of the largest investments in machinery must have been by another Malmesbury farmer, Pieter Eksteen, who had spent £600 on the construction of a steam mill. 61

A backward agriculture? This picture of the mechanisation of Cape agriculture is at variance with what contemporaries saw. Throughout the nineteenth century

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visitors and informed colonial opinion found only ‘backwardness’ and retrograde methods of cultivation. An 1889 investigation into colonial agriculture was typically damning: Even in the long-settled Cape Colony, Boer husbandry is too frequently as primitive as it was two centuries since . . . It is an astonishing fact, that threshing is performed in most part of the Colony, in the ancient Biblical manner, by treading out the corn on a circular threshing floor by means of horses or oxen; the corn is then cleared off the chaff, simply by throwing it in the air when a good breeze is blowing, and it is then bagged and stored away ready for sale or use. Threshing, which by aid of machinery could be finished in a week or ten days, often lasts from January to June, after a quite astonishing amount of labour.62 In 1864, the Colonial Botanist had ‘no expectation of living to see machinery employed in agricultural operations in [the Cape Colony] to the extent to which it is employed by agriculturists who engage in what is called high-farming in Britain’.63 But it is this observer’s comparison with Britain that is most revealing: nearly all individuals who commented on Cape agriculture invariably had England as a frame of reference. It is worth pausing to examine the nature of agricultural production in that country in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The use of machinery in England was not much further advanced than at the Cape at the time of emancipation. Even though there were some important innovations in agriculture, such as the development of threshing and winnowing machines in eighteenth-century England, the English agricultural engineering industry, as a source of supply of mechanised implements, was at the time of emancipation still in its infancy.64 Eighteenth-century technological innovation was geared towards raising production and increasing yields, not towards cutting labour costs. Increases in output were accomplished by bringing new land under cultivation, improving older methods of production and ‘perhaps as important as anything, by applying systematic business calculation to farming’.65 Consideration of labour-saving machinery

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came only once higher yields were coupled with labour shortages, as happened during the Napoleonic Wars and again in the 1830s.66 As noted earlier, the harvest period required the most concentrated use of labour. Wheat harvesting involved two separate activities: reaping and the related tasks of threshing and winnowing. In England, progress in the development of a reaping machine was slow. The reaping machine became a practical instrument there only in 1851, and the scythe (as opposed to the less efficient sickle) was the most commonly used harvesting tool.67 Sickles and scythes were not finally done away with until the beginning of the twentieth century.68 Most importantly, the adoption of machines in England did not advance in a linear or uniform manner. Rural labourers had some role in determining the pace at which mechanised implements were taken up. Much as English farmers may have wanted to mechanise, they were constrained by a moral economy that dictated that they provide employment. The Swing Riots of 1830 grew out of their first hesitant steps in the use of threshing machines. So violent was this ‘Luddite reaction’ that it retarded the general adoption of threshing machines by fully two decades, a ‘virtual moratorium’ having been declared on their use.69 English workers’ resistance to infringements upon their labourtime even extended to non-mechanical implements, such as the use of the scythe, instead of the sickle, which reduced the number of days spent on the harvest. Only as the labour supply dwindled after 1850 did machines again come into more general use. Only about two-thirds of all English wheat was cut by machine in the late 1870s.70 Clearly, therefore, contemporaries exaggerated the ‘backwardness’ of Cape agriculture. There was nothing ‘backward’ about Cape farming when viewed in wider comparative perspective. The mechanised production of wheat was extremely rare in the nineteenth-century world. Certainly, labour-scarce countries such as Australia, Argentina and the United States mechanised heavily in the course of the nineteenth century. But in 1882 only about 7 per cent of cereal acreage in France and only 3.6 per cent of Germany’s was cut by machine.71 Mechanisation of wheat production in Mexico came at the very end of the nineteenth century and in Chile only in the course of the twentieth century.72 In most places, the mechanisation of agriculture required both capital and external incentives. In societies with ready supplies of labour, such as

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nineteenth-century Chile or the pre-emancipation Cape, ‘backwardness’ made good economic sense. In the Cape, as in England, the adoption of mechanised implements was neither linear nor uniform. The lack of markets for wheat in the remote district of Clanwilliam meant that by 1859 agriculture there ‘had not advanced a step’.73 By 1864, there were still ‘no signs of progress . . . no efforts have been made for improvements in agriculture, or for the introduction of agricultural implements, to reduce the price of labour, so much complained of by the farmers’.74 In 1861 there was in the Worcester district ‘very little improvement’ with regard to the introduction of agricultural machinery, except for ‘two or three English gentlemen engaged in farming’.75 These ‘English gentlemen’ were important, however, since they doubtless served as an example to others. One of them was Thomas Tennant Heatlie, who in 1865 was in every way the ‘modernising’ farmer. Not only did he own a threshing machine valued at £100, a winnowing machine worth £15, but also 11/3 miles of wire fencing, valued at £135.76 By 1863 it was reported from Worcester that farming in the district was ‘slowly but surely being revolutionised’. Not only were farmers beginning to see the advantages of the scythe over the sickle, but threshing machines had come into more general use.77 There are clear indications that the depression years of the mid1860s retarded the process of mechanisation.78 Thus, no ‘particular improvement’ took place in Malmesbury in the year 1864.79 For some the reversal in mechanisation could be quite literal in these difficult times. Johan Botha, owner of Hamburg in the Malmesbury district, was forced to return a threshing machine he had bought on credit when he found himself in financial difficulty in 1864.80 At the same time the farmers of Worcester ‘altogether discontinued the use of the thrashing, winnowing and reaping machines which were imported for them by some gentlemen formerly engaged in trade’. They were ‘so much attached to their old and rude implements, that they have again disposed of the few articles of machinery which have been procured for them at a considerable expense, and have reverted to the use of the “sickle” ’.81 Part of the problem was that farmers had difficulty in repairing machines that had broken down. A few years earlier it was noted that farmers in the district preferred to use their ‘old fashioned implements, which

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(notwithstanding they must admit them to be inferior to those of late manufacture) they affirm they can always repair them on their farms, without the assistance of a smith or tradesman, whom they cannot always procure at distant places’.82

Labour and mechanisation The discovery of diamonds at Kimberley had an immediate impact on the agricultural economy of the Cape Colony, as it had on the rest of the subcontinent. The opening of large food markets on the diamond fields led to a great demand for agricultural produce. But farmers soon discovered that their ability to take advantage of these new markets was limited by the choices made by those farm labourers in permanent and semi-permanent employ – large numbers deserted agricultural labour in favour of the higher wages that could be earned on the diamond fields, railways and public works. Thus the 1870s witnessed a renewed interest in mechanisation.83 ‘The want of reaping-machines has been seriously felt during the past harvest, owing to the unusual scarcity of labour at the season it was most required’, wrote the Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury in 1870.84 In the same year it was reported by the Civil Commissioner of the Piquetberg district that labour was ‘scarce, owing probably to the exodus to the Diamond-fields’. As a result, he continued, a threshing machine was introduced in the district and it was hoped that ‘other improved agricultural implements’ would ‘follow in due time’.85 In 1871, ‘a few’ farmers in Stellenbosch district took up the use of threshing machines ‘which seems to answer their object, and thus supply the deficiency of manual labour’.86 A steam threshing machine made its appearance in the Malmesbury district in 1872.87 By the end of the 1870s complaints of labour shortages had become so acute that the government formally investigated what had become the ‘labour question’.88 J.A. Lochner, a Malmesbury farmer, told the investigators that he did ‘not know of a farm in the neighbourhood on which there are five coloured labourers. Most of the farmers have to leave their cattle unemployed in ploughing season for want of hands’.89 The report eventually concluded that there was a ‘serious want of labour in some of the western districts’. As a consequence, the incentive to mechanise was intensified.

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Of course, not every farm acquired mechanised implements. But even a small number of machines in a district could make a difference, as it was possible for threshing machines to be carried from one user to the next. In the course of the nineteenth century, a class of itinerants emerged who travelled through the countryside to thresh cereals by machine. One commentator noted in 1875 how the ‘ “tramp floor”, where the grain used to be trodden out by horses, is giving place to the stream-threshing machine, which itinerates about the districts, doing all the thrashing at the rate of 1s. a muid, the farmer supplying fuel and labour’.90 One such person was Frederick Allderman who in 1880 was employed to thresh the rye of Jacobus de Kock. 91 Others pooled resources to buy mechanised implements. In 1887, for example, Johannes Lambrechts of Malmesbury owned shares in a threshing machine to the value of £6.92 Labour shortages and the incentive to mechanise continued into the 1890s. As in earlier decades, farmers were above all concerned to restrict the mobility of labour. Mobility continued to be the labourers’ greatest asset and ‘the majority of cases tried under the Masters and Servants Act related to desertion of a servant either after an advance had been given or in response to an advance promised by a competing farmer’.93 A government commission reported in 1893 that the great employers of labour in mines, public works and towns are under stress, and compete strongly against each other. They thus fix high rate of wages beyond that which farmers could pay . . . Farmers too have to compete against each other, especially in critical times, under pain of losing a sowing or harvest or vintage or other season, which will not wait. Corn-farmers again compete with wine-farmers, villagers with manufacturers, individuals of each class of employers against each other, and sometimes against themselves, when forced to obtain temporary labour at high wages, which had the effect of raising the market for permanent labourers.94 The expansion in the use of reaping machines came in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. It was not possible, as was the case with threshing machines, to share the use of reaping machines since

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they tended to be needed everywhere at more or less the same time.95 In 1885 the Professor of Agricultural Chemistry at Stellenbosch could write that in ‘grain-producing districts, as for instance Malmesbury and Koeberg districts, the presence of one or two dozen reaping machines does not mean anything; in the Malmesbury district alone there ought to be a couple of hundred’.96 It is not surprising that the widespread adoption of reaping machines developed later than that of threshing machines. In England they came into use only in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 97 Reaping occupied but a small part of the agricultural year. For eighteenth-century England it was estimated that it accounted for 28 out of 200 working days of the average agricultural labourer. By comparison, threshing took up to 130 days, or 63.1 per cent of the total working year.98 By the end of the century, thus, the Colony’s primary wheat-growing regions showed a remarkable degree of mechanisation. In 1882 Cornelis Grundlingh owned a reaping machine valued at £25. 99 A threshing machine and a reaping machine were amongst the goods that Johanna Pienaar mortgaged in 1885 to secure a loan of £700. 100 In 1886 Stephanus Walters owned three reaping machines.101 Between 20 and 30 self-binding reaping machines and over 100 ordinary reaping machines had been sold in the district of Malmesbury in 1891. The consequent saving in labour, according to an official of the Standard Bank, had been ‘greatly appreciated’.102 That same year the Tygerberg farmer Johannes Uys purchased four threshing machines and a straw binder for £600 from the firm of Marsh & Sons.103 One farmer in the neighbouring Paarl district claimed in 1893 that the ‘greater part of the farmers use the self-binder. Everyone is bound to go in for it since he cannot obtain decent workmen.’104 The agricultural implements firm of Ryan, Roods and Co. could at the same time claim that it found ‘a ready sale’ for self-binders and other agricultural machinery.105 From Bredasdorp it was reported that in the district ‘everyone . . . uses the “steam thresher” ’.106 By 1898 ‘the latest time-saving reaping machines’ had come into ‘almost universal use’ in the Malmesbury district.107 Mechanisation of this nature clearly allowed farmers to reduce their labour needs and increase output. In 1893 one Malmesbury farmer estimated that a reaper saved the labour of 5 workers per day and a selfbinder about 20. His father, he claimed, ‘had thirty [labourers]; I have

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to do with eight, along with my machines’.108 Another farmer claimed that he could increase his wheat sown from 10 muids to 50 because he could employ ‘as much machinery as possible’.109 Whereas harvesting and threshing with manual labour had taken 3 weeks to a month, a Bredasdorp farmer asserted, it could now, with the aid of a self-binder and steam-thresher, be done in 3 days.110 After the introduction of the steam-thresher, ‘what took a month to thresh out’, another contemporary noted, ‘is quite finished in a week . . . by machine’.111 The move to mechanisation did not completely eliminate the farmers’ labour problems; on the contrary, it created a set of its own. In 1880, for instance Malmesbury labourer Marius Basson was tried in the local magistrate’s court for negligence while working a threshing machine. The owner of the machine alleged that Basson had fed the machine negligently, and that the machine was ‘liable to receive damage if fed too fast’. Upon being reprimanded, Basson ‘made use of the most abusive language . . . and continued to feed the machine too fast’.112 Clearly, a criminal case of this nature would have been unimaginable a few decades earlier. To see Cape agriculture as having been universally backward throughout the course of the nineteenth century, as some have done,113 is thus unsustainable. To be sure, this was the case for wine farming. Indeed, one late nineteenth-century commentator who lamented the backwardness of Cape agriculture emphasised that he was ‘speaking . . . of wine farmers, not the corn farmers’.114 It was a ‘well-known fact’, noted another, ‘that farmers, and particularly wine farmers, adhere to their old habits and customs’.115 Pamela Scully found that ‘most wine farmers in Stellenbosch district just did not have the capital to invest in knowledge and technology in order to improve wine production’.116 It seems clear, therefore, that to the end of nineteenth century, little or no mechanisation took place on wine farms. In this regard, however, the Cape was not unique.117 Even in France, wine production remained labour intensive; harvesting machines were introduced there only in the 1970s.118 But it is evident that in the Colony’s primary wheat producing districts, mechanisation commenced as early as the 1850s and was well underway by 1860. This process was retarded only by the recession of the 1860s, but the mineral discoveries at Kimberley at the end of this

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decade gave renewed incentive for the adoption of mechanised implements. By the 1890s wheat farms were mechanised to a degree which allowed farmers both to increase their acreages and to cut down on labour costs.

In search of profits As was the case on the Highveld at the end of the nineteenth century, mechanisation was no guarantee of profitable farming or successful accumulation.119 For the better part of the nineteenth century profits eluded the former slave-owning class despite their ability to increase annual output. Between 1838 and 1888, wheat production in the Western Cape increased threefold.120 Wine farmers could produce more (lower quality) wine.121 But increased output was not an indicator of increased profitability.122 Insolvency was a routine occurrence in the history of a large number of farms. As a consequence, landholding in the core wheat- and wine-producing regions of the Colony was fundamentally unstable. Under these conditions, trading became a central prop to the farming economy and those who preserved their properties longest had sources of income other than farming. Without farm account books it is almost impossible to arrive at an accurate figure for the annual rate of return on an average farming operation. Worden has calculated that eighteenth-century slaveholding units in the Western Cape could on average produce a net return of between 5 and 10 per cent per annum on capital invested.123 For the nineteenth century, both the income and expenses of farming operations are of necessity mere estimates. Wheat prices obtained in Cape Town typically displayed patterns of glut and shortage. Prices fluctuated throughout the year. It is apparent that wheat prices were at their lowest in the early months of the year since this was when most farmers brought their harvest to market; conversely wheat prices were at their highest during the middle of the year and then trailed off again towards the summer months.124 Many farmers took the remainder of the previous year’s crop to market between September and the start of the harvest season in December. Not many would have been able to determine the timing of selling their crops, but when Gustrouw, a wheat farm near the Hottentots Holland, Stellenbosch district, was advertised for sale in 1847, one of the advantages emphasised was the fact that grain ripened

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rapidly on this farm and that by ‘means of early sowing’, the harvest ‘might be got ready for Market every season before the prices materially fall’.125 In the period from emancipation to 1859, wheat prices were highest in the years around emancipation. This and the compensation money paid by the British crown is what rescued many from insolvency during the crisis years of the 1840s. Wheat prices stabilised in the early 1840s, but rose in 1847, and again in 1857 (see Table 4.2). Wine prices, by contrast, remained depressed throughout the period from emancipation to 1859. In fact, the wine industry had still not recovered from the severe depression of the 1820s.126 As a result, wine prices did not undergo significant fluctuations and remained more or less stable throughout the year.127 For a brief period in 1857 the failure of the European wine harvest pushed prices above 120 rixdollars per leaguer, leading the Zuid Afrikaan to note that the ‘prospects of [the] winegrowers have brightened to a degree, that has more than doubled the value of their farms’.128 The average price for that year was 108.22 rixdollars per leaguer (see Table 4.3). This respite, however, was shortlived. It is clear that prices for wheat and wine did not drive profits. A clue to farmers’ survival strategies can be found in the records of Matthys Michielse Basson of Dassenheuvel. When insolvency loomed, he quit farming, let his farm to his overseer and ‘[confined] himself exclusively to his tochts or trading excursions’.129 Jacobus Smuts of Malmesbury was, in his own words, ‘unsuccessful in [his] agricultural pursuits’. Thus he ‘took to trading and . . . was enabled to earn a livelihood’. To record his transactions he had ‘kept a small memorandum book and had also memorandums upon slips of paper such as are usually kept by farmers who are traders’.130 Well into the 1850s and beyond trading served as a central prop to the farming economy. For many farmers, trading in cattle in the interior was not merely a supplementary source of income, but an integral part of their livelihood. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that it was farmers’ access to non-agricultural sources of income that accounted for the stability of ownership of landed wealth in the years between the crisis decade of the 1840s and the depression of the mid-1860s. Those who acquired landed properties from the insolvent estates that came onto

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the market in the 1840s and 1850s were wise enough to seek incomes elsewhere. Thus when Barend van Niekerk purchased a portion of Leeuwedans from Nicolaas van Wielligh’s bankrupt estate, he turned his attention not to squeezing a living out of the soil, but to trading.131 The same was true for others in the region. From 1851 to 1876 Hendrik du Plessis successfully held onto Middelburg, the farm that failed to produce profits for its owner in the early 1840s.132 Du Plessis’ brother, Christiaan Petrus du Plessis, since 1858 owner of the neighbouring farms Spenglaar’s Drift and Blaauwe Blomskloof, previously the property of the notable Scheundorff, turned his attention to cattle trading.133 It seems Christiaan du Plessis collected rent on his farm while he pursued his trading activities. Portions of Spenglaar’s Drift were in 1865 rented to at least three different individuals. Du Plessis also let a portion of Blaauwe Blomskloof to his brother, Willem du Plessis.134 Non-farming sources of income were as important to the wealthy in the more remote regions of the Colony. Wilge Rivier, situated in the Hex River region of Worcester district, had been in the hands of the Du Plessis family since at least 1820.135 Charl du Plessis, who took title to the farm in 1845, had been ‘in affluent circumstances from his youth’.136 In 1864, by which time he was ‘well in decline of life’, he was – in his own words – a ‘Farmer and Capitalist’.137 Being a ‘capitalist’ involved lending money to others, and in 1851, 1854, and 1855 he granted mortgage loans of £300, £730, and £800 respectively to Jacobus Pretorius, a ‘farmer and trader’ of Riviersonderend.138 Du Plessis had let his farm to three tenants who were to give him half of their annual harvest as rent. In 1862, by virtue of his ownership of 75 shares in the Worcester Commercial Bank, he was listed as eligible to be nominated as director of the Bank.139 Trading could be a profitable form of primary enrichment. Joseph Barry, who established the largest mercantile concern in the nineteenthcentury Western Cape, the firm of Barry and Nephews, started his commercial life as an itinerant trader.140 Hercules Enslin had worked as a tochtganger since 1822; by 1867, now an ‘Agriculturist and Trader’,141 he owned landed property all over the Colony valued at £9 325.142 Enslin had diversified his holdings considerably and in 1867, in addition to his landed property, owned 97 shares in the Paarl Bank valued at £485, 25 shares in the Western Province Bank valued at £550, one

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share in the Paarl Board of Executors valued at £40, one share in the Colonial Orphan Chamber Company valued at £25 and four shares in the Protecteur Life and Fire Assurance Company valued at £30.143 The merchant firm of Van der Byl & Co. featured amongst his creditors. By far the largest creditor was the South African Bank, to the value of £7 500. Traders in the interior districts of the Colony could do considerably better than commercial farmers closer to Cape Town. Johannes Cilliers, for example, had for a number of years ‘carried on Farming and Trading’ in the vicinity of Fraserburg in the Karoo, but with the establishment of the village of Fraserburg in 1852 he decided to abandon farming and to ‘confine himself entirely to Trading pursuits’. From that time until 1860 he ‘carried on a very thriving Business as Shopkeeper and General Dealer’. Things took a turn for the worse as he lost at least £5 000 through ‘Insolvencies, Deaths, and Absconding of several parties’ and he was subsequently unable to obtain credit from his normal suppliers. At the time of his insolvency in 1862, amongst his chief creditors were the Cape Town merchants Ernst Landsberg and Van der Byl & Co.144 Cape Town’s merchants stood at the centre of the tochtganger trade. Foremost was Ernst Landsberg who in 1853 was chairman of the Union Bank, director of the Equitable Marine Company and the Equitable Fire Assurance Company. He amassed his fortune primarily by employing a large number of tochtgangers.145 The most common practice was for the merchants in Cape Town to supply the traders with credit, consumer goods and even wagons. These persons would then barter for cattle with farmers of the interior and resell them at a profit in Cape Town and other parts of the Colony. Frequently, the traders were compelled to grant credit to the farmers with whom they traded their wares.146 Clearly, as the Colonial Botanist observed in 1864, the way to wealth was through means other than farming: Instances . . . have been given to me of farmers and landholders having attained to estimated fortunes of colossal extent; but upon inquiry I found that the fortune reached its ultimate extent, not by the rearing of flocks and herds, but by the successful speculations in the purchase of land, or in the purchase of farm produce from others.147

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Twenty years later, when Mosselbanks Rivier farmer David du Plessis was forced to account for his insolvency, he made the same point more bluntly: ‘Farming’, he said, ‘did not pay’.148 Profits from Middelburg, the estate he had acquired just a few years earlier, had clearly eluded Du Plessis. But he was not alone, for almost all previous owners had the same fate. The farm witnessed insolvency in 1844, 1870, 1877, 1884 and, finally, 1909.149 These were the problems of free labour. But David du Plessis and his peers now also had to contend with a renewed assault on their moral community. The Colony’s merchants and their allies were once again ready to do battle for ‘free trade in money’.

