Cape of Slaves

South Africa’s most cosmopolitan holiday honey pot, Cape Town has always beaten to a different drum. Now a new musical initiative based on Cape slave culture encourages visitors and locals alike to celebrate its unique cultural essence. Inspired by its vibrance, I devised a 10-stop slave site tour which also takes in some of the city’s trendiest and most spectacular sights.

Think contemporary Cape Town city centre and you probably think penthouses, coffee shops, colonial architecture and modern high-rises. Stretch your imagination to include its foundations and scenery and De Oude Kaap, first settled by the Dutch in 1652, takes on a funky new dimension.

1. Forget glitterati; think goemarati
Not only was much of the city built with the expertise of slaves, many of whom lie buried anonymously in unmarked graves covered by roads and buildings, but the genetic make-up of much of its present population owes its hybrid structure to over 63 000 slaves imported from Indonesia, India, Mozambique, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, amongst other destinations, from the mid-1600s to the early 19th century. With little in common to unite them, slaves, many of whom interbred with the indigenous Khoi, virtually invented their own culture, which relied strongly on the Khoi ghoema drum. Now, in keeping with national efforts to embrace South Africa’s multicultural identity, the Cape Town Partnership has devised a strategy called Goemarati, which aims to connect Town and Township, and memorialise Cape Town’s creolised culture through musicians, poets and performers. Launched on 21 February, the monthly performances take place at historic Church Square, transformed from a run-down parking area to a vibrant pedestrian-friendly public space, until August. Get down and be a slave to the rhythm.

2. Blend into the Bo-Kaap
Employed either by the Dutch East India Company or mainly white European burghers, who began to cohabit and/or procreate with slaves and indigenous Khoi soon after the Dutch arrived in 1652, slaves made up ??% of the population in ??. Descendants of those who didn’t marry into white families lived in what have become trendy sought-after areas since the abolition of apartheid. Today, the Bo-Kaap, with its brightly painted exteriors and steep, cobbled streets is still the home of many Malay slave descendants, and a major tourist attraction. For an idea of what 19th century Muslim homes looked like, pay a visit to the Bo-Kaap Museum at 71 Wale Street. If you’re here at midday, take your cue from the noon-day gun, ??, and head for lunch at the family-run Noon Gun Café where bobotie (a Cape Malay style curry), chicken biryani and lamb curry will give you a real taste of the Cape.

3. Take in Tana Baru
Situated in the Bo-Kaap atop Signal Hill in one of Cape Town’s prime spots with views of Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain, Lion’s Head and Table Bay, the Tana Baru, though rundown in recent years due to lack of funds, still houses old unmarked Muslim graves, with Arabic inscriptions dating back 300 years, and the colourful kramats of Islam pioneers, Tuan Guru and Nuruman. While foreign developers have started buying up the historic land, still owned by Muslim individuals, the Tana Bara Trust and the South African Heritage Agency is trying to preserve the historic site and build a Garden of Remembrance. Whether you do the trip to pay spiritual respect or just take in the view, this is one spot that shouldn’t be missed.

4. Languish in Long Street
Step into one of the funkiest streets in South Africa, and, after stocking up your plate and your wardrobe, grab some culture. Built in 1804, the South African Missionary Society’s Old Slave Church at 40 Long Street is today an architecturally unique museum outlining the work of Christian missions, which helped employ slaves who were emancipated in 1838. To embellish your religious background, head further down the road to the Palm Tree mosque, built in the 1780s as a house with an upstairs prayer room and today a much-frequented mosque. Brought to the Cape by slaves and political prisoners from the east, Islam was used as a language of resistance to oppression. Today the legacy lives on and a circle of ?? kramats around the peninsula extends to Robben Island. Situated at 39 Dorp Street (where?), the oldest mosque in the country, the Auwal Mosque was a property owned by a freed slave Salie Coridon of Ceylon, whose daughter married Achmat of Bengal who later made it available to the Muslim community for use as a mosque. While many slaves stuck to Islam, many were converted by Christian missionaries post-emancipation. For a really interesting slice of religious slave history, head for St Stephen’s Church in Riebeeck Square, which was originally the African Theatre built in 1801. Though it was closed to non-whites in 1829, it later became a Dutch Reformed mission church for freed slaves. This caused an outcry and when ex-theatre patrons shattered the windows, the church was named after St Stephen the Martyr, who was stoned to death.