Notes 1. G3 – 1894, Report of the 1893 Labour Commission. 2. CA MOIB 1/92, Records in insolvent estate of Nicolaas van Wielligh, 9 August 1849; CA MOIB 2/761, no. 134, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Nicolaas van Wielligh, 15 December 1851; DO, DR, W, 536. 3. See Chapter 3. CA MOIB 2/761, no. 134, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Nicolaas van Wielligh, 15 December 1851; CA MOIB 1/90, Records in insolvent estate of Daniel Johannes Eelders, 31 January 1849. 4. See Chapter Three. 5. CA MOIB 2/761, no. 134, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Nicolaas van Weilligh, 15 December 1851. 6. DO, DR, S, 675. 7. DO, Transfer Deed no. 1, 4 October 1831; Mortgage Bond no. 2, 4 October 1831. 8. DO, DR, S, 675. 9. DO, DR, S, 675. 10. DO, Transfer Deed no. 19, 5 September 1837; Mortgage Bond no. 20, 5 September 1837; Transfer Deed no. 68, 8 May 1838; Mortgage Bond no. 69, 8 May 1838; Transfer Deed no. 157, 28 May 1839; Mortgage Bond no. 158, 28 May 1839; Transfer Deed no. 184, 29 June 1838; Mortgage Bond no. 185, 29 June 1838; Mortgage Bond no. 186, 29 June 1838. 11. DO, Transfer Deed no. 82, 15 January 1839; Mortgage Bond no. 83, 15 January 1839; Mortgage Bond no. 84, 15 January 1839. 12. DO, Transfer Deed no. 161, 17 June 1831; Mortgage Bond no. 162, 17 June 1831. 13. DO, Transfer Deed no. 158, 26 January 1838. 14. DO, Transfer Deed no. 175, 29 December 1842; Mortgage Bond no. 176, 29 December 1842. 15. DO, Transfer Deed no. 1, 1 November 1842; Mortgage Bond no. 3, 1 November 1842; Mortgage Bond no. 4, 1 November 1842; Mortgage Bond no. 5, 1 November 1842, Transfer Deed no. 141, 19 October 1848; Mortgage Bond no. 142, 19 October 1848.

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16. DO, Transfer Deed no. 9, 7 January 1840; Mortgage Bond no. 10, 7 January 1842; Mortgage Bond no. 11, 7 January 1842. 17. CA MOIB 2/448, no. 19, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Franciscus X. Jurgens, 31 May 1836. 18. CA MOIB 2/551, no. 60, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacob Willem van Renen, 5 May 1842. 19. Worden, Slavery, pp. 20–2. 20. Worden, Slavery, p. 21. 21. ZA, 7 February 1840. 22. Worden, Slavery, pp. 22–3. 23. ZA, 7 February 1840. 24. Worden, Slavery, pp. 70–1. 25. GG, 14 January 1847. 26. CA MOIB 1/127, Records in Insolvent Estate of Jacob Hendrik Morkel, 18 February 1860. 27. GG, 9 August 1859; CA MOIB 2/922, no. 119, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes C.J. Brand, 17 November 1860. 28. It is not known how big a portion of land Brand had rented, but had he managed to produce an ‘average’ wheat crop of 300 muids, he could have expected an income of about 5 418 rixdollars or about £180 for his main crop. 29. S. Miller, ‘Wheat Production in Europe and America: Mexican Problems in Comparative Perspective, 1770–1910’, Agricultural History, 68, 1994, p. 27. 30. ZA, 7 February 1840. 31. Blue Books, 1841. 32. S. van der Spuy, who sowed 16 muids in 1839, claimed that he had three labourers in his employ and had to employ one of his children on the fields as well: ZA, 31 January 1840. 33. DO, Transfer Deed no. 19, 1 June 1841; Mortgage Bond no. 20, 1 June 1841; Mortgage Bond no.21, 1 June 1841; CA MOIB 2/620, no. 10, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Pieter Hendrik Woutersen Neethling, 28 February 1845; Blue Books 1841. This figure is based on the assumption that the owner of the farm, Pieter Neethling, employed only three full-time labourers and that he produced 300 muids of wheat. In 1841 agricultural labour in the Cape district averaged 30 shillings per month (that is £54, for three full-time labourers) and in 1843/44 wheat prices were on average 13 rixdollars per muid (that is, £130 for 300 muids). 34. CA MOIB 2/620, no. 10, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Pieter Hendrik Woutersen Neethling, 28 February 1845. 35. GG, 12 April 1844. Neethling’s farm was of an ‘average’ size, and would have yielded in the region of 300 muids of wheat. In 1843 wheat prices averaged around 13 rixdollars per muid, giving him an estimated income of 3 900 rixdollars (£130). 36. See for instance, CA MOIB 1/127, Records in Insolvent Estate of Jacob Hendrik Morkel, 18 February 1860. 37. CA MOIB 1/103, Records in Insolvent Estate of Matthys Michielse Basson, 26 November 1852. 38. CA MOIB 2/640, no. 45, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Dirk Hamman, 11 June 1846.

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39. Miller, ‘Wheat Production in Europe and America’, p. 27. 40. Cape Monthly Magazine, 2 (November 1857), Annual report of the Committee of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society. 41. Cape Monthly Magazine, 6 (July 1859), ‘The Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society’, by FWR. 42. Cape Monthly Magazine, 2 (July 1857), ‘The Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society’, by T.B. Bayley. 43. SACA, 12 August 1863. 44. Cape Monthly Magazine, 5 (March 1859), ‘Agricultural Societies’, by R.W. Murray; Blue Book, 1857, Reports of Civil Commissioners. 45. GG, 11 October 1839. 46. SACA, 6 January 1844. 47. ZA, 18 December 1848. 48. ZA, 12 December 1850. 49. ZA, 12 February 1849. 50. ZA, 30 June 1853. 51. ZA, 2 December 1852. 52. ZA, 6 December 1858. 53. CA MOIB 2/1116, no. 202, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Christiaan du Plessis, 12 September 1866; GG, 23 February 1868; CA MOIB 2/1237, no. 126, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of A.B. van Niekerk Piekard, 3 June 1869. 54. For use of a winnowing machine, see, CA MOIB 2/1256, no. 298, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Willem Adriaan Kotze, 4 November 1869. 55. Blue Books, 1859, Report of Civil Commissioner on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 56. Blue Books, 1860, Observations by Civil Commissioner on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 57. Blue Books, 1860, Observations by Civil Commissioners on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 58. Blue Books, 1861, Observations by Civil Commissioners on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 59. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1860. 60. CA MOIB 2/988, no. 201, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Weybrand Elias Thuynsma, 12 September 1863. 61. CA MOIB 2/1121, no. 254, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Pieter Gideon Eksteen, 23 October 1866. 62. H.A. Bryden, Kloof and Karoo: Sport, Legend and Natural History in the Cape Colony (London: Longman, 1889), pp. 331–2. 63. G24-1865, Report of the Colonial Botanist for the Year 1864, 20 June 1864. 64. E.J.T. Collins, ‘The Age of Machinery’, in G.E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, 2 volumes, (London: Routledge, 1981), p. 201. 65. E. Hobsbawm and G. Rudé, Captain Swing (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969), p. 31. 66. B.H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850 (London: Arnold, 1966); Collins, ‘Age of Machinery’, p. 201.

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67. G.E. Fussell, The Farmer’s Tools: The History of British Farm Implements, Tools and Machinery, A.D. 1500–1900 (London: Oris Publishing, 1981), p. 200. 68. H. Long, ‘The Development of Mechanization in English Farming’, Agricultural History Review, 11, 1963, p. 21; Miller, ‘Wheat Production in Europe and America’, pp. 16–34. 69. E.J.T. Collins, ‘The “Machinery Question” in English Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century’, in G. Grantham and C.S. Leonard (eds.), Agrarian Organization in the Century of Industrialization: Europe, Russia and North America (London: JAI Press, 1989), p. 208. 70. Collins, ‘Age of Machinery’, p. 205. 71. A.J. Bauer, Chilean Rural Society: From the Spanish Conquest to 1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 105. 72. Miller, ‘Wheat Production in Europe and America’, pp. 16–34; Bauer, Chilean Rural Society, pp. 102–5; D. Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 61. 73. Blue Books, 1859, Report of Civil Commissioner for the district of Clanwilliam. 74. Blue Books, 1864, Report of Civil Commissioner for the district of Clanwilliam. 75. Blue Books, 1861, Observations by Civil Commissioners on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 76. CA MOIB 2/1059, no. 77, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Thomas Tennant Heatlie, 13 March 1865. 77. ZA, 30 November 1863. 78. De Zuid Afrikaan recognised in 1863 that few farmers ‘in their present depressed circumstances’ could afford to invest in machinery ‘without recourse to loans’. ZA, 2 February 1863. 79. Blue Books, 1864, Report of Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury. 80. CA MOIB 2/1052, no. 29, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johan Samuel Fredrik Botha, 20 January 1865. 81. Blue Books, 1864, Report of the Civil Commissioner of Worcester. 82. Blue Books, 1861, Observations by Civil Commissioners on Improvements in Agriculture and Manufactures. 83. J.N.C. Marincowitz, ‘Rural Production and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838– 1888, with Special Reference to the Wheat Growing Districts,’ Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985, pp. 194–206. 84. Blue Books, 1870, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury. 85. Blue Books, 1870, Report of Civil Commissioner, Piquetberg. 86. Blue Books, 1871, Report of Civil Commissioner, Stellenbosch. 87. Blue Books, 1872, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury. 88. A26-1879, Report of Select Committee Appointed to Consider and Report on the Supply of the Labour Market. 89. A26-1879, Report of Select Committee Appointed to Consider and Report on the Supply of the Labour Market., Evidence of J.A. Lochner. 90. J. Noble, Descriptive Handbook of the Cape Colony: Its Conditions and Resources (Cape Town: Richards, Glanville and Co., 1875). 91. CA 1/MBY 1/1/19, no. 41, Jacobus Petrus de Kock vs Marius Basson, 19 February 1880.

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92. CA MOIB 2/1955, no. 196, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Jacobus Lambrechts, 14 March 1887. 93. P. Scully, The Bouquet of Freedom: Social and Economic Relations in Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c.1870–1900 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1990), p. 63. 94. G3-1894, Report of the 1893 Labour Commission. 95. Collins, ‘Age of Machinery’, p. 206. 96. G46-1885, Memorandum upon the Condition of Agriculture in the Cape Colony, and Suggestions for Its Improvement; with the Inaugural Address Delivered at the Stellenbosch College on 20 June 1884, by Prof. A. Fischer. 97. Collins, ‘Age of Machinery’, p. 205. 98. Slicher van Bath, Agrarian History of Western Europe, p. 302. 99. CA MOIB 2/1565, no. 21, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Cornelis Ernestus Grundlingh, 1 February 1882. 100. CA DOC 4/1/163, Mortgage Bond no. 130, 14 October 1885. 101. CA MOIB 2/1936, no. 863, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Stephanus Sebastiaan Walters, 22 December 1886. 102. SB Insp 1/1/107, Inspection Report, Malmesbury, 26 October 1891. 103. CA DOC 4/1/291, Mortgage Bond no. 2696, 14 November 1891. 104. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission. 105. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission. 106. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission. 107. SB Insp 1/1/108, Inspection Report, Malmesbury, 19 October 1898. 108. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission, Evidence of Frans Schroeder. 109. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission. 110. G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission. 111. H. Duckitt, Hilda’s Diary of a Housekeeper (Cape Town: Clapham and Hall, 1978), p. 5. 112. CA 1/MBY 1/1/19, no. 41, Jacobus Petrus de Kock vs Marius Basson, 19 February 1880. 113. See, for example, Marincowitz, ‘Rural Production’, p. 3. 114. C2-1882, Select Committee Report on the Desirability of the Appointment of a Minister of Agriculture, Evidence of Prof. Hahn, emphasis added. 115. G39-1886, Report on Viticulture of the Colony, emphasis added. 116. Scully, Bouquet of Freedom, p. 23. 117. T. Unwin, Wine and Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 11. 118. Unwin, Wine and Vine, p. 345. 119. T.J. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986), pp. 117–18. 120. Marincowitz, ‘Rural Production’, p. 309. 121. R. Ross, ‘ “Rather Mental than Physical”: Emancipations and the Cape Economy’, in N. Worden and C. Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwaterrand University Press, 1994), pp. 153–4. 122. My assessment differs significantly from that of Robert Ross, who regards increased production as an index of the overall health of the post-emancipation Cape economy.

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The emphasis here is on micro- rather than macro-economic forces. See Ross, ‘ “Rather Mental than Physical” ’. For a similar point with reference to the eighteenth-century frontier, see Newton-King, Masters and Servants, pp. 150–3. 123. Worden, Slavery, pp. 64–85. 124. For Cape Town wheat prices, see Government Gazette. 125. GG, 14 January 1847. 126. See Rayner, ‘Wine and Slaves’. 127. Weekly wine prices are listed in the Government Gazette. 128. The rate of exchange of 1 rixdollar to £0.1.6 was fixed in 1825; Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner of Paarl, 29 January1857; ZA, 21 December 1857. 129. CA MOIB 1/103, Records in Insolvent Estate of Matthys Michielse Basson, 26 November 1852. 130. CA MOIB 1/132, Records in Insolvent Estate of Jacobus Johannes Smuts, 10 January 1861. 131. DO, Transfer Deed no. 99, 15 April 1850; GG, 19 February 1864. 132. DO, Transfer Deed no. 210, 25 October 1851; Transfer Deed no. 148, 14 May 1870; Transfer Deed no. 76, 1 May 1876. 133. DO, Transfer Deed no. 199, 11 November 1858; CA MOIB 2/1091, no. 359, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik du Plessis, 14 December 1865. 134. CA MOIB 2/1116, no. 202, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Christiaan Petrus du Plessis, 12 September 1866. 135. DO, Transfer Deed no. 15, 7 July 1826. 136. DO, Transfer Deed no. 14, 3 April 1845; CA MOIB 2/1108, no. 138, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacobus Pretorius, 26 January 1866. 137. CA MOIB 2/1099, no. 53, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Charl Jacobus du Plessis, 19 April 1866. 138. DO, DR, P, 862, 874, 994; CA MOIB 2/1108, no. 138, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacobus Pretorius, 26 June 1866. 139. GG, 3 January 1862. 140. E.H. Burrows, Overberg Outspan: A Chronicle of People and Places in the South Western Districts of the Cape (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1952), p. 260. 141. GG, 9 January 1866. 142. CA MOIB 2/1153, no. 192, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hercules George Fredrik Enslin, 9 July 1867. 143. CA MOIB 2/1153, no. 192, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hercules George Fredrik Enslin, 9 July 1867. 144. CA MOIB 1/140, Records in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Stephanus Cilliers, 18 March 1862. 145. CA GH 23/23, Enclosure no.3 to Lt. Gov. Darling’s Desptach no. 96 of 19 August 1853 to the Duke of Newcastle. 146. CA MOIB 1/108, Records in Insolvent Estate of Heinrich Ludwig Goldschmidt, 22 January 1855; CA MOIB 1/119, Records in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik Amos Minnaar, 21 July 1857; CA MOIB 1/130, Records in Insolvent Estate of Dirk Teubes, 26 October 1860; CA MOIB 1/134, Records in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Lodewicus Pretorius, 3 May 1861.

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147. G24-1865, Report of the Colonial Botanist for the Year 1864, 20 June 1864; Colonial Botanist – F. Tudhope, 16 December 1864. 148. CA MOIB 2/1744, no. 808, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of David Johannes du Plessis, 13 October 1884. 149. DO, Transfer Deed no. 25, 5 December 1844; Transfer Deed no. 148, 14 May 1870; Transfer Deed no. 156, 10 February 1877; Transfer Deed no. 456, 29 October 1884; Transfer Deed no. 832, 22 May 1909.

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Remaking of the Cape Gentry

W

hen David du Plessis purchased Middelburg in 1880, he took on two mortgage loans which amounted to 100 per cent of the farm’s value. The Paarl Bank supplied a mortgage loan of £1 400 while a bond of £150 was registered in the name of the previous owner.1 There was, of course, nothing unusual about this kind of debt. But it was a third bond of £857.11.6 – passed three years later in favour of grain millers and merchants, Daniel Mills & Sons – that was the key to Du Plessis’s undoing. The mortgage loans extended by the Paarl Bank and the firm of Daniel Mills & Sons – at a rate of 7 per cent per annum – marked the end of moral community and the unmaking of the Cape gentry. The cardinal rule of community credit – that interest rates should not be allowed to float above 6 per cent per annum – had been transgressed. A seemingly minor detail in the financial affairs of a Malmesbury farmer marked the particular victory of a new class of merchants and signified their new dominance in the political economy of the Cape Colony. This was the era of ‘free trade in money’.

Drought and famine in the 1860s It was the great misfortune of the former slave-owners that the arrival of ‘free trade in money’ coincided with the worst drought in living memory. Wednesday 5 October 1859 was sanctioned by the Governor as a day of ‘humiliation and prayer’ to take cognisance of the terrible drought that had taken hold of the Cape countryside. It marked the beginning, not the end, of a deep economic recession.2 Drought was compounded by disease that appeared in virtually every branch of Cape agriculture. Large numbers of cattle succumbed to lung-sickness, the disease that so terribly ravaged the African communities of the eastern districts of the 188

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Colony. In Worcester lung-sickness raged with ‘unabated vigor’ during the year 1856.3 In 1859 the oidium4 made its first appearance in the Cape’s vineyards.5 The Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury estimated that the district would not produce one quarter of its normal quantity of wine.6 And in the same year, ‘rust’ afflicted the Colony’s wheat crops.7 Reports of distress continued to be heard throughout the early 1860s. In 1861, in Piquetberg alone, 300 horses and mules, between 6 000 and 7 000 sheep and goats, and about 1 500 cattle perished.8 In the district of Worcester the drought was ‘most disastrous in its consequences to almost every proprietor of stock . . . There was hardly any one of them who did not suffer’.9 By 1863 the situation in the Colony was ‘a grave and a critical one’.10 The long drought was broken in that year but was followed by a ‘winter of unusual duration and severity’. It put the ‘finishing stroke’ to the countryside’s distress.11 In 1864 the rains failed again and in Malmesbury district drought and ‘rust’ conspired to reduce the harvest by a third of its normal volume.12 From Caledon it was reported that the severity of the drought of that year was ‘far beyond anything of the kind experienced in [the] division for many years’.13 In neighbouring Bredasdorp, ‘the oldest inhabitants [could] not recollect ever to have witnessed such a continuously dry year’ as 1865.14 It was only in 1866 that the Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury could report that ‘copious’ rains fell and by the following year prospects in the district were ‘much more cheering’. Early rains ensured that wheat yields were for the most part ‘abundant and remunerating’.15 The Worcester district could also report that the ‘year 1867 has been most favourable for agricultural, pastoral, and general farm purposes. The rain fell in such abundance and at such periods that farmers were encouraged to sow more than they had done for many years.’ In Swellendam ‘opinion [was] united that [1867] has been the best year for the last ten’.16 By 1870 the drought had finally come to an end. In that year Malmesbury was ‘blessed with one of the best grain-crops on record for many years past, both as regards quantity and quality’.17 But if distress manifested itself in widespread bankruptcy amongst the Colony’s landowners, for the labouring classes it meant nearstarvation. Without doubt, the drought of the 1860s bore much more heavily on the labouring classes than on landlords who were in no

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position to offer employment. For the labouring classes, the 1860s witnessed a great – but temporary – reversal of the gains made during the 1840s. From the mission station at Pacaltsdorp it was reported in 1863 that the drought meant that the ‘poorer classes in the Colony . . . were reduced to very great distress. At this place it was but too plainly visible in their emaciated countenance [sic] and their general feebleness of health’.18 At Zuurbraak mission station the drought resulted in ‘the loss of much property’ and reduced the mission population ‘almost to a state of famine’.19 The following year the scarcity of money was said to be responsible for the fact that the farmers could not offer employment to the labouring classes.20 Clearly the labouring population had lost the position of relative strength that it had enjoyed two decades earlier. Unlike the 1840s, complaints about the price of labour hardly featured in the reports of those who went insolvent in these years. ‘Labour still continues to be abundant,’ wrote the Civil Commissioner of Malmesbury in 1864, ‘and there has been great distress amongst the labouring population, and pauperism has greatly increased.’21 The head of the mission at Pacaltsdorp bemoaned the fact that farmers in the vicinity of Pacaltsdorp were unable to ‘employ many labourers and where they do employ them, they generally pay them in food, very rarely in money’. This had ‘necessarily caused a great falling off in the contributions towards the support of the mission’.22 The Civil Commissioner of Caledon said much the same thing in his report for 1866: ‘The labour market has been well supplied – in fact, the supply has far exceeded the demand; consequently many, very many, of the coloured classes have been reduced to extreme want, and have been ready to work for merely their food.’23 Reports became more desperate as the years progressed. At the beginning of 1866 the drought and subsequent failure of crops bore heavily on the residents of Zuurbraak, who were left ‘wholly without resource and employment’. There was a real fear that the mission would be left to face the ‘horor [sic] of actual famine & that many will perish from starvation’.24 Most of the residents of Pacaltsdorp, where there was ‘scarcely any work to be had’ and where the farmers had ‘scarcely food for their own families’, were at this time ‘without anything whatever, and . . . almost starving’.25

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‘Universal insolvency’ In the course of the 1860s, thus, the Colony faced a severe and lasting recession, and the decade would test the limits of the resilience of the former slave-owners. The most obvious index of economic difficulty was the incidence of insolvency. Between 1849 and 1855, 935 estates were surrendered as insolvent throughout the Colony, an average of 133 per annum.26 In 1849, 173 estates were declared insolvent; for 1855 the figure was 182.27 But in the 1860s the numbers increased dramatically, as Table 5.1 shows. Between 1860 and 1869 a total of 4 168 estates were declared insolvent, an average of about 417 per annum. ‘An almost universal insolvency pervades wide districts of the colony, among that class of the rural population who really support themselves by the produce of their farms,’ wrote the Commercial Advertiser in 1863.28 Table 5.1: Number of insolvencies declared throught the Colony, 1860–1869. Year

Number of Insolvencies

1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869

249 269 394 501 478 584 533 387 465 308

Average

416.8

Source: Government Gazette, 1860–1869

The recession affected the entire Colony. From Graaff-Reinet, where the recession was felt particularly severely because of the collapse of London wool prices and where merchant houses had extended credit liberally, the magistrate reported insolvencies to the value of £400 000 in 1862.29 ‘Editorial after editorial attested to the paralysis of trade, the insolvencies, “famine” prices of basic provisions, unemployment and the radical decline in the value of property.’30 The year 1863 was the worst in the decade and ‘mercantile men and agriculturists alike were reduced to their last extremity, and hundreds

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of them swelled the list of the Insolvency courts.’31 In Worcester the merchant community felt the recession particularly severely. Here, ‘commercial prosperity’ was ‘smashed to a fearful extent’.32 The district suffered severe capital scarcity, noted one commentator, and ‘most of the monied people’ in the town were ‘nearly ruined’.33 One such person was Thomas Tennant Heatlie, who had ‘carried on business as an agricultural trader and speculator and as a farmer’.34 Heatlie had invested considerably in machinery on his farm.35 He was said to have ‘expended considerable capital, unflagging energy, and an amazing amount of labour directed by farming intelligence of a high order’.36 But drought, horse- and cattle-sickness and bad debts in the region of about £6 000 drove Heatlie to the insolvency courts. Wine farmers remained unable to compete on the British market and the price of their produce remained stubbornly low. ‘Every wine farm in this district is overstocked with wine, the trade having suffered so much that the prices offered will not cover the outlay for labour,’ wrote the Civil Commissioner of Stellenbosch in 1868.37 In Paarl the ‘depressed state of the wine farmers caused serious alarm’.38 Drought, crop disease, and general recession were merely the catalysts that plunged the landlord class into insolvency. The root cause of the general crisis, however, was that farmers were, as we have seen, mortgaged far in excess of what was financially sound. As a consequence, they operated on the margins of profitability. De Zuid Afrikaan recognised the problem: ‘When proprietors become borrowers for the full value of their property, they are no proprietors at all, and the first adverse contingency places them at the mercy of their creditors.’39 As the crisis deepened, the South African Commercial Advertiser was prompted to investigate the structure of agricultural production at the Cape and ran a series of articles entitled ‘The State of the Country’. The Cape farmer, one of the articles noted, regards a mortgage on landed property not only as a normal and proper condition attaching to such property, but even as a boon and privilege of peculiar value, in which the Cape is blessed above other countries, and the agricultural community, above other classes . . . He accepts his mortgaged condition as the universal and proper state of things at the Cape; he saddles

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himself with a heavy rent to an absentee landlord, from which he gets nothing in return; and his great consideration every year is to get this rent or interest paid.40 In another issue, the series continued: There will be insolvency and ruin among the Cape Boers for years to come. Fine seasons cannot prevent it. Fine seasons would keep them in rural abundance and affluence, if they were not burdened with mortgages . . . the boer has to do more than keep himself in bread and wheat, and coffee, and blue moleskins. He has to sell a certain amount of produce every year to pay the interest on his mortgage.41 The author of these articles was well-informed. As the transfer deeds and mortgage bonds show, the wheat and wine producers of the Colony entered the crisis of the 1860s, as they did in the 1840s, with mortgage debt commonly equalling 100 per cent of the value of their properties. Table 5.2 shows the mortgage debt on Mosselbanks Rivier farms for the years around 1860. It is clear that levels of mortgage indebtedness were largely unchanged since emancipation, despite the fact that every farm, apart from Kalbaskraal, had changed owners. Thus it is no surprise that Mosselbanks Rivier, no less than the rest of the Colony, experienced widespread insolvency during this difficult decade. The owners of Kalbaskraal (1863, 1866), Uitkyk (1863), Middelburg (1864), Berg en Dal (1864, 1867), Blaauwe Blomskloof and Spenglaar’s Drift (1865) and Wolwedans (1868) were all declared insolvent during these years of crisis.42 Kalbaskraal, home to the largest number of Mosselbanks Rivier slaves at the time of emancipation, experienced the kind of instability that was typical of this time. Upon his insolvency, Hendrik Vos transferred the farm to Hendrik Petrus Vos who was in turn declared insolvent in 1866.43 A short time before his insolvency, in 1861, Hendrik Vos had sold off two 500 morgen portions of Kalbaskraal.44 One portion was sold to Tobias Christian van den Berg who was declared insolvent less than a year after taking transfer of the property.45 In short, insolvency in Mosselbanks Rivier was universal. Virtually every farm in the region witnessed the bankruptcy of its owner and

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those that did not were somewhat atypical. Oliphantsfontein belonged to H.H. Gird, the vocal ‘English farmer’ and medical doctor of the region.46 Drooge Valley and Hoornbosch were the property of the wealthy William Proctor at the time of emancipation and were in the hands of the very wealthy Eaton brothers during this decade of recession.47 However, one of the tenants on Drooge Valley, George Smart, went bankrupt and the records of his insolvency provide a unique insight into the workings of the farm.48 For at least five years prior to his insolvency Smart had hired a portion (the size of which is not given) of the farm at the rate of £15 per annum. With his 5 horses, wagon, and Swedish and Dutch ploughs he was able to produce a crop of 14 muids of oats. Smart was also an employer of labour and owed Harry Harris and Frans Wood £5 and £4.16.0 in wages respectively. Smart’s most significant creditor was his landlord, T.J. Eaton, with whom he had run up debt to the value of £147.12.6. This included, inter alia, rent for 17 months (£22.5.0), £24.1.0 for oats purchased, £4.10.0 for wheat purchased and, interestingly, £1.12.6 for 13 days schooling for Smart’s children. Smart was not only a tenant but also a labour tenant and he reduced his account by working for Eaton for 62 days (51 days @ 3s/day and 11 days @ 4s/day). This arrangement was not free of conflict. Eaton, who also acted as trustee of the insolvent estate, complained that Smart had since his surrender ‘lived on the Estate in idleness though offered work [and] has been exceedingly insolent . . . and has . . . killed a pig, a fowl . . . and taken a good supply of potatoes and cabbages . . . all belonging to the Estate and all of which [he had been] cautioned not to touch’. Smart also refused to obey a magistrate’s order of eviction. As was the case with recession in the wine industry in the 1820s and 1830s, and the crisis of emancipation in the 1840s, the recession of the 1860s revealed the close interdependencies that continued to exist within local communities. Such interdependencies contributed to the universality of insolvency. The history of Kalbaskraal was typical of the dangers of community credit. At the time of Hendrik Vos’s bankruptcy he was owed substantial amounts of money. But this did not help Vos much – as a consequence of the insolvency of his debtors, his debts were classified as ‘bad and doubtful’.49 The owners of Middelburg, the farm that in 1884 passed from David du Plessis to Daniel Mills & Sons, could tell a similar story. When

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Hendrik du Plessis took ownership of the property in 1851, his brother, Christiaan Petrus du Plessis, bought the nearby estate Blaauwe Blomskloof in 1858.50 As Table 5.2 shows, both had mortgaged their properties for 100 per cent of their purchase value. Christiaan du Plessis periodically assisted his brothers ‘with such amounts as they required when [he] could spare the money’.51 Towards the end of 1863, ‘when money was very scarce’ and he found himself ‘in want of funds’, he

Table 5.2: Mortgage indebtedness of Mosselbanks Rivier farms, c.1860. Date of Transfer

Date of Bond

Price in £

Mortgage in £

Percentage of Mortgage Relative to Price

06/06/1856

06/06/1856 06/06/1856 Total

1 952 1 952

1 325 700 2 025

67.88 35.85 103.74

11/11/1858 11/11/1858 Total

5 250 5 250

3 503 1 751 5 254

66.72 33.35 100.08

31/01/1855

6 500

1 000

15.38

31/01/1855 31/01/1855 Total

6 500 6 500

1 500 4 000 6 500

23.08 61.54 100.00

Farm

Berg en Dal

Blaauwe Blomskloof & Spenglaar’s Drift 11/11/1858

Drooge Valley & Hoornbosch & Buurman

31/01/1855

Hoornbosch

26/11/1858

26/11/1858 26/11/1858 Total

2 000 2 000

500 1 500 200

25.00 75.00 100.00

Kalbaskraal

28/05/1839

28/05/1839

1 500

1 500

100.00

Leeuwedans

13/04/1859

13/04/1859

1 375

1 125

81.82

Leeuwekuil

04/04/1851

09/07/1830

900

900

100.00

Middelburg

25/10/1851

25/10/1851 25/10/1851 Total

950 950

200 750 950

21.05 78.95 100.00

Oliphantsfontein

18/02/1842

18/02/1842

1 000

1 000

100.00

Uitkyk

19/08/1841

19/08/1841

610

400

65.57

Wolvedans

01/10/1857

01/10/1857

1 350

1 500

111.11

Source: Deeds Office

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asked his brothers to settle their accounts. They were unable to do this; instead ‘it was arranged that they should pass a mortgage bond on their property’ on which he would be able to raise some cash. Indeed, amongst the assets of Christiaan du Plessis was a bond of £600 made in his favour by another sibling, Petrus du Plessis, which he (Christiaan) had in turn pledged to the Cape Commercial Bank to raise a loan of £400.52 Petrus du Plessis was also a creditor, to the value of £200, in the estate of Hendrik du Plessis of Middelburg. This spiral of credit and debt that the Du Plessis brothers had constructed collapsed as the recession of the 1860s took hold. In time, Christiaan, Hendrik and Petrus du Plessis were all declared insolvent.53 G.J. van der Riet, a farmer of Koeberg, and another creditor of Christiaan du Plessis’s creditors, experienced a similar fate in January 1863.54 One week later, one of Van der Riet’s sureties, Weybrand Thuynsma, followed suit.55 Hard times were as visible in the wine-producing district of Stellenbosch and Moddergat fieldcornetcy saw its share of failures. Wouter Ackerman managed to squeeze only 20 leaguers of wine from his vines as a result of the oidium, whereas in previous years he could count on between 60 and 70 leaguers. Moreover, he saw the price of his wine reduced to 50 per cent of previous levels.56 Amongst the Moddergat farms to face insolvency during this decade were Brakelsdal (1860), Rust en Vrede (1865), De Groote Zalse (1868), and Blaauwe Klip (1868).57 The wine producers, as much as the wheat farmers of Mosselbanks Rivier, lived with the perils of incestuous money-lending during this difficult decade. The losses sustained by the insolvency of others rendered Melt van der Spuy, a wine farmer in the Paarl region, ‘irretrievably Insolvent’, as he put it in his own words.58 Daniel Malan, whose insolvency was declared in 1863, claimed that he lost £7 323 over an eighteen-month period as a result of the insolvency of individuals who were indebted to him.59 The trustees in the estate of Jacobus Stofberg Wium, a wine farmer of Kuils Rivier, Stellenbosch district, whose insolvency was declared in 1860, found that the insolvency was partly a result of the fact that he chose not to call in a mortgage bond of £400 due to him but instead used it as security to raise a second mortgage loan on his farm.60 The early 1860s, then, were dreadful years for all involved in the rural economy of the Cape Colony. For rural labourers, these were

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years of hunger. For landowners, the years were characterised by widespread insolvency as the recession revealed the perils of excessive mortgage indebtedness. Indebtedness was the defining feature of the rural economy, as knowledgeable commentators never failed to point out. Matters were made worse by the fact that credit and debt remained tied to age-old networks in which considerations of kin and community were at the forefront. As landowners watched assessors of the insolvency knocking at the doors of their neighbours, they could only be certain that the bonds, which they had co-signed as sureties, would shortly be called in. It was no wonder that the Cape countryside experienced an upswing in religious fervour and millenarian thinking at precisely this time. 61

‘Free trade in money’ For many landowners, however, the depression of the 1860s was as much a consequence of political manoeuvrings as it was of divine intervention. The real cause of the misery, ‘A winegrower’ wrote to De Zuid Afrikaan in 1863, the worst year of the recession, was the blight of ‘free trade in money’. As a consequence, ‘agriculture was at once deprived of capital, trade paralysed and the largest contributors to the revenues of the country were driven by scores to the Master’s office to surrender their estates’. Drought and vine disease, he added, had caused ‘great injury to agriculture’. In the past, whereas farmers could ‘right themselves again in a short time’, they were now ‘under the right of free trade in money which has been smuggled in . . . given a prey to the low avarice of banks and unscrupulous usurers’.62 It was thus in the midst of the recession of the 1860s that the Colony witnessed the mostly bitterly contested political disputes since the abolition of slavery. The Cape was not alone in debating the ‘usury’ question. England, France, Holland, Belgium, Russia, Prussia and the United States all faced similar issues in the mid-nineteenth century.63 But at the Cape, ‘free trade in money’ was closely tied up with the ending of slavery and the incorporation of the Colony into the wider world of the British Empire. Indeed, the questions of ‘free trade in money’ and ‘usury’ had been festering since the time of emancipation. Then, as much compensation money was floating around the Colony, the former slave-owners successfully fought off a challenge to pass a bill

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that would leave money-lenders free to charge what they deemed market rates for interest. Throughout the 1850s, these issues had occupied the Cape parliament. By 1860 the question of ‘free trade in money’ had ‘become a periodical phenomenon like drought, locusts, lung sickness and other vexations’.64 The lines remained clearly drawn between farmers and merchants. ‘The population of the country’, wrote De Zuid Afrikaan, along the lines of classical political economy, ‘is not made up of mere individuals, but also of classes, whose interests are not in all respects identical.’65 Specifically, the fury was directed at a decision of the Cape Supreme Court. In 1860, ruling in the case of Dyason vs. Ruthven, the Court effectively circumvented the opposition that had so effectively been mounted in the legislature. On this occasion it established the ‘nonexistence’ of a usury law that prohibited the taking of interest above the rate of 6 per cent per annum.66 The opportunity was provided by a dispute between two merchants. There was no disagreement as to the basic facts of the case. In October 1859 Ruthven had borrowed £65 from Dyason on the security of a promissory note. In the agreement it was ‘expressly stipulated’ that the interest charged would be 12 per cent and the loan would be repaid within three months.67 Ruthven repaid the amount borrowed but at a rate of only 6 per cent interest. His attorneys claimed that, by the law of the Colony, Dyason was ‘not entitled to contract . . . at the rate of twelve per cent’, but that six per cent per annum was the only rate allowed by the ‘Law of this Colony’.68 Recognising the greater significance of the case, the Attorney-General, who had long supported the merchant cause of ‘free trade in money’, delivered a three-and-a-half hour speech during which he scoured ancient Dutch texts and local statutes. In the end he found that ‘there was no law fixing a legal rate of interest’.69 ‘Usury’, it was decided, was not the taking of interest in excess of a rate fixed by statute: What is usury, depends on the circumstance of each particular case . . . Relief against usurious contracts for the use of money will be granted on the same principle as relief against other ruinous contracts: but agreements for the purchase price of the use of money are prima facie as valid as all other agreements, whatever may be the rate agreed upon.70

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But the ruling of the Attorney-General needed to be ratified by both the House of Assembly and Legislative Council. In June 1860 the Legislative Council upheld the view that a law was indeed needed to limit the annual rate of interest to 6 per cent.71 Petitions continued to reach the legislature and H. H. Gird of Mosselbanks Rivier hoped that ‘the members of the [House of] Assembly [would] represent the interests of the farmers’.72 ‘The names of those who opposed this protection to the farmers’, Gird further threatened, ‘must be borne in mind, that they may not again have the opportunity of betraying them into the hands of the unmerciful usurers.’73 It is not hard, of course, to find the reasons for the farmers’ anxiety. Almost all in the commercialised wheat- and wine-producing regions suffered from unhealthy levels of mortgage indebtedness, as De Zuid Afrikaan recognised: ‘The farmer’s property, in nine cases out of ten, is mortgaged and such are the disadvantages resulting from scarcity of labor and other causes, that it is as much as he can do to pay the interest with any degree of punctuality at 6 per cent.’74 As the reality of ‘free trade in money’ grew closer, the commentary became more frantic: The profits of the country people are not high enough to admit of their paying a higher rate of interest than they have hitherto done. Accordingly the farmers would be first ruined, and as they are the customers of the merchants, these too, would soon have reason to regret the usury law. The promoters of this measure are cutting their own throats. There is not one class of society that will benefit by it.75 But the quests for ‘free trade in money’ did much more than threaten the economic welfare of the farmers. ‘Free trade in money’ struck at the heart of the moral community of the former slave-owners. As we have seen, the expectation that interest rates not rise above 6 per cent per annum was ‘custom’. According to ‘A Winegrower’, ‘free trade in money was introduced with no other object than to blot out and destroy the so hated Dutch class, in order to make room for strangers.’76 ‘Free trade in money’, a group of Stellenbosch farmers claimed, was the tool of ‘unjust extortioners [sic], usurers, and avaricious capitalists’ who sought to ‘increase in an ungodly way their capitals, by demanding an

200

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exorbitant interest to the ruin of hundreds of struggling and industrious families, and to the great detriment of the agricultural interests.’77 Oblivious to irony, they asked the House of Assembly to protect them from a state worse than slavery, inasmuch that before they would be thrown as beggars on society, they will be compelled to submit to the extortioners’ [sic] exorbitant demands, and in order to meet them, will have to drag out a miserable existence, a lingering life of toil, hardship, and misery, for the least advantage to themselves, except that of merely keeping body and soul together, which condition would make death almost preferable.78