5. Lament at the Lodge
Slaves who weren’t owned privately worked for the Dutch East India Company and were housed in the Slave Lodge, at 49 Adderley Street, a windowless brick building built in 1679. (Are dungeons visible?) Once also magistrate offices, today the building is called the Cultural History Museum, run by Iziko Museums. In addition to an extensive exhibition detailing the Cape slave labour system as well as a peek at American slavery, the museum showcases a wide range of Cape Dutch furniture and the tombstones of Jan Van Riebeeck and his wife, Maria de Queillerie, in the courtyard. A commemorative plaque on the centre island of Spin Street, alongside the lodge, marks the slave tree under which slaves were auctioned. Stop for coffee at the top of Adderley Street at The Crypt, a quaint outdoor restaurant cum coffee shop which also serves omelettes to die for.

6. Chill in the Company Gardens
Step out of the Crypt and head down the oak-lined alley cutting through the well-tended gardens, one of six outposts worked by Company slaves during Dutch rule. Check out the symbolic slave bell, chill on the grass, and if you have a day at your disposal, fill up on culture. The South African National Library, the Planetarium, SA National Gallery, the Jewish Holocaust Museum and St ??s Cathedral are all situated here. Be sure to get a glimpse of the rare gingko biloba tree which nearly got gallery director Marilyn Martin into trouble because it wasn’t indigenous, and buy a bag of nuts from the vendors to feed the squirrels.

7. Get grave in Green Point
When over 2000 bones, thought to be those of slaves, Khoi or underclasses buried in unmarked graves in the late 17th century, were uncovered during the building of an upmarket development in Prestwich Street, Green Point, in 2003 they were honoured in a burial ceremony after much deliberation. Three years later, the development is under way again, and the first stages of a memorial garden, ossuary and square have been completed on the corner of Buitengracht Street and Somerset Road. Called St Andrews Square after the Presbyterian church which accommodated ex-slaves after emancipation in 1838, architects aim to build a visitor’s centre and kiosk run by rehabilitated individuals who will serve teas and light meals, as well as a theatre and sculpture exhibitions. Visitors should be able to enjoy all the benefits of the revamped green area by May 2007 against the backdrop of the old cemetery walls lining Alfred Street, which will house the remains. As Clive James, Head of Planning for the project, puts it, “it is not just the story of the burials, but also the story of District 1 – dating back to pre-colonial times, through slavery, struggle and forced removals, up until the present day.”

8. OD at Oudekraal
With probably the highest value for privately owned property in Cape Town, this piece of land ?? of Camps Bay has been the centre of a legal land battle since 1957. It’s not hard to see why. Ninety-nine steps up the mountain slope from Victoria Road which straddles the sparkling Atlantic is the tomb of Sheikh Noorul Mubeen beside a stream. Banished to the Cape in 1716, he was incarcerated on Robben Island, and, after escaping, made a humble mountain home of this tranquil spot with a 360 view of the ocean and mountains. When the slaves on the surrounding estates discovered he was a holy man, he began preaching the tenets of Islam to them at night. A popular Sunday pilgrimage spot for Muslims and meditators alike, Oudekraal is also the site of two more kramats and 53 graves. It is also an eco-sensitive shrine and wishful Shangri-la for property owner ?? who is trying to persuade the court to allow him to develop it. If you want to experience the serenity over an extended periond – and are prepared to pay for it, double-storeyed Oudekraal House starts at R1200 a day. Phone Jonathan Tillett on 082 958 7608 for details or e.mail oudekraal@worldimages.co.za.

9. Mount the mountain
To leave Cape Town without ascending Table Mountain is tantamount to touristic sin, but, as many hikers who have lost their way with disastrous consequences have discovered, climbing it is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you are the outdoor type and don’t go anywhere without your hiking boots, the route via Platteklip Gorge – and the only year-round source of water on this walk, where slave washerwomen used to do their laundry and around which much slave literature has been written – is your safest bet. If you are relatively fit, you should get from the bottom cable station to the top one in about two and a half hours, have tea or lunch in the restaurant on the summit, before grabbing the cable car down, which only takes four minutes. Although the route is well signposted, be sure to get a map from ?? before you leave.