Fighting the imperial banks ‘Free trade in money’ represented the sharp edge of incorporation into a wider imperial world that had brought such large benefits to the Colony in the 1810s and 1820s. In their arguments against the lifting of restrictions on rates of interest, the farmers’ spokesmen presented themselves as anti-imperial and anti-capitalist. And to the rural communities, few forces more visibly represented both monopoly capital and imperialism than the new British banks, in particular the London and South African Bank and the Standard Bank. It was especially the fact that these institutions came from ‘outside’ that drew the farmers’ ire. For rural communities, thus, the 29 local banks that had been established between 1836 and 1862 were vital to the preservation of their values and represented a bulwark against institutions such as the Standard Bank. In the ideal, local banks were at one with the communities they served. In ‘good times . . . every bank was solely of colonial birth and growth . . . [the] profits of the banks were distributed among the inhabitants of the colony, and these turned over again and again,’ De Zuid Afrikaan’s Worcester correspondent wrote, with no small degree of false nostalgia.79 The bank at Worcester was thought to do well – in 1862 it declared a dividend of 10 per cent on paid up capital for its shareholders – because, it was believed, ‘the greater number’ of its directors came from within the farming community.80 Clearly, what mattered most here was local influence. In 1862 five members of the

The Remaking of the Cape Gentry

201

powerful Van der Merwe clan were among the shareholders eligible for election to the board of directors.81 On one occasion a ‘very intelligent and business-like man’ failed to acquire sufficient votes for election to the board of directors because ‘he was not a member of the Kerkraad [Church council]!!’82 For farming communities, quite apart from the fact that the profits of foreign banks were said to leave the Colony, the struggle to sustain local banks was inseparable from that against ‘free trade in money’. Local banks had the means to ‘show that banking establishments [were] not solely depending on the exertions, knowledge and cash of the merchants and capitalists of the metropolis’.83 For the ‘plan’ of the foreign banks was to ‘amalgamate with the other banks so as to get rid of all competitors, and thus keep up the rate of interest’.84 The Standard Bank, H.H. Gird charged, ‘intended to swallow up all the little banks in its monopolising stomach.’85 And ‘however beneficial free trade in money is in the abstract, it gave the finishing stroke to the decline of the colony.’86 The farmers had considerable success at keeping the imperial banks at bay. Despite the fact that the Standard Bank at Malmesbury was in 1863 said to be ‘doing a good business’, lack of custom forced the branch to close its doors the following year.87 Not until 1878 was another branch started. In large parts of the Colony – to the great disappointment of new imperial banks – the lending of money on mortgage security remained within private hands. To the end of the century, the Inspectors of the Standard Bank bemoaned the competition it faced from private moneylenders. Farmers close to Cape Town did not ‘appear to appreciate the existence of a branch . . . They probably obtain most of what they require in the way of monetary assistance through friends in the neighbourhood and Cape Town,’ wrote the Inspector of the branch at Somerset-West (Moddergat).88 The ‘only opposition’ that the bank faced, the Caledon branch Inspector complained in 1891, came from ‘local money lenders, of whom there [were] two or three’.89 He spoke for many other districts when he wrote in 1899 that the branch there was made to contend against strong competition with a few local money lenders. These people lend money, pretty freely, to different classes of the

202

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community, regulating the rate of interest accordingly, from 5% upwards . . . Money is also freely lent on house property and farms but we are debarred from sharing in this class of business, owing to the lowness of the rates, ruling, viz, 5% and 6%.90 At the end of the nineteenth century, thus, imperial banks and speculative mortgage companies had largely failed to penetrate the former slavery domains. For the time being, mortgage lending remained in private hands.

‘Merchants’ tyranny’ Merchant capital had more success where the imperial banks failed. ‘Free trade in money’ proved divisive because of the potential it granted merchants to subvert the Cape’s rural economy. Already in 1848, the Reverend G.W.A. van der Lingen of Paarl had warned of ‘merchants’ tyranny’.91 It was through the shopkeeper’s door that British merchant capital first entered the Cape countryside, replacing the itinerant smous of earlier years. In numerous districts merchant-shopkeepers set up semipermanent and permanent bases, greatly increasing their visibility and involvement in the rural economy. In fact, the influence of Cape mercantile firms reached well beyond the boundaries of the Cape Colony. In the southern Free State merchant firms such as Mosenthal & Company gave great impetus to the boom in wool production that took off in the 1840s.92 As far away as southern and central Namibia, trade in cattle, elephant tusks and other commodities with Cape mercantile houses was central to the military power of Oorlams commandos who ruled the region.93 By the early 1850s it was estimated that as many as 10 000 cattle per annum (mostly the products of raiding) were sent to the Cape from Namibia in exchange for a variety of goods, amongst which guns and ammunition were undoubtedly the most important. The firm of Barry and Nephews was typical of the kinds of inroads that merchants could make into the rural economy. Joseph Barry first settled in Cape Town in 1819 and moved to Swellendam in 1824 from where he operated as an itinerant trader. It no doubt helped that he had married into the Van Reenens, one of the wealthiest of Cape families. Much of Barry’s influence stemmed from his literacy and training as a

The Remaking of the Cape Gentry

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lawyer and he was thus able to undertake almost all of the legal work for farmers in the region. He became Deputy Sheriff of the districts of Swellendam and Worcester and Justice of the Peace for most of the Overberg. At Port Beaufort, the mouth of the Breede River, he set up a trading store and here the firm purchased the farmers’ produce and transported it by ship to Cape Town. Over the course of time the company had established a number of stores, issued its own notes and extended scores of mortgage loans. By 1858 ‘the house of Barry reigned supreme in the Overberg’.94 In the course of the recession many lost their farms to the firm of Barry and Nephews.95 In 1863, with partners Joseph Mosenthal of Mosenthal & Co., and John Paterson, director of the Standard Bank of British South Africa and the merchant firm of Paterson & Co., Joseph Barry launched the South African Irrigation and Investment Company.96 Almost all the directors were connected to the mercantile world of the City of London. The Company’s ‘real character’, the South African Commercial Advertiser believed, was revealed when it sought to extend mortgages on real estate in Cape Town ‘at the highest rate of interest’.97 But for now, the Colony escaped the kind of influence that mortgage and finance companies exerted elsewhere.98 The reign of Barry and Nephews proved to be short-lived as over-extension took its toll. By 1866 the firm was bankrupt. It tottered along for another decade before collapsing.99 With it went the Swellendam Bank, a subsidiary firm founded in 1852. As a consequence, the lending of money could revert to local and private hands. In other districts less ambitious merchant-shopkeepers appeared to have greater success. In the Malmesbury district numerous farmers ran up accounts with the shopkeeper G.S. Holmes.100 Between April and December 1860, for example, Holmes had sold to Daniel Baard 150 pounds of coffee (£5.14.9), 185 pounds of sugar (£3.6.7), one bar of American soap (£0.18.0), one bag of salt (£0.13.6), one double Howard plough (£13.10.0) and six Howard plough shares (£0.12.0).101 By July 1863 Matthys Basson of Malmesbury had run up an account of £53.13.7 with Holmes for goods, including shoes, leather boots, coffee, fish, a saddle, sugar, 20 bags of oats, rye, tobacco, thread and cloves.102 More important than Holmes was the firm of Daniel Mills & Sons, grain merchants of Cape Town, who first appeared as short-term creditors

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to wheat farmers in the district.103 Mills, whose father had come to the Cape as one of the 1820 settlers, started a grain merchandising business in Cape Town in 1845. He went on to establish one of the largest grain milling concerns in the Colony.104 Very soon Mills was able to act as personal banker to wheat farmers, as his dealings with Zwartland wheat farmer, Nicolaas Basson, show. In 1865 Mills produced the following account in Basson’s insolvent estate:105 Table 5.3: Account of Nicolaas Basson with Daniel Mills, 1865. Date

31 December 1864 19 January 1865 21 January 1865 21 January 1865 2 February 1865 2 February 1865 16 February 1865 16 February 1865

Transaction

Debit

Credit

£

s

d

Balance of account 40 sacks of wheat Cash advance for wheat 20 sacks of wheat 40 sacks of wheat Cash paid to F. Visser 40 sacks of wheat Cash advance

108

3

4

75

0

0

Total Balance of account

0 10

0

6

0

0

189 13

4

39

6

£

s

d

41 13

4

20 10 43 0

0 0

45

3

4

150

6

8

8

In this way Mills was able to control grain marketing in the heartland of the Colony’s wheat-growing region. By extending credit on the security of standing crops, the firm of Daniel Mills & Sons was effectively able to dictate future prices and so control crucial aspects of the farming economy. Although Mills was merely one lender among many, his influence continued to grow. Certainly, he stood to collect his share of overdue mortgage payments during the difficult decade of the 1860s, including one from the owner of Wolwedans.106

‘A revolution among the agricultural population’? The merchant community saw great opportunities in the depression of the 1860s. There were many who believed that the crisis would finally demolish an ancient class of landowners and the relics of the slave economy. ‘The decay of the old system has set in,’ the Commercial Advertiser wrote optimistically in 1863. ‘A rotten system is collapsing –

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has collapsed.’107 Land would ‘change hands for the better’ and ‘English capital’ would put the soil to more productive use. Furthermore, faced with competition from the large wheat producers of the nineteenth century – Chile, the United States, Australia and Canada – the Colony could look forward to a ‘general and permanent reduction of prices’. The final upshot of the crisis of the 1860s, the Commercial Advertiser clearly hoped, would be to ‘effect a revolution among the agricultural population . . . more gradual but no less important than that which followed the emancipation of the slaves’.108 But the ‘rotten system’ did not collapse just yet and the ‘revolution’ was slow to materialise. Merchant capital was far too retrograde a force to revolutionise colonial agriculture.109 Another, more immediate, problem was that crucial aspects of colonial law proved far too malleable when pitted against the moral community of the former slave-owners. Although insolvency was everywhere to be seen, colonial lawmakers had yet to find ways of separating ancient landowners from the land. ‘Free trade in money’ – an unambiguous attempt on the part of the Colony’s mercantile community to rationalise the Cape economy along capitalist lines – could not accomplish this feat on its own. Equally important was the law of insolvency, laid down in Ordinance 6 of 1843. This Ordinance, which was largely based on one passed under De Mist’s Batavian regime, ultimately derived from a law passed in the city of Amsterdam in 1777. The latter law had established the principles of compulsory sequestration, the administration of insolvent estates by trustees and the principle of ‘rehabilitation’.110 The law of insolvency, a government report found, was ‘far from satisfactory’. The problem was to be found, not with Ordinance 6 itself, but with the ‘mode in which the provisions of the Ordinance have been carried into effect’.111 Specifically, insolvent persons had too much leeway in negotiating the terms of their insolvency. As the merchant Benjamin Norden argued, the trustees of insolvent estates were ‘so mixed and connected with the insolvents and creditors generally, that they have not that entire independence which they should have’. Trustees who felt ‘bound conscientiously to do their duty become obnoxious to parties and their connexions, and are often considerably injured in their private and other business’.112 It was clear to those who investigated the operation of the law of insolvency in the Colony that considerations of community overrode the strict letter of the law:

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There seems to us to be too great laxity on the subject of debtor and creditor – persons too easily become insolvent, and too easily escape from that position . . . the chief vice in the administration of insolvent estates has arisen from the mode in which trustees, elected by the creditors, have discharged the duties of their office, and that this has arisen greatly from the influence which have been brought to bear upon persons in that capacity, who are dependent for their success in life on the opinions entertained of them by the members of so small a community as can be found within any given district of the Colony – with whom, therefore, they are necessarily constantly coming in contact with matters of business, not connected with the insolvent estates entrusted to them.113 The problem with insolvency at the Cape, as English-speaking merchants guided by Victorian standards saw it, was that an individual’s insolvency had ‘been taken too much as an event in the natural course of things’.114 Insolvency, in other words, invited far too little stigma and moral condemnation. De Zuid Afrikaan agreed that ‘the times when insolvency, under any circumstances was considered disgraceful, are gone by.’115 But even England had difficulty on this score. The English law of bankruptcy was far from settled in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Reform bills on bankruptcy law were passed in 1825, 1831, 1842, 1849, 1861, and 1869. The Act of 1849 stipulated distinct moral categories on which bankruptcy should be judged: fraudulent, improvident, or ‘merely unfortunate’.116 Thus until 1861 Victorian England distinguished between insolvency and bankruptcy, the latter term being reserved for the ‘trading’ classes.117 Insolvency, on the other hand, was regarded as a ‘chronic and tedious condition’.118 The mid-nineteenth century English novel was ‘haunted by the fear of bankruptcy’ as Victorian England struggled to transform the inability to meet one’s financial obligations into a moral dilemma.119 In the course of the agrarian crisis of the 1860s it became clear that the ‘moral check on insolvency’ that had existed ‘within the memory of man’ was no more.120 Considerations of community clearly prevailed as the former slave-owners, despite ‘universal insolvency’, stubbornly remained on the land. In Mosselbanks Rivier, for example, Hendrik du Plessis retained ownership of Middelburg from 1851 to 1876, despite

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207

insolvency in 1864.121 Blaauwe Blomskloof and Spenglaar’s Drift, the property of his brother, Christiaan du Plessis, were in 1866 transferred to one Albertus Michiel Laubscher who lived in nearby Koeberg.122 Albertus van Niekerk Piekard kept his farm for fully 32 years, from 1854 to 1886. His insolvency in 1868, noted the Seventh Annual Report of the Malmesbury Agricultural and Commercial Bank, ‘must have surprised the Shareholders as much as it did the Directors’.123 In 1854, he purchased Wolwedans in partnership with one Johan van Aarde.124 Three years later Piekard became the sole proprietor of the farm by purchasing Van Aarde’s half-share. 125 Although the records of the liquidation of Piekard’s insolvent estate show that ownership of Wolwedans passed to Jan Hendrik Hofmeyer, the chief mortgage creditor in the estate, it is clear that Piekard nevertheless remained on the property. According to the farm’s deed records, Piekard retained his title to the property and disposed of it only in 1886.126 It is likely that Piekard stayed on as Hofmeyer’s tenant until he was able to repurchase the farm out of the insolvent estate. Similar tenacity can be found in the wine-farming regions. In 1848 Jacobus du Toit took possession of the Moddergat estate De Groote Zalse following the death of his father. He registered a mortgage bond in his mother’s name to the value of £1 750.127 When Du Toit went insolvent in 1868128 the farm was taken over by one of his mortgage creditors, J.C. Faure.129 But in 1874 the farm was re-transferred to Du Toit and Faure issued a new mortgage bond to the full value of the farm.130 It is likely that Du Toit had stayed on as Faure’s tenant in all this time, and upon his death, in about 1885, ownership of the farm passed to Du Toit’s son, Gerrit Jan du Toit.131 Thus the Du Toits, who had acquired the main holding as early as 1820, held on to their property for the better part of the nineteenth century and beyond, despite intervening insolvency. In 1929 portions of De Groote Zalse were still in their hands.132 Similarly, the farm Blaauwe Klip remained with the Rossouws from as early as 1802 to 1884. Even though Jacobus Rossouw went insolvent in 1868, he retained title to the farm until 1875 when it was transferred to his son.133 Some of the Moddergat wine farms avoided insolvency in the 1860s and in these instances families were able to remain resident on farms for long periods of time. The Marais family retained title to Zandberg from as early as 1831 to 1907; Johannes Marais held the farm the longest,

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Table 5.4: Mortgage history of Middelburg, Mosselbanks Rivier,1833–1909. Insolvent – 1844, 1870, 1877, 1884, 1909. Date of Transfer

Date of Bond

Price in £

Mortgage in £

Percentage of Mortgage Relative to Price

07/05/1833

07/05/1833

950

625

65.79

01/06/1841

01/06/1841 01/06/1841 Total

875 875

625 325 950

71.34 33.35 108.57

05/12/1844

05/12/1844 05/12/1844 Total

1 075 1 075

250 750 1 000

23.26 69.77 93.02

25/10/1851

25/10/1851 25/10/1851 Total

950 950

750 200 950

78.95 21.05 100.00

14/05/1870

14/05/1870

750

750

100.00

04/05/1876

04/05/1876

1 800

928

107.11

1 500

0

0.00

1 550 1 550

1 400 150 950

90.32 9.68 100.00

1 400

0

0.00

10/02/1877 07/07/1880

07/07/1880 07/07/1880 Total

29/10/1884 18/05/1889

18/05/1889

1 900

1 000

52.63

16/01/1891

16/01/1891

1 400

1 300

92.86

22/05/1909

22/05/1909

3 400

2 000

58.82

Source: Deeds Office

from 1846 to 1893.134 Keerweder remained the property of Henricus Roux from 1847 until his death in about 1892, upon which different portions of the farm were transferred to his heirs.135 On this occasion it was expressly stipulated that none of the heirs had the right to sell a portion without giving the others the first option of purchase. Johannes Roux managed to retain title to Rustenburg for 50 years – from 1846 until his death in about 1896.136 Vredenburg, which at the time of emancipation was the property of Thieleman Roos, a member of one of the most notable slaveholding families of Stellenbosch district, remained with Roos Jr. from 1845 until 1873, upon which it was

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The Remaking of the Cape Gentry

Table 5.5: Mortgage history of Berg en Dal, Mosselbanks Rivier,1837–1911. No insolvencies. Date of Transfer

Date of Bond

Price in £

Mortgage in £

Percentage of Mortgage Relative to Price

05/09/1837

05/09/1837 05/09/1837 Total

750 750

500 250 750

65.79 33.33 100.00

06/06/1856

06/06/1856 06/06/1856 Total

1 952 1 952

1 325 700 2 025

67.88 35.86 103.74

21/01/1864

21/01/1864

1 450

800

55.17

19/03/1867

25/10/1851 25/10/1851 Total

975 975

800 175 975

82.05 17.95 100.00

19/04/1871

19/04/1871 19/04/1871 Total

525 525

250 175 425

47.62 33.33 80.95

18/06/1873

18/06/1873 18/06/1873 Total

650 650

400 250 650

61.54 38.46 100.00

04/06/1896

04/06/1896 04/06/1896 Total

1 325 1 325

900 400 1 300

67.93 30.19 98.11

18/05/1911

18/05/1911

1 425

1 425

100.00

Source: Deeds Office

transferred to one Pieter Scholtz.137 Scholtz kept the farm until 1895, when he broke it up and sold portions to members of his family.138 There was another sense in which the ‘revolution’ that the merchants had hoped for failed to materialise. Wheat and wine farmers emerged from the crisis of the 1860s with as much mortgage debt as before, and remained at these levels for the duration of the century. Tables 5.4 and 5.5 illustrate the mortgage history of only two Mosselbanks Rivier farms for the entire period from emancipation to the end of the century. As we have seen, Middelburg experienced insolvency frequently; Berg en Dal, not at all. Middelburg emerged from insolvency in 1870 still burdened with 100 per cent of mortgage debt.139 When the farm was again sold in 1876 it carried mortgage debt of 107 per cent of its purchase

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value.140 Although Berg en Dal was indebted for only 55 per cent of its value in 1864, by 1867 this had reverted to 100 per cent.141 When the farm was once more transferred in 1873, it was again bonded for 100 per cent of its value.142 In other words, at no point in the nineteenth century was mortgage debt on these farms materially reduced. Other farms in the fieldcornetcy displayed similar levels of mortgage indebtedness in the post-recession years. Kalbaskraal remained indebted for 100 per cent of its purchase value after insolvency in 1868.143 Albertus Piekard of Wolwedans owed J.H. Hofmeyr the sum of £2 700 at the time of his insolvency.144 Piekard retained title to his farm by increasing his mortgage debt: a bond of £3 333.6.8 was registered in Hofmeyr’s favour.145

The ‘unmaking’ of the Cape gentry Given such tenacity, then, in what sense can it be argued that the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the ‘unmaking’ of the Cape gentry? Ever since the ending of slavery the former slaveholders had fought – and lost – a defensive, rearguard action to uphold moral values that were at odds with the bourgeois world of the ‘age of capital’.146 The high incidence of insolvency that the Colony experienced during the recession of the 1860s, almost unknown in the eighteenth century, was largely a consequence of the rationalisation of commercial law and the imposition of a new moral order brought about by the interventions of English-speaking merchants. The bourgeoisie that had emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century now clearly dominated economic and political life in the Colony. As in nineteenth-century England, they had become the hegemonic class.147 In some ways, the Cape’s English-speaking bourgeoisie had an easy task of it. The Cape gentry never did wield the political power of their slaveholding counterparts in the Atlantic world, and never controlled matters of state in the same way. Even the rationalisation of the law was not radical, compared with what occurred in some of Britain’s other African colonies, where the alienation and commodification of land was less complete. In Lagos Colony, for example, as ‘legitimate commerce’ replaced the trade in slaves, the colonial state had first to turn land into a commodity through a process of land registration and conveyances. There, a foreign legal system and new courts of law had to be introduced

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that would allow for the alienation of property. Legal instruments such as mortgages, credit agreements and formal interest were entirely novel, and the task of the new courts was to educate residents of the Colony in the language of bourgeois property. Ironically, commoners who were able to rise in the new colonial economy did not hesitate to exploit instruments such as mortgages to sustain the age-old practice up building up followings of clients and retainers.148 It was not until the twentieth century that the colonial state in Nigeria attempted to regulate moneylending.149 At the Cape, the institutions that turned land into a commodity had been put in place from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule. The VOC, after all, was the greatest merchant company of its day. It was perhaps because the Cape gentry’s institutions were so ancient, and because they had tailored them to their particular form of class rule based on networks of community and patronage, that the interventions of English-speaking merchants were felt so strongly. Everywhere the former slave-owners were forced to witness assaults on their world that had started with the humanitarian impulses of the 1820s. Not even the law of inheritance was free from attack. By the second half of the nineteenth century it was clear that the former slave-owners and their descendants were no longer the supreme lords of the countryside. The once wealthy gentry of the Western districts in particular were now beholden to merchant capital in a way that had not been the case in the eighteenth century.150 Thus, survival during the recession of the 1860s did not insulate the former slaveholders against future disaster. The experience of the 1860s was replayed when the Colony faced another wave of recession in the early 1880s.151 The farmers’ vulnerability was greatly increased by the fact that they had emerged from the recession of the 1860s with at least as much debt as before. Merchants such as Daniel Mills did not disappear from the scene. In 1876, thus, Mathiam de Kock passed a bond to the value of £854 in favour of the firm of Daniel Mills & Sons on mortgage security of Leeuwedans, which had been the property of Mosselbanks Rivier notable Nicolaas van Wielligh at the time of emancipation.152 The bond carried particularly onerous terms. Firstly, Mills & Sons freely made use of the Supreme Court decision to allow ‘free trade in money.’ De Kock was charged interest at an annual rate of 9 per cent, far higher than the

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common one of 6 per cent. But more importantly, De Kock was ‘obliged to deliver to . . . Daniel Mills . . . in the wheat season such quantities of wheat as he may desire at the then market rates for the amount of the proceeds of which . . . Daniel Mills shall give [De Kock] credit in diminution of [the] Bond.’ And it was in 1884 that David du Plessis of Middelburg passed a bond to the value of £857.11.6, charged at a rate of 7 per cent per annum, in favour of Daniel Mills & Sons. This bond was issued, not to finance the purchase of any property, but to secure ‘money lent and advanced for goods sold & delivered.’153 In the aftermath of Du Plessis’s insolvency, Middelburg became the property of the merchant firm of Daniel Mills & Sons.154 The bonds passed in favour of Daniel Mills represented a new era that had arrived in the economic and political history of the Colony. They were similar in effect to the cotton liens of the post-emancipation United States, one of the most potent symbols of the ‘New South’ and representative of the new hegemony of merchant capital.155 ‘Most of the agricultural villages of South Africa’, an Inspector of the Standard Bank explained in 1881, ‘possessed a man who by the length of time amongst them . . . and his manner of giving credit, and collecting debts, became a great power in the District, and his influence over the farmers was so great, that they did just anything that . . . [was] asked of them.’156 Thus in regions such as St. Helena Bay, thousands of acres of land passed into the hands of the merchant firm of Stephan Brothers.157 Even descendants of very large-scale slave-owners were reduced to tenants.158 Merchants such as Mills & Sons and shopkeepers such as G.S. Holmes were outsiders to the farming community of Mosselbanks Rivier. In time, however, insiders came to abide by their rules. As early as 1862 the farmers charged that ‘contrary to all expectations and public promises, the mortgagees are beginning to call in their mortgages unless the mortgagers consent to pay a ruinous interest of eight and more per cent.’159 One of the most vociferous opponents of ‘free trade in money’, as has already been indicated, was H.H. Gird, long-time owner of the Mosselbanks Rivier estate, Oliphantsfontein. ‘The merchants of Cape Town in favour of unrestricted interest care nothing for the farmers, provided they can increase their profits by the trade in money,’ he wrote in 1860.160 But Gird’s heir, Henry William Gird, did not share the

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same enthusiasm for keeping annual interest rates at 6 per cent. In 1882 and 1885 he loaned his neighbour, Daniel du Toit, the sums of £600 and £2 000 respectively. Both loans – on security of the Mosselbanks Rivier estate Hoornbosch – were charged at 7 per cent per annum.161 The rules of commercial capitalism had triumphed over those of moral community.

The remaking of the Cape gentry But in a sense, the Cape gentry had in the process also been remade. Most importantly, the tides of the nineteenth century encouraged formal political activity on the part of the landowning class. Amongst the earliest formal political organisations in the Colony was the Zuid Afrikaansche Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging (Farmers’ Protection Association), led by Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, since 1871 editor of De Zuid Afrikaan. Founded specifically to fight an excise duty imposed on Cape brandy in 1878, the ZABBV remained committed to advancing the interests of Afrikaner farmers. In the second half of 1878 branches of the ZABBV sprang up throughout the Cape countryside and the organisation scored significant electoral success. In the elections of 1878–79 the ZABBV won nine out of twenty-one seats in the House of Assembly.162 Meanwhile, in the wine-farming region of Paarl, the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Fellowship of True Afrikaners) was founded in August 1875 under the guidance of S.J. du Toit, a Dutch Reformed minister and the son of wine farmer, D.F. du Toit. The GRA stood for ChistelijkNationaal Onderwijs (Christian National Education), a concept imported from the Netherlands by the Reverend G.W.A. van der Lingen, Du Toit’s mentor and the Dutch Reformed minister who had earlier warned against ‘merchants’ tyranny’.163 Through their newsletter, Die Afrikaanse Patriot, members of the GRA committed themselves to fostering Afrikaner interests – specifically, they campaigned to have the Bible translated into Afrikaans and to promote the Afrikaans language more generally. The advent of Responsible Government spurred Du Toit to seek a parliamentary presence for the GRA.164 Thus in June 1879 he launched the Afrikaner Bond, a new political party that was to have a much wider aim than that of fostering the Afrikaans language. The new party’s aims were clearly directed at addressing the transformations that had occurred in the Cape countryside in earlier decades. The Bond, Du Toit proposed,

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was to further the ‘true interests of our land and of all parties’ and to prevent the ‘sacrifice of Africa’s interests to England, and those of the Farmer to the Merchant’. The party was to develop ‘Trade and Industry for the benefit of the land and not to fill the pockets of speculators’; it would ‘not permit our money market to be dominated by English Banks’.165 In the course of the 1880s the party waged a full-scale ideological battle against merchants and English banks. In four consecutive issues of March and April 1882 the Afrikaanse Patriot pilloried the Standard Bank and recommended the founding of a national bank.166 The Stellenbosch District Bank was founded in December 1882 at the instigation of the Bond, although it is not clear how much success this institution had.167 The party advocated a boycott of English shopkeepers, and the founding of boerewinkels (farmers’ shops) to resist the control that English merchants had over the rural economy. ‘And therefore we say outright: it is now the duty of every true Afrikaner not to spend a copper at an Englishman’s if he can avoid it . . . Buy nothing at an Englishman’s, or at an English-minded Afrikaner’s; or even from anyone who advertises in an English paper,’ Du Toit wrote in an 1881 editorial of the Afrikaanse Patriot.168 But the ZABBV and the Bond initially failed to agree on many matters of substance. Indeed, one of the issues over which the ZABBV and Bond disagreed most strongly was the very question of ‘free trade in money’. Hofmeyr was of the view that there were many ‘patriotic Afrikaners’, who were in favour of free trade in money and therefore unwilling to obstruct the activities of English business interests.169 By 1880, thus, it was clear that English and Afrikaner settlers were not divided along polar lines of ethnicity. For English capital had served many Dutch-speaking farmers too well for this to be the case. In fact, Hofmeyr was himself involved in the business of lending money, and had significant interests in the farming economy.170 Here, after all, were the roots of collaboration with British imperialism. But the ZABVV and Bond found common ground as a consequence of the 1881 war between Britain and the Transvaal and in 1883 the two parties merged formally. Together they fought the election of 1883–4 and from 1884 until the end of the century the Bond maintained a hold on at least 40 per cent of the seats in both Houses of Parliament.171 Under Hofmeyr’s leadership the new Bond toned down its anti-English

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and anti-capitalist rhetoric and sought to use parliament to advance the interests of wealthy farmers, those who ‘controlled links of paternalism and patronage in the countryside’.172 By the end of the decade, the Bond, under Hofmeyr’s leadership, was in alliance with arch-imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes. Their alliance was based on the understanding that as Prime Minister, Rhodes would support the interests of colonial Afrikaners in return for Bond support of his imperial designs to the north of the Colony. It was a platform called ‘colonialism’; both Hofmeyr and Rhodes wished for minimal intervention on the part of the imperial government in the affairs of South Africa. Although Hofmeyr was at first sympathetic to the independence of the trekker republics that had been founded to the north of the Gariep, he had by 1890 come to see the Transvaal as a hindrance to stability in a greater South Africa.173 With Rhodes’s support the Bond sought to restore to the Cape countryside the kind of reactionary personal rule that the master class had known under slavery. During every session of parliament between 1884 and 1889 the party sought to reinstate the judicial authority of veldcornets that the Commission of Enquiry of the 1820s had done away with. In 1890 the Bond attempted to amend the Masters and Servants Act through which they hoped to win for landowners the right to flog their labourers. Although this infamous ‘Strop’ Bill was never passed, it had Rhodes’s support. To many observers, the Bond became the ‘strop and dop’ party, the party that sought to rule the countryside through the whip and the tot. It was little wonder that the Bond failed to attract the support of Coloured voters.174 By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, there was in power a new South African ruling class that had been forged in the tumultuous decades of the nineteenth century. The winners were wealthy farmers happy to collaborate with English capital. The losers were small-scale farmers, landless whites, those such as G.W.A. van der Lingen who stood in the way of ‘progress’ and, of course, the mass of the Colony’s labouring population. By the end of this century the commercial wine and wheat farmers had found ways of accommodating to the hegemony of the English ruling class, in much the same way that the likes of Vos and Truter had done a century earlier. It was this adaptability, more than anything else that kept them on the land.

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Notes 1. DO, Transfer Deed no. 176, 7 July 1880; Mortgage Bond no. 177, 7 July 1880; Mortgage Bond no. 178, 7 July 1880. 2. CA GH 23/28, Wynard – Duke of Newcastle, 1 October 1859. 3. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, 1856. 4. A disease of mildew that attacks vines. 5. G41-1861, Report of the Operations of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society, 1861. 6. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1860. 7. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Caledon, 1860. 8. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Piquetberg, 1861. 9. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Worcester, 1862. 10. SACA, 21 March 1863. 11. SACA, 21 March 1863. 12. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1864. 13. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Caledon, 1865. 14. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Bredasdorp, 1865. 15. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1866, 1867. 16. Blue Books, Reports of Civil Commissioners, Swellendam and Worcester, 1867. 17. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1870. 18. SOAS, CWM, Box 32, Folder 5, Jacket E, Report of Resident Missionary, Pacaltsdorp, 16 June 1863. 19. SOAS, CWM, Box 32, Folder 5, Jacket E, Report of Resident Missionary, Zuurbraak, 25 July 1863. 20. SOAS, CWM, Box 33, Folder 2, Jacket C, Report of Resident Missionary, Zuurbraak, 17 March 1864. 21. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1864. 22. SOAS, CWM, Box 33, Folder 3, Jacket C, Report of Resident Missionary, Pacaltsdorp, 11 May 1864. 23. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Caledon, 1866. 24. SOAS, CWM, Box 33, Folder 6, Jacket D, Report of Resident Missionary, Zuurbraak, 28 January 1866. 25. SOAS, CWM, Box 34, Folder 2, Jacket A, Report of Resident Missionary, Pacaltsdorp, 6 July 1866. 26. ZA, 28 May 1857. 27. These figures were compiled by counting every declared insolvency as listed in the Government Gazette. Neither the place of residence, nor the occupation of the insolvent was given in a great many instances, and it is therefore not possible to give an accurate breakdown of figures for these categories. These figures include the insolvency of companies and partnerships which in each case was counted as a single insolvency regardless of the number of partners. In some cases, though, owners of such companies were declared insolvent in their private capacities as well, and these figures were added to the list. 28. SACA, 21 March 1863. 29. S. Dubow, Land, Labour and Merchant Capital: The Experience of the Graaff-Reinet District in the Pre-industrial Rural Economy of the Cape, 1852–1872 ( Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1992), pp. 18–19.

The Remaking of the Cape Gentry

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

217

Dubow, Land, Labour and Merchant Capital, p. 19. SACA, 2 January 1864. SACA, 3 October 1863. CA MOIB 2/1166, no. 312, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Frans Cornelis de Wet, 24 October 1867. CA MOIB 2/1059, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Thomas Tennant Heatlie, 13 March 1865. See Chapter 4. SACA, 3 October 1863, Advertisement on property sales in Worcester by E.J.M. Syfret. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Stellenbosch, 1868. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Paarl, 1868. ZA, 23 February 1863. SACA, 3 September 1863. SACA, 17 September 1863. GG, 17 July 1863; 11 August 1863; 1 April 1864; 29 September 1865; 23 February 1868; DO, Transfer Deed no. 221, 21 January 1864; GG, 19 February 1864, Transfer Deed no. 259, 19 March 1867; GG, 29 March 1867. Although Berg en Dal was not technically declared bankrupt, Servaas de Kock probably had little choice but to sell up in January 1864 as he was declared insolvent just one month later; CA MOIB 2/ 1080, no. 258, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Servaas de Kock, 31 August 1865. DO, Transfer Deed no. 416, 28 October 1864; GG, 27 February 1866. DO, Transfer Deed no. 386, 21 May 1861; Transfer Deed no. 388, 21 May 1861. GG, 4 February 1862. DO, Transfer Deed no. 146, 18 February 1842. DO, Transfer Deed no. 26, 5 December 1850; Transfer Deed no. 344, 21 January 1855; Transfer Deed no. 473, 26 November 1858; Deed no. 487, 26 August 1861. CA MOIB 2/975, no. 87, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of George Smart, 9 April 1863; GG, 29 August 1862 – here Smart’s last name is given as Smit. CA MOIB 2/1055, no. 51, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik Vos, 7 February 1865. DO, Transfer Deed no. 210, 25 October 1851; Transfer Deed no. 199, 11 November 1858. CA MOIB 2/1091, no. 359, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Hendrik du Plessis, 14 December 1865. CA MOIB 2/1116, no. 202, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Christiaan Petrus du Plessis, 12 September 1866. GG, 1 April 1864; 29 September 1865; 16 February 1866. Christiaan du Plessis was declared insolvent for a second time in 1867: GG, 8 October 1867. GG, 30 January 1863. GG, 6 February 1863; CA MOIB 2/988, no. 201, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Weybrand Elias Thuynsma, 12 September 1863. CA MOIB 1/175, Records in insolvent estate of Wouter Eduard Ackerman, 21 March 1865.

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57. GG, 27 July 1860; 24 March 1865; 30 May 1868; 6 October 1868; DO, Transfer Deed no. 17, 3 December 1860; Transfer Deed no. 164, 19 April 1866; Transfer Deed no. 128, 12 September 1868; Transfer Deed no. 2, 1 March 1875. 58. CA MOIB 1/184, Records in insolvent estate of Melt van der Spuy, 30 December 1865. 59. CA MOIB 1/160, Records in insolvent estate of Daniel Johannes Malan, 12 October 1863. 60. CA MOIB 1/131, Records in insolvent estate of Jacobus Stofberg Wium, November 1860. 61. J. du Plessis, ‘Colonial Progress and Countryside Conservatism: An Essay on the Legacy of Van der Lingen of Paarl, 1831–1875’, M.A. thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 1988, p. 180. 62. ZA, 16 July 1863. 63. CA CSC 2/9/1/13, From The Cape Monitor, 18 February 1860. 64. ZA, 23 February 1860. 65. ZA, 12 October 1863. 66. CA GH 23/28, no. 71, Wynyard – Duke of Newcastle, 21 April 1860. 67. CA CSC 2/9/1/13, From The Cape Monitor, 18 February 1860; CA CSC 2/1/1/95, no. 16, John Dyason vs John Ruthven, 14 February 1860. 68. CA CSC 2/1/1/95, no. 16, John Dyason vs John Ruthven, 14 February 1860. 69. CA CSC 2/9/1/13, From Cape Monitor, 18 February 1860. 70. CA GH 28/75, Part II, Enclosure 2 to 71/60. 71. ZA, 28 June 1860. 72. ZA, 28 June 1860. 73. ZA, 28 June 1860. 74. ZA, 20 December 1855. 75. ZA, 23 February 1860. 76. ZA, 16 July 1863. 77. A9-1862, Petition from Certain Landowners and Inhabitants of the District of Stellenbosch, 14 May 1862. 78. A9-1862, Petition from Certain Landowners and Inhabitants of the District of Stellenbosch, 14 May 1862. 79. ZA, 5 November 1863. 80. ZA, 21 April 1851; GG, 21 January 1862. 81. GG, 3 January 1862, Worcester Commercial Bank, Notice to Shareholders. 82. ZA, 30 March 1865, emphasis in original. 83. ZA, 21 April 1851. 84. ZA, 5 November 1863. 85. ZA, 21 June 1860. 86. ZA, 5 November 1863. 87. Blue Books, Report of Civil Commissioner, Malmesbury, 1863; Blue Books, Civil Commissioner’s Annual Report, Malmesbury, 1864; Report of Directors of the Standard Bank (SB), 15 August 1878, in A. Mabin and B. Conradie (eds.), The Confidence of the Whole Country: Standard Bank Reports on Economic Conditions in Southern Africa, 1865–1902 (Johannesburg: Standard Bank Investment Corporation, 1987), pp. 69–70. 88. SB Insp 1/1/163, Somerset West, 5 May 1900.

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89. SB Insp 1/1/166, Inspection Report, Swellendam, 5 December 1896. 90. SB Insp 1/1/166, Inspection Report, Swellendam, 14 August 1899. The branch inspector could have been speaking of the owners of the Moddergat estate, Brakelsdal who, till the end of the century, preferred to obtain credit from local sources and private individuals. 91. Du Plessis, ‘Colonial Progress and Countryside Conservatism’, p. 123. 92. T.J. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986), p. 3. 93. B. Lau, ‘Conflict and Power in Nineteenth-century Namibia’, Journal of African History, 27, 1986, pp. 36–7; J. Gewald, Herero Heroes: A Socio-political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923 (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), p. 14. Oorlams were disaffected refugees from the Cape Colony – slaves, outlaws, and runaways Khoisan and ‘Baster’ servants. They had knowledge of Dutch/Afrikaans and, most importantly, had command of guns and horses. 94. E.H. Burrows, Overberg Outspan: A Chronicle of People and Places in the South Western Districts of the Cape (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1952), p. 266. 95. See for instance, CA MOIB 2/1124, no. 284, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Christoffel Lodowyk Knobelauch, 22 November 1866; CA MOIB 2/1196, no. 160, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Pieter Wessel Odendal, 16 June 1868; CA MOIB 2/1223, no. 10, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Franciscus Steyn, 12 January 1869; GG, 20 November 1865. 96. SACA, 17 January 1863. 97. SACA, 16 February 1863. 98. See, for example, J.D. Bailey, A Hundred Years of Pastoral Banking: A History of the Australian Mercantile Land & Finance Company, 1863–1963 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); H. Slater, ‘Land, Labour and Capitalism in Natal: The Natal Land and Colonisation Company, 1860–1948’, Journal of African History, 16, 1975, pp. 257– 83. 99. Burrows, Overberg Outspan, pp. 78–270. 100. CA MOIB 2/973, no. 69, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Michiel Gobregts, 9 April 1863; MOIB 2/975, no. 87, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of George Smart, 9 April 1863; MOIB 2/ 1161, no. 265, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacobus Johannes Mostert, 12 October 1864; MOIB 2/1021, no. 171, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of John Andries Truter, 1 August 1864; MOIB 2/1020, no. 168, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Sebastian Valentyn van Reenen, 1 August 1864; MOIB 2/1108, no. 134, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jacobus Smit, 21 June 1866. 101. CA MOIB 2/947, no. 22, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Daniel Thomas Johannes Baard, 12 March 1862. 102. CA MOIB 2/1051, no. 24, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Matthys Michielse Basson Sr., 7 February 1865. 103. CA MOIB 2/960, no. 139, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Christoffel Kotze, 20 November 1862; MOIB 2/1021, no. 171, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of John Andries Truter, 1 August

220

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113.