10. Dine at Delta
Monopolised by French Huguenots who became burghers after their arrival in 1688, Drakenstein Valley wine farms were virtually run by slaves. Still thriving on wine farms and restaurants today, the upmarket valley 80km from Cape Town took on a new conscience when ex-neuroscientist Mark Solms bought Delta farm in 2002 and, with innovative marketing, introduced a system to empower the slave descendants still living on the farm. After a tour of its immaculately presented Museum van de Caab, which aims to tell the history of the farm (and the country) through the subjective viewpoints of the people who worked there, treat yourself to the ample wine-tasting. Using research cadged from local microhistorians and academics, the brochure – which tells the tale of well-known slave icons like Groote Catrijn – is a masterpiece in itself. Read it while you languish on the lawns and enjoy a pre-packed picnic which costs only R90 (sans wine).

Published in Rootz, South Africa. Copyright Sharon Masrhall 2007.

 

A grave discovery

(see Part I of the story) and started tracking down his and my own ancestors, who moved in the same circles.

In my travels overseas, I have never been able to resist a graveyard and the silent history it relates. At home I’m so caught up in the cause of progress it’s easy to pass off a cemetery as the dead centre it seems.

Until I found boy-soldier SE Morley

In a little cemetery on Grassridge Farm in Cradock , James Lydford Collett, the progenitor of my paternal grandmother’s family and that of the late Professor Guy Butler, is buried beside his wife Rhoda Trollip, herself a settler in search of a better life and unknowing pawn in England’s grand emigration scheme which shaped the complicated history I call my own.

I’m told the grave-site still exists, and the thought of seeing it produces the same chilly-warm feeling that I have somehow come home – to the mighty Fish River, Bartholomew Diaz’s turning point in 1488, strategic boundary of the 1820 settlement and site of my great great great uncle’s marriage to a slave from Madagascar in the early 1830s.

This is Frontier country: nine wars were fought here before 1900, the ANC and resistance to Nationalist rule was born here in the 20th century and graves are as much a part of the landscape as the melting pot of people who have fought to own a part of it.

Halfway between nearby Graaff-Reinet and Aberdeen in the middle of the veld lies the overgrown grave of an Afrikaner voortrekker, fenced in by his wife on their pilgrimage north, and, not far away, an ancient rock painting of the sacred eland and runic inscriptions proclaim spiritual homage to a San hunter-gatherer.

Closer to colonial strongholds like Grahamstown, settler graveyards like St James at Southwell, St John’s at Bathurst and Cuylerville Cemetery complement the lone testimonies of an unnamed Hottentot whose hand was chopped off to save the life of a Xhosa chief to whom he was handcuffed. The grave of cult figure and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in King William’s Town, who was murdered in jail in 1977, also bears testimony to generations of political strife.”

If Queenstown’s on your route, there’s an elderly gentleman in the town who knows every ‘inhabitant’ of the vandalised graveyard, because he made it his business, as a United Party member, to ensure the opposition Nats weren’t using dead people as bogus postal voters in the 1960’s elections.

If you’re into drama and have access to a 4×4, get someone to guide you to the top of Buffelskop, overlooking Cradock, where the spirit of controversial author of Story of an African, Olive Schreiner, lives on, in an elaborate igloo-shaped tomb built in 1920 by her estranged husband Samuel Cronwright, who had her remains moved from Maitland Cemetery in Cape Town.

More of a contrast would be hard to find. Maitland or Woltemade Cemetery, though it houses hundreds of notables, is run-down and a source of much agitation for visitors. Over 100 homeless squatters camp out in plastic ‘tents’ beside their stone-slab ‘postboxes’, hanging out their washing to the approval of the dead who they say protect them from gangsters.

Unorthodox form of respect though it may be, respect it is; which, many believe, is a civilised custom that began right here in South Africa. The Border Cave, a site on the KwaZulu Natal/Swaziland border, is the site of the first known deliberate burial in the world 80 000 years ago, and as recently as 1999 archaeologists discovered the mummified remains of a 2000-year-old San hunter-gatherer embalmed by an indigenous plant, in the Kouga mountains.

Respecting the dead

It is this same need to show respect that sparked the international battle over the remains of Sara Baartman hundreds of years after she was publicly humiliated in Europe and which saw them finally brought to rest in Hankey; the same debate that raged over the removal of Chief Makana’s remains from Robben Island to the Eastern Cape; the same urge that motivated local tribesmen to preserve the Valley of the Kings in KwaZulu Natal, home in life and death to a long line of Zulu chiefs which include Cetshwayo, the man who brought the British to their knees at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.

For better or worse, spiritual consciousness deems it necessary to honour the dead, and like the circle of modern South African life begun at the foot of Table Mountain, the Mother City is the fulcrum around which at least one circle spins.

Begun over 250 years ago, when Islam slaves were first brought to the Cape, a circle of tombs of saints of their religion is now complete. It starts at the kramat on Signal Hill and ends at Robben Island.

For those with little inclination to travel beyond the fairest Cape, just one trip is necessary: embodying the essence of what all this battle and heartache is about: a granite Celtic cross marking the grave of Kirstenbosch’s first director, Professor Harold Pearson, states simply, “If ye seek his monument, look around.”

Extract from Thabo Mbeki’s words at the adoption of South Africa’s constitution on May 8, 1996:

“I owe my being to the hills and the valleys…the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. I owe my being to the Khoi and the San… I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home in our native land… in my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves… I am the grandchild who lays flowers on the Boer graves…I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led…the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.”

TOUR YOUR LOCAL CEMETERY Eastern Cape Liz Eshmade, known as the ‘Grave Lady’ by the Port Elizabeth press, has, with the help of school groups and other volunteers, recorded a comprehensive list of graveyard inhabitants in the greater Port Elizabeth area, and is in the process of publishing a second book which already covers over 16 000 names in 230 cemeteries – from the Fish River to Port St. Johns and north to the Orange River. It should be out later this year. On visiting graveyards, Liz says: “The main element here is that cemeteries are NOT sad places, they are gold mines of information about our past, they are the best and easiest way to learn history and get a load of fresh air and exercise at the same time. Everything from battles, the rise of commerce and industry, the killer diseases of their period, their way of life, their thinking, their religious beliefs – it is all there to be noted and can be so easily understood when you are away from the comforts of your lounge and standing in a forgotten cemetery in the bush.” However, she cautions that it is safest to do tours in groups, especially in more isolated areas, and she herself conducts tours to this end of St Mary’s in Port Elizabeth, while Rose Treahaven includes other cemeteries in her Ghost Walk Tours. Contact Liz at eshmade@mweb.co.za or 041-3682213. Settler Country If you’re into experiencing the whole Frontier shebang, Rob Speirs of Frontier Tours runs comprehensive tours of settler country. Brochures can be obtained from info@speirstours.co.za or 043 642 1747, or by visiting www.speirstours.co.za Gauteng Elaine Persona runs customised tours of Brixton and Braamfontein cemeteries, combined with other architectural legacies in Johannesburg. Contact her at the Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust on: 011-482 3349. Cape To find out more about graveyards around the Cape peninsula, contact info@twinoaks.co.za or catch a ride on the Mystery Ghost Bus Tour. And if you’re ever in the Prince Albert district in the Karoo, make sure you try out their ghost walk. In the Northern Cape town of Kimberley, you can join the Kimberley Ghost Trail. Phone: 053-832 7298 for more info.

 

 Published on iafrica.com 2004. Copyright Sharon Marshall 2004.

 

A grave guide to South Africa

There is something about a grave that speaks of dignity…perhaps the only real permanent spot one gets on Planet Earth. In a mission to trace her settler origins Sharon Marshall uncovered the evolution of her family as well as that of the land which gave her birth – through the monuments to the dead.