114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126.

127. 128.

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

1864; MOIB 2/1027, no. 221, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Johannes Marthinus de Goede and Cornelis Michiel de Goede, 21 September 1864. Dictionary of South African Biography, volume IV (Durban: Butterworth, 1981), pp. 364–5. CA MOIB 2/1375, no. 56, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Nicolaas Lambertus Basson, 15 April 1865. CA MOIB 2/1237, no. 126, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of A.B. van Niekerk Piekard, 3 June 1869. SACA, 21 March 1863. SACA, 17 September 1863. For a classic statement on the ambiguous and contradictory nature of merchant capital, see E.D. Genovese and E. Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), esp. pp. 3–25. On the workings of merchant capital in the wool economy of mid-nineteenth-century Graaff-Reinet, see Dubow, Land, Labour and Merchant Capital, esp. pp. 20–8. J.W. Wessels, History of Roman-Dutch Law (Grahamstown: African Book Company, 1908), p. 673. G20-1857, Two Reports for Inquiring into the Present State of the Law Relative to the Collection, Administration and Distribution of Insolvent Estates in the Colony. G20-1857, Two Reports for Inquiring into the Present State of the Law Relative to the Collection, Administration and Distribution of Insolvent Estates in the Colony. G20-1857, Two Reports for Inquiring into the Present State of the Law Relative to the Collection, Administration and Distribution of Insolvent Estates in the Colony, emphasis added. G20-1857, Two Reports for Inquiring into the Present State of the Law Relative to the Collection, Administration and Distribution of Insolvent Estates in the Colony. ZA, 5 April 1858. B. Weiss, The Hell of the English: Bankruptcy and the Victorian Novel (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986), pp. 43–4. Weiss, The Hell of the English, p. 14. Weiss, The Hell of the English. Weiss, The Hell of the English, pp. 15, 23–36. ZA, 16 July 1863. GG, 1 April 1864; DO, Transfer Deed no. 148, 14 May 1870; Transfer Deed no. 76, 4 May 1876. DO, Transfer Deed no. 40, 3 November 1866. GG, 20 July 1869, DO, Transfer Deed no. 60, 4 October 1854. DO, Transfer Deed no. 14, 1 October 1857. CA MOIB 2/1237, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of A.B. van Niekerk, 3 June 1869; DO, Transfer Deed no. 313, 19 March 1870; Transfer Deed no. 444, 31 March1886. DO, Transfer Deed no. 141, 19 October 1848; Mortgage Bond no. 142, 19 October 1848. GG, 2 June 1868.

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129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141.

142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

149. 150.

151. 152.

153. 154.

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DO, DR, T, 1464; DO, Transfer Deed no. 128, 12 September 1868. DO, Transfer Deed no. 525, 27 November 1874; DO, DR, T, 1464. DO, Transfer Deed no. 12, 2 July 1885. DO, Transfer Deed no. 2544, 18 March 1929. DO, Transfer Deed no. 167, 29 April 1802; Transfer Deed no. 131, 3 November 1835; Transfer Deed no. 2, 1 March 1875. Transfer Deed no. 470, 30 December 1884; GG, 6 October 1868. DO, Transfer Deed no. 161, 17 June 1831; Transfer Deed no. 27, 2 April 1846; Transfer Deed no. 4059, 26 July 1893; Transfer Deed no. 4258, 30 May 1907. DO, Transfer Deed no. 211, 24 November 1847; Transfer Deed no. 6832, 24 December 1892; Transfer Deeds nos. 6833–6837, 24 December 1892. DO, Transfer Deed no. 144, 28 July 1846; Transfer Deed no. 1567, 24 March 1896. DO, Transfer Deed no. 127, 12 August 1845; Transfer Deed no. 462, 26 November 1873. DO, Transfer Deed no. 2072, 20 April 1895. DO, Transfer Deed no. 148, 14 May 1870; Mortgage Bond no. 149, 14 May 1870. DO, Transfer Deed no. 76, 4 May 1876; Mortgage Bond no. 77, 4 May 1876. DO, Transfer Deed no. 221, 21 January 1864; Mortgage Bond no. 222, 21 January 1864; Transfer Deed no. 259, 19 March 1867; Mortgage Bond no. 260, 19 March 1867; Mortgage Bond no. 261, 19 March 1867. DO, Transfer Deed no. 340, 18 June 1873; Mortgage Bond no. 341, 18 June 1873. DO, Transfer Deed no. 54, 6 May 1868; Mortgage Bond no. 55, 6 May 1868; Mortgage Bond no. 56, 6 May 1868. CA MOIB 2/1237, no.126, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of A.B. van Niekerk Piekard, 3 June 1869. DO, Transfer Deed no. 313, 19 March 1870; Mortgage Bond no. 314, 19 March 1870. E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), pp. 291–2. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, pp. 283–93. K. Mann, ‘The Rise of Taiwo Olowo: Law, Accumulation, and Mobility in Early Colonial Lagos’, in K. Mann and R. Roberts (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991), pp. 85–102. T. Falola, ‘ “My Friend the Shylock”: Money-lenders and their Clients in SouthWestern Nigeria’, Journal of African History, 34, 1993, pp. 403–23, esp. pp. 410–15. The merchant capital represented by smousen was of a very different kind from that of the resident merchant shopkeepers of the nineteenth century. Newton-King, Masters and Servants, esp. pp. 168–70. T.R.H. Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond: The History of a South African Political Party, 1880–1911 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 97–8. DO, Transfer Deed no. 429, 16 March 1875; CA MOIB 2/1800, no. 270, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Marthiam Johannes de Kock, 13 April 1885. CA MOIB 2/1744, no. 808, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of David Johannes du Plessis, 13 October 1884. DO, Transfer Deed no. 456, 29 October 1884.

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155. The literature on the New South is extensive, but see C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951); J. Wiener, Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1865–1885 (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1978); J. Wiener, ‘Class structure and economic development in the American South, 1865–1955’, American Historical Review, 84, 1979, 970–92. S. Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) has been particularly influential on my thinking of the cultural content of agrarian transformations. 156. SB Insp 1/1/17, Inspection Report, Bredasdorp, 20 July 1881. 157. E. Rosenthal, ‘The Stephan Saga’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d). 158. In 1886, for instance, Catharina Laubscher was forced as a consequence of insolvency to sell up to the firm of Stephan Brothers after she had run up large debts with them. Her farm, Patrysberg, had since emancipation been in the hands of the Laubschers. Jan van Schoor Jurgen Kotze, the son of Jan Jurgen Kotze, at emancipation one of the largest slave-owners of the fieldcornetcy of St. Helena Bay, could tell a similar story. For Laubscher, see DO, Transfer Deed no. 367, 19 September 1882; CA DOC, Mortgage Bond no. 231, 19 September 1882; CA DOC, Mortgage Bond no. 267, 28 April 1885; DO, Transfer Deed no. 280, 17 April 1873; DO, Transfer Deed no. 285, 24 November 1886. For Kotze, see CA DOC 4/1/54, Mortgage Bond no. 136, 12 August 1882; DO, Transfer Deed no. 110, 25 April 1834; DO, Transfer Deed no. 592, 30 August 1873; CA DOC 4/1/185, Mortgage Bond no. 236, 25 May 1886; CA MOIB 2/2018, no. 87, Liquidation and Distribution Account in Insolvent Estate of Jan van Schoor Jurgen Kotze, 15 March 1888. 159. A9-1862, Petition from Certain Landowners of the District of Stellenbosch, 14 May 1862. 160. ZA, 28 June 1860. 161. CA DOC 4/1/46, Mortgage Bond no. 286, 23 May 1882; DOC 4/1/137, Mortgage Bond no. 160, 21 January 1885. 162. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 13–17; V. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 41–2. 163. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, p. 31. 164. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride, p. 40. 165. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 35–6. 166. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 34, 50. 167. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, p. 51. 168. Cited in Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 50–1. 169. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, p. 36. 170. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride, pp. 41–2 171. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 60–71; L. Thompson, ‘Great Britain and the Afrikaner Republics, 1870–1899’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, volume 2, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 304. 172. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride, p. 42. 173. Thompson, ‘Great Britain and the Afrikaner Republics’, p. 307. 174. Davenport, Afrikaner Bond, pp. 114–20.

Epilogue

A

century after Britain first conquered the southern tip of Africa, its ruling classes were forced to reconsider the kind of rule they wished to exercise over a dramatically changed colonial landscape. At the end of the nineteenth century British hegemony extended into vast swathes of southern Africa, well beyond the port of Cape Town that military commanders took in 1795. The exercise of such power irrevocably transformed the region that was to become South Africa. The wellspring of these later transformations was to be found in the discovery of vast mineral reserves in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The diamond riches of Griqualand West paled in comparison with the untold deposits of gold that were to be had from the belly of the South African Republic. In the process, the nature and role of the British colonial state was radically transformed. Its task now went well beyond those faced in the first half of the nineteenth century – liberating an agrarian economy from the shackles of slavery, pacifying the ‘Bushman’ frontier and domesticating the settler society that existed at the end of the eighteenth century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Cape colonial state chose to oversee and participate in the conquest of the African societies of southern Africa. The offshoots of Cape colonial society – the trekker republics of the Orange Free State and South African Republic – owed their existence to the force of British imperial armies. But the ruling class of the South African Republic found itself in a difficult position: it had to satisfy both an agrarian constituency, to which it owed political power, and the gold-mining industry, to which the oncebankrupt state owed its unimagined wealth. Ultimately, the empirebuilders of late Victorian Britain decided that the South African Republic was incapable of reconciling these competing demands. The 223

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consequence was the bloody war of 1899–1902. The South African War, Atmore and Marks have argued, was the ‘result of the failure of the Afrikaner societies to fulfil the role of collaborating groups to the satisfaction of the gold-mining industry’.1 But in the Cape Colony, the war was not fought primarily over the Transvaal’s mineral riches. For the South African War, though imperialist by definition, was ‘fought out deep within the formations of settler and black societies,’ as Bill Nasson has pointed out. The war’s ramifications were ‘profoundly local, grounded in colonial relations of conflict, division and association’. 2 And in the Cape, these relations were inherited from a pre-industrial past rather than a more immediate present.3 The Cape’s particular colonial heritage would ensure that here the war was to be different. The networks of local collaborators and patronage that had been so assiduously cultivated in the Cape from the very earliest days of British colonial rule, all but collapsed in the vortex of war. ‘There was a time, not many months ago,’ wrote the Cape Colonial Treasurer, John X. Merriman in May 1900, ‘when it is not too much to say that the British hold upon South Africa lay in the hands of the Dutch-speaking colonists.’4 At the end of 1899, this form of rule could no longer be assured. As hostilities broke out between Britain and the Boer republics, and as Boer commandos made their way into the Colony, the deep antipathy of local white settlers to British rule was rapidly exposed. In the frontier districts, close ties of ‘blood and friendship’ with the Republics made for a particularly volatile situation.5 ‘The sympathy of the Africander population is almost to a man with the Republics,’ wrote the Resident Magistrate of Middelburg district.6 In the neighbouring district of Colesberg, it was feared that ‘nothing could prevent a number of farmers from taking up arms . . . in favour of the Free State and Transvaal.’7 Certainly, things did not look good when, on 17 November 1899, Resident Magistrate Wrench sent a breathless telegram to Cape Town to tell of his ignominious eviction from the town by Free State commandos.8 The routing of General French as he tried to retake Colesberg early in January the following year came as a big setback, ‘the most disagreeable incident in the campaign . . . since Magersfontein’.9 Many were pressed to join the rebellion out of pure self-interest. Specifically, some Dutch/Afrikaner farmers saw in the rebellion the

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promise of reversing the nineteenth-century transformations of colonial agriculture. Some were under the illusion that Republican rule would bring freedom from the weight of mortgage debt. ‘Very many of our farmers, it appears, have joined the Invaders under the impression that if the Free State annexes this District they will be absolved from the payment of all shop debts and mortgage bonds,’ wrote one observer.10 But the Cape ‘rebellion’ that British authorities feared took a long time to materialise. In circumstances of such uncertainty, colonial settlers were reluctant to join hands with their northern neighbours. For the most part they kept their heads down. Despite statements and feelings of sympathy with the Boer republics, this was a ‘rebellion of the heart rather than the hand’.11 Resident Magistrates of frontier districts were certain that open rebellion was contingent on Republican military success. For as long as this seemed unlikely, the Cape would remain ‘loyal’.12 Settler society, moreover, was far from united, and had, as we have seen, always shown deep divisions. ‘Disloyalty’, wrote the Resident Magistrate of Graaff-Reinet, was ‘not of a kind which could sacrifice self-interest,’ and owners of fixed property in particular would be loath to take up arms against the Crown.13 From Calvinia it was understood that the ‘better class of farmers’ recognised that they were ‘best off under the British flag’ and the Civil Commissioner of Cradock doubted whether ‘men of substance’ would ‘under any circumstances throw in their lot with the Boers’.14 Furthermore, loyalty from the old winefarming districts seemed assured. Even though residents of Stellenbosch were bound to the Transvaal ‘by the closest ties of nature and affection’, veldcornets of the district were at pains to prove the ‘sincerity of their loyalty’. They would not, ‘in word or deed’ engage in ‘action or language which might be construed into disloyalty.’15 The real dangers to continued British rule, however, High Commissioner Alfred Milner had the prophetic foresight to recognise, came precisely from those wealthy settlers in the southwest. The challenges posed by those in Paarl, home of Reverend van der Lingen, the GRA, and the Afrikaner Bond, were of a different kind altogether: Paarl is a leading Dutch centre boasting a good deal more wealth, intelligence & education than the average country district and I suspect it is disloyal because many of its inhabitants cherish

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dreams of a [South] African Dutch state . . . which the Cape country Boer living undisturbed under a decent government does not trouble his head about. The situation would become highly dangerous could the latter generally be infected with the idea. Our worst enemies are often the educated Afrikaners.16 Gone, thus, was the very basis of British rule that had been established a century earlier. Above all else, as Milner clearly knew, Britain had ruled the Colony with the consent of the educated elite. In 1795 the likes of the Reverend Vos used his pulpit to call for loyalty to the Crown.17 Now, British authorities throughout the Colony recognised the critical influence of Dutch Reformed Ministers and they were clearly unhappy about what they saw.18 One such minister, a Reverend M.D. Daneel, used his pulpit to preach sermons that were ‘pregnant with sedition’.19 Statements of this nature have to be treated with caution, but they do signal a significant change in relations between the British and the colonial elite. But at the centre of the collapse of rule through local collaborators was the Colony’s labouring population.20 It was they who ensured that local alliances would not survive the war. Above all else, the war bared the simmering tensions that existed between white settlers and their black servants. As full-scale agrarian conflict erupted between Afrikaner settlers and black labourers, it soon became clear that the war was anything but a ‘white man’s war’.21 In the first instance, black people became involved in the conflict through the mundane demands of the British war effort. For the mass of the black population, service in the British armed forces brought material rewards greatly in excess of what could be earned in the agricultural economy. As for employing ‘natives’ as transport riders, Milner made it clear that ‘military necessity was supreme’. ‘We must have drivers for our transport,’ he wrote, ‘and, if no others could be found, we could not help trying to get men who might otherwise be farm labourers.’22 The result was that a great many farm labourers broke contracts and disappeared to take up service in an array of occupations in the British army.23 But black participation in the war went well beyond that of auxiliary service and was driven by motives that were profoundly more significant

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than material imperatives. The partisan commitment of the colonial black population to the imperial war effort was grounded in the reality of a dependent and ambiguous loyalty to British rule. For in the Cape, a stratum of black colonial ‘subjects’, schooled in missionary-derived notions of respectability and self-improvement had grown up in the decades since the ending of slavery. For such people, both Cape citizens and British subjects, it was but a small step to pit late-Victorian Cape liberalism, with its emphasis on universal male suffrage, against the decidedly illiberal north, where there was to be no equality in church or state.24 A mere five days after the declaration of war, one Abraham Esau and sixty-five other ‘Coloured British subjects’ from the northern Cape settlement of Calvinia swore to ‘support the Imperial policy with life and death’. 25 In February 1900, in a letter to the Cape Colonial Secretary, Esau re-emphasised his loyalty. As ‘true as there is a living God,’ he wrote, ‘I’ll remain a true loyal British subject to the British Crown and not I alone but the whole coloured nation are [proud] of their loyalty.’ 26 Esau, one of a distinctive Cape artisan class with its traditions of sobriety and petty accumulation, did indeed pay with his life.27 In February 1901 he died a terrible death at the hands of vengeful Republican commandos.28 Despite denials on both sides, there was no doubt that blacks carried arms. General Kritzinger, who on two occasions led commandos into the Colony, saw the arming of black people as one of the major causes of the Cape ‘rebellion’. In Calvinia, he alleged, there was an ‘infamous Hottentot column, five hundred strong’ who by ‘their actions . . . goaded the Calvinia farmers into rebellion’.29 These words have to be treated with caution, for Kritzinger was no disinterested observer. He had been captured and tried for his part in the murder of black combatants. Although acquitted, he clearly had no qualms about dealing with ‘armed natives in the most effectual manner possible,’ as he chillingly put it.30 But Kritzinger’s testimony nevertheless serves as a reminder of how incendiary was the sight of armed blacks to Republican forces and their Cape allies. It could easily serve, he explained, as a call to arms: The enlisting of blacks by the British induced many Colonists to cast in their lot with the Boers. If natives were to be employed

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to crush a kindred race, the Colonists thought that they were justified in rendering assistance to their fellow-Dutch . . . Moreover, these armed natives, once promoted to the rank of soldiers, tantalized the farmers, who were formerly their masters, to an inconceivable degree. With rifle in hand they would go to these and treat them in the most insulting manner.31 This was a world turned upside down. There was worse to come for those of Republican sympathies. In July 1900 the loyalist government of Sir Gordon Sprigg passed a Treason Bill to prosecute Cape ‘rebels’ for their part in the war. The government of W.P. Schreiner had earlier attempted to pass a bill which proposed, inter alia, to disenfranchise convicted ‘rebels’ for life. But Schreiner was in power only thanks to the Bond and when he failed to carry the latter with him in support of his bill, his government fell.32 His resignation in June 1900 effectively ended a century of rule through local collaborators. The Bond could now emerge as the political voice of Republican sympathy. Outside of government, it was free to denounce the war altogether.33 Sprigg’s Treason Bill heightened the tone of the agrarian war in the countryside. When the fortunes of war turned against Republican forces and as scores of Cape ‘rebels’ were brought up on charges of treason, the labouring poor of the Cape countryside took great satisfaction from ‘doing down their masters’.34 As settler society closed ranks, successful prosecutions came to depend on the testimony of black servants. The Bond saw Sprigg’s bill as a measure that ‘placed one section of the superior race in this country at the mercy of an inferior race’.35 The Bond had cause for concern. The treason courts became another forum in which the class war of the countryside was fought out. Old scores were settled and servants drew much strength and gleeful satisfaction from their ability to determine the fate of those who formerly ruled the countryside. At the trials held in Malmesbury between April and May 1902, for example, about 90 per cent of prosecution witnesses were Coloured farm labourers and domestic servants.36 The question of black testimony had, of course, troubled colonial courts throughout the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Then, as we have seen, slave-owning notables selectively used black testimony to impose their version of class rule on the Cape countryside. Now, ‘attributes of

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property, racial status and respectability carried little weight’.37 Foremost in the recollections of black witnesses were the victories that had been won under slavery. It was no small irony that it was in Cradock, the eastern Cape town named after the British governor who had resolved to end the ‘uncontrolled severity of the powerful over the weak’,38 that the shepherd Jacobus Stoffels reminded the Treason Court that ‘even slaves and Hottentots could speak out freely against their masters under British justice’.39 In the Cape, the war did not, as it did in the Transvaal, drive Boer landowners ‘to the very edge of extinction’.40 There, an expropriated African peasantry reclaimed ancestral land and so rolled back the frontiers of conquest. In the Cape there were no such reclamations. Colonial conquest was as complete in 1902 as it was in 1899. But the South African War nevertheless suspended – if only momentarily – the rule of the Cape gentry. For the wartime alliance that the British army forged with black colonial subjects was simply incompatible with the particular form of class rule that the Cape gentry had exercised thus far. The voices of the labouring poor had not been heard as loudly since the 1820s and 1830s. In the disorder of the South African War, they were – briefly – able to reclaim the elusive promises of citizenship granted by Ordinance 50, the ending of slavery and the cherished non-racial franchise of 1853. 41 But out of the ashes of war emerged the Union of South Africa, a unified white racist state. Foremost amongst South Africa’s new ruling class, was Jan Smuts, Boer general and son of the Cape gentry. As one who saw ‘the white community as the ruling class in South Africa’ he was the British Empire’s prime new collaborator. To allow the ‘coloured races’ the ‘casting vote’, Smuts believed, ‘would cause South Africa to relapse into barbarism’.42 The political rights that the British army’s black soldiers had fought for were not granted by the peace treaty of 1902; the question of extending the Cape’s non-racial franchise to the former northern republics was to be considered only after the introduction of responsible government a few years down the line. As local collaborators, the black population was dispensed with. This new South Africa was ruled in the interests of a reconstituted white ruling class.

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Notes 1. A. Atmore and S. Marks, ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 3, 1974, p. 109. ‘We do not know enough about the agrarian economy of the pre-war Transvaal to be able to claim that the war was the outcome of ‘a conflict between two competing bourgeoisie’. C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914: Volume 1, New Babylon (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1982), p. 23. 2. B. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War: A Black South African War in the Cape, 1899–1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 3, emphasis in original. 3. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 4. 4. Cited in G.H.L. le May, British Supremacy in South Africa, 1899–1907 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), p. 68. 5. PRO CO 48/543, Schreiner – Milner, 7 November 1899, Enclosure no. 5 in Despatch no. 33001. 6. PRO CO 48/543, Enclosure to Despatch no. 31516, Howe – Milner, 19 October 1899. 7. PRO CO48/543, Enclosure to Despatch no. 31516, Wrench – Milner, 20 October 1899. 8. PRO CO 48/543, Enclosure to Despatch no. 34349, Wrench – Secretary of Law Department, 17 November 1899. 9. PRO CO 48/545, Despatch no. 3021, Milner – Chamberlain, 27 January 1900. 10. PRO CO 48/546, Enclosure to Despatch no. 190000, 16 June 1900, Memorandum of F.R. Tennant of Burghersdorp, 24 May 1900. 11. Le May, British Supremacy, p. 48. 12. See for instance, PRO CO48/543, Howe – Milner, 19 October 1899, Enclosure to Despatch no. 31516. 13. PRO CO48/545, Resident Magistrate, Graaff-Reinet – Secretary of Law Department, n.d., Enclosure no. 4 in Despatch no. 2483, 22 January 1900. 14. PRO CO48/545, Enclosure to Despatch no. 4658 of 24 January 1900, Civil Commissioner, Calvinia – Secretary of Law Department, 20 December 1899; PRO CO48/543, Blenkins – Milner, 19 Oct. 1899. 15. PRO CO 48/543, F. Herold – Under Colonial Secretary of Cape Town, 2 November 1899, Enclosure to Despatch no. 33849. 16. PRO CO 48/543, Despatch no. 34343, Milner – Chamberlain, 9 December 1899, emphasis in original. 17. See Chapter 2. 18. PRO CO48/543, Enclosure to Despatch no. 31516, Gibbs – Milner, 20 October 1899. 19. PRO CO48/545, Enclosure no. 2 in Secret Despatch no. 7101 of 14 February 1900, Duk – Fiddes, 5 February 1900. 20. This is what is missing from M. Tamarkin, Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners: The Imperial Colossus and the Colonial Parish Pump (London: Cass, 1996). 21. For an early statement on the war as a ‘white man’s war’, see L. Thompson, ‘Great Britain and the Afrikaner Republics, 1870–1899’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, volume 2, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 326. For a definitive refutation, see P. Warwick, Black People and the South

Epilogue

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

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African War, 1899–1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). As it turned out, the war was neither ‘white’, nor was it a ‘man’s’ war; see H. Bradford, ‘Gentleman and Boers; Afrikaner Nationalism, Gender, and Colonial Warfare in the South African War’, in G. Cuthbertson et al. (eds.), Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002), pp. 37–66. PRO CO48/545, Despatch no. 3021, Milner – Chamberlain, 27 Jan. 1900. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 70. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 8. For the lessons which could be drawn from firsthand experience of British justice and notions of rule of law, see B. Willan, Sol Plaatje: A South African Nationalist, 1876–1932 (London: Heinemann, 1984), esp. pp. 64–72. PRO CO48/543, Enclosure no. 2 to Despatch no. 32030, 18 November 1899. PRO CO48/546, Enclosure to Despatch no. 10967, Esau – Secretary of Government, February 1900. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 122. The most moving account of Esau’s life and death is Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, esp. pp. 120–41. P.H. Kritzinger and R.D. McDonald, In the Shadow of Death (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1904), p. 167. Kritzinger and McDonald, In the Shadow of Death p. 88. Kritzinger and McDonald, In the Shadow of Death, pp. 166–7. E. Walker, W.P. Schreiner: A South African (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 233–6; Le May, British Supremacy, pp. 68–9; Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 146. Le May, British Supremacy, p. 71. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 168. Cited in Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 146. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 150. Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 147. See Chapter Two. Cited in Nasson, Abraham Esau’s War, p. 166. J. Krikler, Revolution from Above, Rebellion from Below: The Agrarian Transvaal at the Turn of the Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 59. In 1853, after much political wrangling, the Cape Parliament affirmed a non-racial franchise. The only qualifications were property and gender: voting was restricted to men who occupied fixed property worth £25 or earned an annual wage of at least £50. This qualification, which was not raised until 1892, was considered low even at the time. W.K. Hancock and J. van der Poel (eds.), Selections from the Smuts Papers, Volume 1 June 1886 – May 1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 484; B. Nasson, The South African War 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 232.

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Select Bibliography

A Note on Sources This book is based exclusively on written sources. It rests very largely on the magnificent collections in the Cape Town branch of the National Archives of South Africa and to a lesser extent on colonial documents deposited with the National Archives in the United Kingdom (formerly known as the Public Records Office). The South African documents provided much insight into local events, although the criminal and civil cases of the British period are not nearly as rich of those of the eighteenth-century Dutch East India Company records. Lawmakers and local magistrates seldom wrote down the thinking that went into legal decisions and for the most part the historian of this period has to make do with summary judgements. The nineteenth-century Cape is similarly not as well served for records to track wealth and moveable property when compared to the eighteenth century. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the year which saw the formal ending of slavery, 1834, also brought to an end the routine recording of the assets of deceased estates. Up to this point, slaves had constituted by far the greatest portion of settler wealth. British authorities also discontinued the Dutch practice of carrying out yearly censuses. This lacuna, however, was more than compensated for by the determination on the part of British authorities to bring bankruptcy into the public eye and the records of insolvent estates have provided evidence for many of the core arguments for this book. The basic empirical investigation of this book – to examine the extent to which former slaveholders retained title to land – was conducted by scouring through thousands of land transfers and mortgage bonds in the Cape Town Deeds Office. These documents are of immense importance and have been almost entirely neglected by historians. They cover the entire period from when the first land deeds were issued in the middle of the seventeenth century to the present day. A voluminous series of ‘Debt Registers’, which complements these records, details the transactions of every single individual in the Colony who had taken on debt or extended credit for the whole of the nineteenth century. At the time I conducted my research, these volumes were neatly arranged in alphabetical order (by individual) across several metres of shelving. They have since been unceremoniously dumped on the floor of an anonymous storeroom and have as a consequence been rendered unusable. Moreover, at the time I consulted the documents in the Cape Town Deeds Office, access was open and free to historical researchers. The South African Ministry of Land Affairs has subsequently imposed a substantial fee for access to these documents, effectively closing the door to sustained academic work on the primary documentary records of colonial and apartheid-era land alienation.

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DOCUMENTARY SOURCES A. Republic of South Africa National Archives, Cape Town (CA) The following series were consulted: AC C CJ CO CSC DOC GH 1/GR J LG 1/MBY MOIB MOOC NCD SO 1/STB VC

Council of Advice Council of Policy, VOC Court of Justice, VOC Colonial Office Cape Supreme Court Registrar of Deeds Government House Graaff-Reinet District Archives Opgaafrollen, [Census Records] VOC Lieutenant Governor of the Eastern Province Malmesbury District Archives Records of Insolvent Estates Records of Deceased Estates Notarial Records of Individual Notaries Slave Office Stellenbosch District Archives Verbatim Copies

Deeds Office, Plein Street, Cape Town (DO) Transfer Deeds Mortgage Bonds Debt Registers (abbreviated as ‘DR’) Index to Farms Standard Bank Archives, Johannesburg (SB) Inspection Reports (abbreviated as ‘SB Insp’) from the following district branches: Bredasdorp, Caledon, Ceres, Malmesbury, Paarl, Riversdale, Robertson, Stellenbosch, Swellendam, Wellington, Worcester

B. United Kingdom Public Records Office, London (PRO), now The National Archives The following series were consulted: CO Colonial Office, mainly series 48, 53 and 414 WO War Office School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) CWM Archives of the Council for World Mission (formerly London Missionary Society), Incoming Correspondence

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PUBLISHED GOVERNMENT SOURCES A. Cape Colony Cape of Good Hope Blue Books Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette (abbreviated as ‘GG’) Cape of Good Hope Directory and Almanack G20-1857, Two Reports for Inquiring into the Present State of the Law Relative to the Collection, Administration and Distribution of Insolvent Estates in the Colony G20-1857, Report of the Commissioners Relative to the Expediency of Abolishing the Existing System of Preferent Credit by Means of General Bonds G41-1861, Report of the Operations of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society, 1861 A9-1862, Petition from Certain Landowners of the District of Stellenbosch, 14 May 1862 G24-1865, Report of the Colonial Botanist for the Year 1864, 20 June 1864 G15-1865, Report of the Law of Inheritance Commission for the Western Districts A7-1867, Report of the Select Committee on the Law of Inheritance Bill A26-1879, Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Consider and Report on the Supply of the Labour Market C2-1882, Report of the Select Committee to Enquire into and Report upon the Desirability of the Appointment of a Minister of Agriculture G46-1885, Memorandum upon the Condition of Agriculture in the Cape Colony, and Suggestions for its Improvement; with the Inaugural Address Delivered at the Stellenbosch College on 20 June 1884, by Prof. A. Fischer G39-1893, Minutes of Labour Commission G3-1894, Report of the 1893 Labour Commission

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PUBLISHED COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS AND OTHER PUBLISHED SOURCES Annual Reports of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society, Colonial Affairs, IV, 1862–1867. Archives of the Union of South Africa, Suid Afrikaanse Argiefstukke: Kaap, 10 volumes (Cape Town: Government Printer, 1957–1984). Dictionary of South African Biography, volume IV (Durban: Butterworth, 1981). Hancock, W.K. and J. van der Poel (eds.). Selections from the Smuts Papers, Volume 1 June 1886 – May 1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Jeffreys, K.M. (ed.), Kaapse Plakkaatboek, 6 volumes (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1944–49). Mabin, A. and B. Conradie (eds.). The Confidence of the Whole Country: Standard Bank

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NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS (Published in Cape Town, except where noted otherwise) Cape Argus Cape Monthly Magazine De Zuid Afrikaan (abbreviated as ‘ZA’) South African Commercial Advertiser (abbreviated as ‘SACA’) The Colonist The Friend of the Free State and Bloemfontein Gazette (Bloemfontein)

PUBLISHED BOOKS AND ARTICLES Atmore, A. and S. Marks. ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 3, 1974, 105–39. Baikoff, J. 1838–1938: The History of the Board of Executors (Cape Town: Board of Executors, 1989). Bailey, J.D. A Hundred Years of Pastoral Banking: A History of the Australian Mercantile Land & Finance Company, 1863–1963 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). Bank, A. The Decline of Urban Slavery at the Cape, 1806–1843 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1991). ————. ‘The Great Debate and the Origins of South African Historiography’, Journal of African History, 38, 1997, 261–81. Bauer, A.J. Chilean Rural Society: From the Spanish Conquest to 1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). ————. ‘Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 59, 1979, 34–63. Berdahl, R.M. The Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology, 1770–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). Bickford-Smith, V. Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Bird, W.W. State of the Cape in 1822 by a Civil Servant (Cape Town: Struik, 1966). Blackburn, R. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery (London: Verson, 1988). Botha, C.G. ‘Sir John Andries Truter, 1763–1845’, South African Law Journal, May 1918, 1–20.

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Botha, H.C. ‘Die Rol van Christoffel J. Brand in Suid Afrika, 1820–1854’, Archives Yearbook for South African History, 1977. Boxer, C.R. The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (London: Hutchinson, 1965). Bradford, H. A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924–1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1987). ————. ‘Highways, Byways, and Culs-de-Sacs: the Transition to Agrarian Capitalism in Revisionist South African History’, Radical History Review, 46 & 47, Winter 1990, 59– 88. ————. ‘Gentleman and Boers: Afrikaner Nationalism, Gender, and Colonial Warfare in the South African War’, in G. Cuthbertson et al. (eds.), Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902 (Cape Town: David Philip, 2002). Brading, D.A. Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajio: Leon 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). Bradley, K.R. Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Bradlow, E. ‘The “Great Fear” at the Cape of Good Hope, 1851–52’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22, 3, 1989, 401–21. Breen, T. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of the Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Brewer, H. ‘Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia: “Ancient Feudal Restraints” and Revolutionary Reform’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, LIV, 1997, 307–46. Bryden, H.A. Kloof and Karoo: Sport, Legend and Natural History in the Cape Colony (London: Longman, 1889). Buckland, W.W. The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908). Burnard, T. ‘Inheritance and Independence: Women’s Status in Early Colonial Jamaica’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XLVIII, 1991, 93–114. Burrows, E.H. Overberg Outspan: A Chronicle of People and Places in the South Western Districts of the Cape (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1952). Butler, K.M. The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados, 1823–1843 (London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Cloete, H. Three Lectures on the Emigration of the Dutch Farmers from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and their Settlement in the District of Natal (Pietermaritzburg: J. Archbell and Son, 1852). Coetzee, J.M. White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988). Collins, E.J.T. ‘The Age of Machinery’, in G.E. Mingay (ed.), The Victorian Countryside, 2 volumes, (London: Routledge, 1981). ————. ‘The “Machinery Question” in English Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century’, in G. Grantham and C.S. Leonard (eds.), Agrarian Organization in the Century of Industrialization: Europe, Russia and North America (London: JAI Press, 1989). Cooper, F. Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997; first published 1977). Cory, G. The Rise of South Africa, 6 volumes, (London: Green and Co., 1910). Crais, C.C. The Making of the Colonial Order: White Supremacy and Black Resistance in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1865 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1992).

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Crosby, A.W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972). Davenport, T.R.H. The Afrikaner Bond: the History of a South African Political Party, 1880– 1911 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1966). Davis, D.B. Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). Delius, P. and S. Trapido, ‘Inboekselings and Oorlams: the Creation and Transformation of a Servile Class’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 8, 1982, 214–42. Denoon, D. Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983). Dooling, W. Law and Community in a Slave Society: Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c.1760– 1820 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1992). ————. ‘Slavery and Amelioration in the Graaff-Reinet District, 1823–1830’, South African Historical Journal, 27, 1992, 75–94. ————. ‘The Castle: its Place in the History of Cape Town in the VOC Period’, Studies in the History of Cape Town, 7, 1994, 9–31. Du Toit, A. and H. Giliomee. Afrikaner Political Thought, Volume 1, 1780–1850 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1983). Dubow, S. Land, Labour and Merchant Capital: The Experience of the Graaff Reinet District in the Pre-industrial Rural Economy of the Cape, 1852–1872 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1982). Duckitt, H. Hilda’s Diary of a Housekeeper (Cape Town: Clapham and Hall, 1978). Duly, L.C. British Land Policy at the Cape, 1795–1844: A Study of Administrative Procedures in the Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1968). ————. ‘A Revisit with the Cape’s Hottentot Ordinance of 1828’, in M. Kooy (ed.), Studies in Economics and Economic History: Essays in Honour of Professor H.M. Robertson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972). Elphick, R. and H. Giliomee (eds.). The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 (2nd edition, Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989). Falola, T. ‘ “My Friend the Shylock”: Money-lenders and their Clients in South-Western Nigeria’, Journal of African History, 34, 1993, 403–23. Faure, D.P. My Life and Times (Cape Town: Juta & Co., 1907). Foner, E. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). Ford, L.K. Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Fransen, H. (ed.). A Cape Camera: The Architectural Beauty of the Old Cape, Photographs from the Arthur Elliot Collection in the Cape Archives (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2000). Fussell, G.E. The Farmer’s Tools: the History of British Farm Implements, Tools and Machinery, A.D. 1500–1900 (London: Oris Publishing, 1981). Genovese, E.D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Press, 1974). ————. From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1979). Genovese, E.D. and E. Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Gewald, J. Herero Heroes: A Socio-political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923 (Oxford: James Currey, 1999).

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Giliomee, H. ‘Die Administrasietydperk van Lord Caledon, 1807–11’, Archives Yearbook for South African History, 29, 1966. ————. The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London: Hurst, 2003). Glymph, T. and J.J. Kushma (eds.). Essays on the Postbellum Southern Economy (Arlington: Texas A & M University Press, 1985). Hahn, S. The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). ————. ‘Class and State in Post-emancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective’, American Historical Review, 95, 1990, 75–98. ————. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (London: Belknap, 2003). Hall, M. ‘The Secret Lives of Houses: Women and Gables in the Eighteenth-century Cape’, Social Dynamics, 20, 1994, 1–48. Hancock, W.K. Smuts: the Sanguine Years, 1870–1919 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1962). Harlow, V.T. ‘Cape Colony, 1806–1822’, in E.A. Walker (ed.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, volume VIII: South Africa, Rhodesia and the High Commission Territories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Hobsbawm, E.J. The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975). Hobsbawm, E.J. and G. Rudé, Captain Swing (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969). Hoge, J. ‘Martin Melck’, Tydskrif vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 12, 1933–34, 198–209. ————. ‘Personalia of the Germans at the Cape, 1652–1806’, Archives Year Book for South African History, 9, 1946. Iliffe, J. Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Katzenellenbogen, S.E. ‘Reconstruction in the Transvaal’, in P. Warwick (ed.), The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (London: Longman, 1980). Keegan, T.J. Rural Transformations in Industrializing South Africa: the Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1986). ————. Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996). Keim, C.R. ‘Primogeniture and Entail in Colonial Virginia’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XXV, 1968, 545–68. King, H. Richard Bourke (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971). Kivelson, V. ‘The Effects of Partible Inheritance: Gentry Families and the State in Muscovy’, The Russian Review, 53, 1994, 197–212. ————. Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). Kolchin, P. ‘Some Recent Work on Slavery outside the United States: An American Perspective’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28, 1986, 767–77. Krikler, J. Revolution from Above, Rebellion from Below: The Agrarian Transvaal at the Turn of the Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). Kritzinger P.H. and R.D. McDonald. In the Shadow of Death (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1904). Kulikoff, A. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680– 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). Lamar, M. ‘ “Choosing” Partible Inheritance: Chilean Merchant Families, 1795–1825’, Journal of Social History, 28, 1994, 125–45.

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Lau, B. ‘Conflict and Power in Nineteenth-century Namibia’, Journal of African History, 27, 1986, 29–39. Le May, G.H.L. British Supremacy in South Africa, 1899–1907 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965). Long, H. ‘The Development of Mechanization in English Farming’, Agricultural History Review, 11, 1963. Lonsdale, J. and B. Berman. ‘Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914’, Journal of African History, 20, 1979, 487–507. Mann, K. ‘The rise of Taiwo Olowo: Law, Accumulation, and Mobility in Early Colonial Lagos’, in K. Mann and R. Roberts (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991). Manning, R. The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). Marais, J.S. Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1944). ————. The Cape Coloured People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1968; first published 1939). Marincowitz, J.N.C. ‘From “Colour Question” to “Agrarian Problem” at the Cape: Reflections on the Interim’, in H. Macmillan and S. Marks (eds.), Africa and Empire, W.M. Macmillan: Historian and Social Critic (London: Temple Smith, 1989). Marks, S. and A. Amore (eds.). Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London: Longman, 1980). Mason, J.E. ‘The Slaves and their Protectors: Reforming Resistance in a Slave Society; The Cape Colony, 1826–1834’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 1991, 103–28. ————. Social Death and Resurrection: Slavery and Emancipation in South Africa (London: University of Virginia Press, 2003). Mayer, A.J. The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Croom Helm, 1981). Mentzel, O.F. Life at the Cape in the Mid-eighteenth Century, Being the Biography of Rudolf Siegfried Allemann (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1919). ————. A Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good Hope, 3 volumes (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1921 and 1925). Miller, S. ‘Wheat Production in Europe and America: Mexican Problems in Comparative Perspective, 1770–1910’, Agricultural History, 68, 1994, 16–34. Moore, B., Jr. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). Morgan, E.S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975). Morris, M.L. ‘The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture: Class Struggle in the Countryside’, Economy and Society, 5, 1976, 292–343. Mostert, N. Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992). Mountain, A. An Unsung Heritage: Perspectives on Slavery (Cape Town: David Philip, 2004). Nasson, B. Abraham Esau’s War: A Black South African War in the Cape, 1899–1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). ————. The South African War 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999). Newton-King, S. Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier, 1760–1803 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). Newton-King, S. and V.C. Malherbe. The Khoikhoi Rebellion in the Eastern Cape (1799– 1803) (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1981).