It all started in Sri Lanka a few months ago.
We were catching a tuk-tuk ride up in Trincomalee, a strategic spot which has seen few foreigners in the last 13 years because of civil war, when the driver pointed out a pristine Bougainvillea-bordered patch of ground amidst the war-ravaged countryside.
A few steps closer and the rows of white benches turned into perfect little crosses – not a refuge for tired travellers or locals, but an honorary haven for allied forces who fought here in World War II.
All too aware of the irony of seeming to be paying homage to an imperialist soldier in a Buddhist land, which ironically was once the source of slave labour for our country, I told the overseer I was a South African Buddhist.
Unperturbed, he proudly unlocked his register from a vault in the wall and, following the map to one South African citizen – 19-year-old Private SE Morley from Queenstown, the very place of my own birth – I flounder.
A halo appears around the head of this gentle man who has probably seen more senseless deaths than I have read about, and I am transported back to a time when my travelling partner, an unwilling conscript in the apartheid government’s great Angolan cover-up, nearly lost his life.
Not much I can do, but this I can – a photo for the family back home.
An act which, I discover on returning in search of this young man’s family, was pre-empted 100 years before when Rose McEwan and a band of women friends took to the Anglo-Boer battlefields in Lydenburg, photographed the resting places of fallen soldiers and sent the pictures to their wives and mothers.
A fitting tribute
She herself now occupies a respectable place in Brixton Cemetery (Krause Street, Vrededorp), which has recently been upgraded with tar roads and trees to accommodate tourist tours at the recent World Summit. Something macabre about the concept at face value, but on deeper reflection, a fitting and clever tribute to many who left their personal marks on the history of the country.
Her neighbours in this leafy olde-worlde cemetery include the likes of Johannesburg trade unionist Mary “Pickhandle” Fitzgerald and Samuel “Taffy” Long, whose spot in eternity is marked with a granite cross stating that he was executed “for a crime he did not commit” in the aftermath of the 1922 Miners’ Strike.
Laid out in 1912, Brixton Cemetery speaks silent testimony to battle and success across the board, and is the site of the first Hindu crematorium in Africa (built in 1918) conceptualised by human rights pacifist Mahatma Gandhi before he left the country for good.
A lesser-publicised inhabitant of the cemetery is Cornelis Broeksma who was executed by firing squad at Johannesburg Fort on September 30, 1901, for exposing the appalling conditions at concentration camps in the South African War at the turn of the 20th century, with the help of Emily Hobhouse. Her ashes were brought from England and placed at the bottom of the Vroue Monument in Bloemfontein to commemmorate the deaths of over 28 000 women and children in the camps.
Of the 115 white concentration camps, the biggest in Johannesburg was at the Turffontein Race Course, which housed around 5000 people, of whom 700 died and were buried in Winchester Hills, on a farm called Kliprivier Berg.
Vandalised by an anti-Ossewa Brandwag group during World War II, it was overhauled and re-opened in 1961. It now consists of a number of coffin-shaped terraces, with a memorial listing the names of the dead and a few headstones, including that of an eight-month-old baby.
Not far from Brixton, in Braamfontein Cemetery (Graf Street), lies another tragic rite of passage.
Unaware of the passive resistance campaign instigated by Gandhi in response to 1906’s Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance, by which Indians and Chinese were bound to register their presence in the Transvaal, a 24-year-old Chinese man, Chow Kwai For, registered.
When he realised what he had done, he committed suicide – his letter of apology (written in Chinese) is engraved on the headstone. Put this one high on your grave tour agenda.
Besides other passive resistors, the graveyard also accommodates dynamite explosion victims, South African War soldiers, cholera and flu epidemic victims, and a memorial to Enoch Sontonga, the creator of South Africa’s national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, who died in obscurity at the age of 33.
Though it took authorities over a year to find his grave which itself had been buried, a glamorous black granite tribute to his unique legacy has now been erected.
Nearby, in Soweto’s overcrowded Avalon Cemetery, lie Communist Party leader, Joe Slovo; 1976 Soweto hero Hector Pieterson; and human rights stalwart Helen Joseph; not recommended if you can’t ignore the rows of cot-like structures and pauper’s graves of Aids victims that will forever bear witness to this tragic slice of SA history.
If you’re in Johannesburg, don’t miss the three words on the SAHRA memorial commemorating the casualties of the Soweto “uprising” in 1976: “Never never again…”

Fascinating, isn’t it? And that’s not all. Sharon Marshall has many more grave stories to share. We’ll publish PART TWO of A grave guide through SA next week.

Published on iafrica.com 2004. Copyright Sharon Marshall 2004.

 

For Eva and ever

The subject of three novels – the latest of which has just been released in English – and copious academic research, the enigmatic ‘Hottentot’ woman who was taken into Jan van Riebeeck’s household and was the female counterpart of the country’s first ‘mixed’ marriage between a European and Cape-born African continues to intrigue South Africans 330 years after her death. What is her truth? Why won’t she die?