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Noble, J. Descriptive Handbook of the Cape Colony: its Conditions and Resources (Cape Town: Richards, Glanville and Co., 1875). O’Meara, D. Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Philip, J. Researches in South Africa, 2 volumes, (London: James Duncan, 1828). Pitt-Rivers, J. ‘Honor’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, volume 6 (New York: Macmillan, 1968). Ross, R. Adam Kok’s Griquas: A Study in the Development of Stratification in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). ————. ‘The Rule of Law at the Cape of Good Hope in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, 1980, 5–16. ————. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa (London: Routledge, 1983). ————. ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 1983, 193–217. ————. Beyond the Pale: Essays on the History of Colonial South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). ————. ‘ “Rather Mental than Physical”: Emancipations and the Cape Economy’, in N. Worden and C. Crais (eds.), Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the NineteenthCentury Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwaterrand University Press, 1994). Rothenberg, W. ‘Farm Account Books: Problems and Possibilities’, Agricultural History, 58, 1984, 106–12. Rozbicki, M.J. The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America (London: University Press of Virginia, 1998). Saunders, C. The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988). Schissler, H. ‘The Junkers: Notes on the Social Significance of the Agrarian Elite in Prussia’, in R.G. Moëller (ed.), Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany: Recent Studies in Agricultural History (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986). Schoeman, K. Die Laaste Afrikaanse Boek: Outobiografiese Aantekeninge (Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, 2002). Schwartz, S.B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Scott, J.C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (London, Yale University Press, 1985). Scully, P. The Bouquet of Freedom: Social and Economic Relations in Stellenbosch District, South Africa, c.1870–1900 (Cape Town: Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1990). ————. Liberating the Family?: Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997). Shell, R.C-H. Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). Shifflett, C.A. Patronage and Poverty in the Tobacco South: Louisa County, Virginia, 1860–1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). Slater, H. ‘Land, Labour and Capitalism in Natal: the Natal Land and Colonisation Company, 1860–1948’, Journal of African History, 16, 1975, 257–83. Slicher van Bath, B.H. The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850 (London: Arnold, 1966).

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Stannard, D.E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Stein, S.J. Vassouras, a Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1890: The Roles of Planter and Slave in a Plantation Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985; first published 1957). Stone, L. and J.C.F. Stone. An Open Elite? England, 1540–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). Tamarkin, M. Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners: The Imperial Colossus and the Colonial Parish Pump (London: Cass, 1996). Theal, G.M. History of South Africa, the Cape Colony from 1828 to 1846, Natal from 1824 to 1845, and Proceedings of the Emigrant Farmers from 1836 to 1847, volume II (London: Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., 1908). Thompson, E.P. ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 50, 1971, 76–136. Thompson, G. Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1967 and 1968). Thompson, L. ‘Great Britain and the Afrikaner Republics, 1870–1899’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, volume 2, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Thunberg, C.P. Travels at the Cape of Good Hope, 1772–1775 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1986). Trapido, S. ‘South Africa in a Comparative Study of Industrialization’, Journal of Development Studies, 7, 1971, 309–20. Unwin, T. Wine and Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade (London: Routledge, 1991). Van den Heever, C.M. Droogte (Pretoria: Van Schaik, 1930). Van der Merwe, P.J. Die Noordwaardse Beweging van die Boere voor die Groot Trek, 1770–1842 (Pretoria: State Library, 1988; first published 1937). ————. The Migrant Farmer in the History of the Cape Colony, 1657–1842, translated by R.B. Beck, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1995). Van der Spuy, P. ‘ “Making Himself Master”: Galant’s Rebellion Revisited’, South African Historical Journal, 27, 1996, 1–28. Van Leeuwen, S. Commentaries on Roman-Dutch Law, translated by J.G. Kotze, volume 2 (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1881). Van Onselen, C. Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914: Volume 1, New Babylon (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1982). Van Zyl, D.J. ‘Die Geskiedenis van Graanbou aan die Kaap, 1795–1826’, Archives Year Book for South African History, 31, 1968. Wagner, W. Marriage, Property and Law in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). Walker, E. A History of South Africa, (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1928). ————. The Great Trek (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1934). ————. W.P. Schreiner: A South African (London: Oxford University Press, 1937). Walvin, J. England, Slaves and Freedom, 1776–1838 (London: Macmillan, 1986). Warwick, P. Black People and the South African War, 1899–1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Watson, R.L. The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990).

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Wayne, M. The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860–1880 (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983). Weiss, B. The Hell of the English: Bankruptcy and the Victorian Novel (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1986). Wessels, J.W. History of Roman-Dutch Law (Grahamstown: African Book Company, 1908). Wiener, J. ‘Planter-Merchant Conflict in Reconstruction Alabama’, Past and Present, 68, 1975, 73–92. ————. Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1865–1885 (London: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). ————. ‘Class Structure and Economic Development in the American South, 1865–1955’, American Historical Review, 84, 1979, 970–92. Wiener, M.J. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1890 (London: Penguin, 1981). Willan, B. Sol Plaatje: A South African Nationalist, 1876–1932 (London: Heinemann, 1984). Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951). Worden, N. Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). ————. ‘Adjusting to Emancipation: Freed Slaves and Farmers in mid-nineteenth-century South-Western Cape’ in W.G. James and M. Simons (eds.), The Angry Divide: Social and Economic History of the Western Cape (Cape Town: David Philip, 1989). ————. ‘Forging a Reputation: Artisan Honour and the Cape Town Blacksmith Strike of 1752’, Kronos, 28, 2002, 43–65. Worden, N. and C. Crais (eds.). Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the NineteenthCentury Cape Colony (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). Worden, N., E. van Heyningen and V. Bickford-Smith. Cape Town, The Making of a City: An Illustrated History (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998).

UNPUBLISHED THESES AND PAPERS Bank, A. ‘Liberals and their Enemies: Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820 to 1850’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995. Du Plessis, J. ‘Colonial Progress and Countryside Conservatism: an Essay on the Legacy of Van der Lingen of Paarl, 1831–1875’, M.A. thesis, University of Stellenbosch, 1988. Hengherr, E. ‘Emancipation and After: A Study of Cape Slavery and the Issues Arising from It, 1830–1843’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1953. Host, E.A. ‘Capitalisation and Proletarianization on a Western Cape Farm: Klaver Valley, 1812–1898’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. Liebenberg, B.J. ‘Die Vrystelling van die Slawe in die Kaapkolonie en die Implikasies Daarvan’, M.A. thesis, University of the Orange Free State, 1959. Ludlow, E.H. ‘Missions and Emancipations in the Southwestern Cape: A Case Study of Groenekloof (Mamre), 1838–1852’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. Malherbe, V.C. ‘The Cape Khoisan in the Eastern Districts of the Colony before and after Ordinance 50 of 1828’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. Marincowitz, J.N.C., ‘Rural Production and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838–1888, with Special Reference to the Wheat Growing Districts’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985.

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Mason, J. ‘Slaveholder Resistance to the Amelioration of Slavery at the Cape’, paper presented at ‘Western Cape – Roots and Realities’ Conference, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, July 1986. Newton-King, S. ‘In Search of Notability: The Antecedents of David van der Merwe of the Koue Bokkeveld’, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, The Societies of Southern Africa, Collected Seminar Papers, 20, 1994. Rayner, M. ‘Wine and Slaves: The Failure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806–1834’, Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1986. Reidy, M.C. ‘The Admission of Slaves and “Prize Slaves” into the Cape Colony, 1797– 1818’, M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997. Rosenthal, E. ‘The Stephan Saga’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d.). Viljoen, R. ‘ “Land of Our Forefathers”: Jan Paerl, a Khoikhoi Prophet in Cape Colonial Society, 1761–1851’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Leiden, 2003.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to tables and figures. Abolition Act 134 ‘accidental colonists’ 20 Afrikaner Bond 11, 213–14, 225–6, 228 Afrikaner nationalism 5 agrarian economy crisis 6, 206 recession 29–32 agricultural machinery 166–7 agricultural population 204–10 agriculture, backwardness 169–73 agriculture, profitability of 177–81 amelioration programme 11, 84, 87–91 ameliorative legislation 89 apartheid 5 apprenticeship 27, 112 law (1812) 64 scheme 98

British administration (1795–1803) 60 armed forces 226 banks 200 enlisting of blacks 227–8 government 11 hegemony 223 humanitarians 59 imperial armies 223 rule 70–8, 82–91 British Jurisprudence and Practice 59 British Select Committee 25 ‘Bushman’ British policy 60 closing of frontier 59–62 children 61 ‘Wars’ 24, 60

bankruptcies 99–100 landowners 189–90 bankruptcy English law of 206 insolvency and 206 baptised slaves 87 Barry and Nephews 203 Bethelsdorp mission station 69 bijwoners (landless whites) 27 black labourers 226 Bokkeveld 132, 133 brandy, Cape 213 Bredasdorp 189 Bresler, F.R. 66 bribery 45

Caledon 189, 190 Caledon Code 64, 66 Caledon, Lord 60, 65 Caledon mission station 119–20 Camdebo 24 Cape Colony 7 imported slaves 21 labouring population 226 Cape gentry 4, 10, 32–40 British rule 70–8 colonial ruling class 40 remaking of 213–15 unmaking of 210–13 Cape of Good Hope 17–18 registered slaves 115

244

Index

Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society 166–7 Cape of Good Hope Bank 134 Cape Town 20, 21 cash advances 128 cattle farming 116, 178–9 lung sickness 188–9 cereals, price of 21 chattel slavery 16 children 93–4 Bushman 61 Hottentot 67–8 legitimated 118 orphaned 62 Christian National Education 213 Christian slaves 84 Circuit Court 44, 68 Civil Commissioners 92 Civil War, United States 5, 6 class conflict 114 colonial authority and rule of law 40–5 colonial crisis and reform 91–5 ‘colonialism’ 215 Colonial Law of Inheritance 31 Colonial Law of Marriage 31 colonial legal system 17, 205 colonial ruling class 2 Colonial Secretary 74 colonial violence 28 Coloured British subjects 227 commando 24, 60–1 civilian 24 general 25 military power 202 Commission of Inquiry 91–3 community 10 censure 47 credit 194 hunter-gatherers 23 interdependencies 142, 194 see also moral community Company Slave Lodge 19 compensation 98–100 human property 134–8 limits of 138–41 contract system 93

245

corn farmers 116 corruption, personal 74 Council of Policy 19, 25 Court of Justice (Cape Town) 17, 48, 49, 68, 74 public prosecutors 42–3 Cradock, Sir John 58–9, 68 Craig, General 72–3 credit and debt 129, 134 moral dimension 130–1 cultivation methods 169–73 cultural values 10 Daniel Mills & Sons 188, 203, 211–12 debt bondage 124–8 Denyssen, Daniel 70, 71 depression 172–3, 204 desertion 16 diamonds, discovery of 173, 223 domestic servants 116 Drakenstein 21, 23 drought 159, 188–9, 197 Du Toit, S.J. 98 D’Urban, Sir Benjamin 114 Dutch colonists 224 elite 11, 68, 74, 78 slave-owners 113 Dutch/Afrikaner farmers 224–5 Dutch East India Company see VOC Dutch Reformed Ministers 226 Eastern Cape 119–20 economy, slave 28–32 emancipation 4, 99–100, 113–14 English law 92 Esau, Abraham 227 estate agriculture 6 excise duty on brandy 213 Farmers’ Protection Association (ZABBV) 213–14 farmers’ shops 214 Fellowship of True Afrikaners 213 field commanders 25 franchise, non-racial 229 freeburghers 18–20, 28, 30, 33

246

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

free trade 11 ideoloy of 59 in money 147, 197–201, 205 frontier violence 60 Galant (charismatic slave) 88–9 gentry power 78–82 George 44, 70 Graaff-Reinet 24, 26, 60, 61–2, 70, 191 grain 21, 28 crisis 78–9 Koeberg 114 grazing permits, free 22 Great Trek 92, 93 Great War (1914–18) 5 Griqua 117 Guardian of Slaves 85 Guardian’s Fund 145 Hantam 24 harvest labour 164 heemraden 42, 43, 67 hegemony of property 98 Hendrikse, Hendrik 58, 100 Homicide, Law of 78 honour 45–9 ‘Hottentot Code’ 63, 73, 75 colonial origins 65–70 ‘Hottentots’ children 67–8 colonial 62–70 emancipation 93 labour 62 hunting grounds, traditional 23 imperial banks 200–2 inboekstelsel see apprenticeship indebtedness and patronage 128–34 indentureship 112 indigenous population 2 loss of independence 23 industrial revolution 6 industrious class 33 inheritance law (Cape) 31, 32–40 see also partible inheritance insolvency 135, 191–7 law of 205 moral check on 206–7

insolvent estates 191 records of 8–9 interest rates 138–9, 147, 200 judicial torture 73 ‘Junkers’ 4, 6 Kat Rivier rebellion 120 settlement 119 Khoikhoi 18, 20, 23–4, 62 children 64 emancipated 114 protection against abuse 65 uprising 44 Khoisan 24–5 labour 41 massacre of 25 Khoi servants 48 Kimberley 173 Koeberg 114 Koup 24, 27 labour contracts 63 costs 163 force 41 loss of 128 and mechanisation 173–7 mobility of 174 near-starvation 189–90 population 226 shortage 80, 166, 173 tenancy 124–8 wage 124–8 labour-intensive slave regimes 40–5 land decline in prices 30 hunger 119 tenure system 32 landdrosts 42–5, 67–9 bribery 45 landed property 138–41 landholding 177 landlords absentee 33 resident 33

Index

livestock farming 22–3 loan(s) collateral 99 farm system 22 short-term 129–30 slaves as collateral 99 Lombard Bank 99 London Missionary Society

69, 97–8

Macartney, Lord 60, 73 machinery, labour-saving 166 Malmesbury 5, 114, 121, 169, 189 Malmesbury Agricultural and Commercial Bank 207 maps Cape Colony iv Malmesbury village vi Stellenbosch village v Marie (slave) 76–7 marriage 118–19 Marriage Order-in-Council 118 Masters and Servants Act (1856) 123, 174, 215 Maynier, Honoratus 62, 63 measles epidemic 117, 118 mechanisation 166–9 and labour 173–7 merchant capital 7, 10–11, 202–4, 212 class 81 community 204–5 shopkeepers 203 tyranny 202–4 Merriman, John X. 224 migration, to Cape Town 117 Milner, Alfred 225, 226 minerals 6 capital 7, 176–7 reserves 223 Transvaal 224 missionaries 11, 69 missionary institutions Caledon 117–18 Elim 117 Genadendal 117 Moddergat 132–3, 196 money lenders 129–34, 147–8, 201

247

moral economy 42 moral community 10, 45–9, 141–7, 199–200, 205 mortgage 192–3 bonds 145–6, 159–60, 193 capital 6 debt 6–7, 129, 161, 193 holders 142, 143–4 indebtedness 199 loans 129, 188 payments on bonds 165 slave property 136–7 mortgage history Berg en Dal, Mosselbanks Rivier 209 Middelburg, Mosselbanks Rivier 208 Mosenthal & Co. 203 Mosselbanks Rivier 9, 16, 49, 58, 96, 132, 159, 193–4 mortgage indebtedness 195 turnover of property 39–40 Wolwedans farm 16, 32 murder of slaves 16, 17, 48–9 August 58, 70 Danzer 77 Joris 78 Laberlot 16, 32, 49 nachtwerkers see moneylenders Namaqualand 24 Napoleonic Wars 6 Nieuweveld 24, 27 Oliphantsfontein 58, 70 oral contracts 93 Orange Free State 223 Orders-in-Council 85 Ordinance 19 (1826) 85, 86, 95 Ordinance 50 (1828) 59, 93, 94, 95, 114, 121, 229 Ordinance 1 (1841) 121, 123 Ordinance 6 (1843) 205 Orphan Chamber 74, 99, 180 orphaned children 62 Paarl 118, 168–9 Paarl Board of Executors 180 Pacaltsdorp 190

248

Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule

partible inheritance 36, 40, 129, 159, 161 passes 63–4 paternalism of slavery 116 Paterson & Co. 203 patronage, powers of 46 Philip, John 97–8 placaats (statutes) 41–2 political economy 10 politics, local and personal 71 Proclamation (1809) 68 Proclamation (1823) 87 Protecteur Life and Fire Assurance Company 180 Protector of Slaves 85–6, 113 Prussian model 4, 6 public works 173 Punishment Record Books 86 railways 173 reaping machines 167–8, 174–5 rebellion (1799–1803) 63, 65, 68, 224 recession 131, 191–2 agrarian economy 29 reputation 45–9 residential segregation 117 Resident Magistrates 92 retail shops 126 Rhodes, Cecil John 215 rights of slaves 42, 84–7 Riviersonderend 132 Roggeveld 24 Roman-Dutch law 17, 92 cruelty towards slaves 48 of succession 31 rural labourers 196–7 SANTAM 7 services as security 126 settlement, negotiated 128 settlers abuses 65 agriculture 21 expansion 23 farms 3–4, 21 society 17–23 wealthy 225–6

slave economy 28–32, 79 end of 95–100 slave-owners 4 compensation 98–100 Kalbaskraal 39 killing of slaves 48 prosecution of 45–6 Wolwedans 38 slave-owning society 10, 32–40 slaves abuse of 70 freed 120–3 labour force 2 rights 42, 84–7 scarcity 79, 83 testimony of 47–9 slave trade 4 network 29 trans-oceanic 83 smallpox 24, 117 smousen (itinerant traders) 27 Smuts, Jan Christiaan 5, 229 Sneeuwberg 24, 27 Somerset, Lord Charles 11, 91 soul-sellers (seelenverkaüfers) 18–19 South African Association 145 South African Bank 180, 200 South African Irrigation and Investment Company 203 South African Missionary Society 118 South African War 224, 229 black participation 226–7 spice trade 17–18 Squatters Bill 120 ‘squatting’ 94 Standard Bank 200, 201, 203, 214 statutes (local placaats) 41–2 Stellenbosch 21, 23, 25, 28, 46–7, 116, 196 Stellenbosch District Bank 214 stipendiary magistrates 112–13 Stockenström, Andries 60 stock farmers (trekboers) 22, 27, 33, 44–5 economy of 59–60 Stolts, Willem 34–5 Supreme Court 92 surety 130

Index

Swartland region 5 Swellendam 113, 118 Swellendam Bank 203 Tarka 24 threshing machines 171–5 trading 178–81 transfer deeds 193 Treason Bill 228 Tulbagh, Ryk 74 unsecured debt 130 usury 147–8, 197–9 vagrancy 64, 94 legislation 114 Van der Lingen, G.W.A. 98, 225 Van der Stel, Simon 21, 23 Van Riebeeck, Jan 18 Van Ryneveld, W.S. 66–7, 73, 75 veldcornets 67, 94 vineyards, disease in 189, 197 violence 64–5 VOC (Dutch East India Company) settler society 17–23 slave labour 41 Vos, Reverend 226 vrij swart (free black) 35 Wade, T.F. 112–13 wage labour 7, 124–8, 160 wages 123 day-book 127 and debt 126 and work 161–6 war captives 61 Western Cape 116, 161–2 Western Province Bank 179–80 wheat 28, 79, 139 crop failures 96 labour shortages 116 manual labour 162 market prices 165 mechanisation 169, 175 money-lending 196

3

249

morgages 199, 209 post-emancipation 128 prices 177–8 rust 189 slave labour 40, 114 white farmers, first 20–1 white ruling class 229 widows 37–40, 129–30 wine 28, 139–40 allowance 122 Cape industry 80–2, 116 collapse of boom 131 duties on 95 manual labour 162–3 mechanisation 176 money-lending 196 mortgages 199, 207, 209 prices 166, 178 recession 165–6, 192 routes 1 slave labour 40, 82 value collapse 95–6 Wine Taster, office of 80 Wolwedans farm murder of slave 16, 32, 49 ownership history 38 women Cape settlers 37–40 slaves 85 wool production 80, 202 Worcester 113, 179, 189, 192 Worcester Commercial Bank 179 Xhosa 59 alliance with ‘Hottentots’ 62–3 uprising 44 Zuurveld 62 ZABBV (Zuid Afrikaansche Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging) see Farmers’ Protection Association Zuurbraak mission station 190 Zuurveld 62 Zwartland 132