“How changeable this African climate is […] The West wind which had by its violence caused a boisterous sea, and during the last two days had threatened everything with destruction, had today (29 July 1674) gone down completely, followed by such calm weather that not the slightest motion could be observed in the air, whilst the bay was a smooth and bright as a mirror. This day departed this life, a certain Hottentoo named Eva, long ago taken from the African brood in her tender childhood …”

The passage from the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) journal describes the day that Eva Meerhoff, widow of an ambitious Danish surgeon, met her death at the age of 31 on Robben Island. Six years earlier, her husband and father of three of her children, Pieter, had faced his final judgment call when the slaves he sought to buy in Madagascar massacred him and his party of Company traders at Antogil Bay.

Tones of divine justice like this make the Eva story poignant still today, and though there was none for her, the appellation the Dutch gave her – in place of Krotoa, her indigenous name – has prompted many a writer to add biblical allegories to the complex socio-political situation developing in the Eden at the tip of Africa in the late 17th century.

Simplistically put, in the beginning (of South Africa) there was free grazing and simple values and the Lords 17 said, “Let there be ownership”. In 1652 Van Riebeeck and his band of European disciples chose the Cape to set up a refreshment station , far from the war-induced poverty in their own cold lands and midway to the mysterious East, which lured them with promises of exotic wealth.

Though the situation looked promising, the Lords of the autocratic DEIC needed cattle which meant barter with the strandlopers who spoke an incomprehensible tongue. So they used Autshumao, who had learnt to speak English after being taken to the East on an English ship, to facilitate trade and fatten their stocks. Amongst his tiny band of Goringhaicona, a clan of Khoe who lived off the fruits of the sea, was Chief Autshumao’s young niece, Krotoa, who was possibly born on Robben Island, and who picked up the Dutch language quickly. In return for cattle (to be secured by Autshumao), housekeeping and translation services, Van Riebeeck offered Krotoa a home – Christianised, euro-civilised and very different from the wandering life she was used to.

Just when Krotoa fell from grace (or faith) is a matter of speculation as primary records offer new clues, but relations soon began to sour between indigenous tribes – a complex mix of Khoe already competing with each other and encroaching Nguni tribes for cattle – and the Dutch fat cats who, with their double talk, sophisticated weapons and buying power, took over more and more grazing land on the fertile Liesbeeck River and beyond.

Though some Khoe descendants contend that her identity begins and ends with her Khoe birth status, others see her as ‘the woman between’. In order to fit in to her Dutch environment, albeit unchosen, Krotoa had to stop walking about ‘naked’ and trade her skins for western attire, learn the art of dinner-table etiquette and convert to Christianity. She also had to engage in proverbial white lies both to her father-cum-employer Van Riebeeck and her own people, led by her father-cum-uncle – to keep the increasingly fragile peace, which resulted in the Khoe tribes setting aside their own raging differences to revolt against the colonial oppressors.

Perhaps the truth was too complicated, and double-sided, for her to understand, but it is clear from a jubilant entry in Van Riebeeck’s journal – “Eva says she has a Dutch heart” – that the Dutch commander’s interest in her was crucial to relations at the Cape. It is this early cross-cultural interaction which played such a huge, unsung role in the South Africa story that Cape Dutch historian Dan Sleigh explores – with some poetic licence – in his novel ‘Islands’, aptly drawn from the famous John Donne adage ‘No Man is an Island’ and which alludes to the ubiquitous role of Robben Island.

Around this time, Krotoa, now in her late teens, evoked the attentions of Pieter Meerhoff, a newly appointed surgeon who often dined with the Van Riebeecks. An adventurer at heart, he had dreams of living in the East, with Krotoa at his side, suggests Sleigh in ‘Islands’, recently translated from Afrikaans by Andre Brink. Whether a romantic attempt to sanctify Meerhoff or whether she was effectually raped, as suggested by Yvette Abrahams in an article published in 1996 in Kronos (‘Was Eva Raped? An Exercise in Speculative History’), Krotoa gave birth to a son, Jacobus, in 1661.

A year later, Krotoa’s life was set to change again. Van Riebeeck was transferred to Batavia (present-day Djakarta) in 1662 and though inexplicably a union was not solemnised, Krotoa was baptised by a Christian minister a few days before the Van Riebeecks left. Only after the birth of a second child, Pieternella, in 1663, when Zacharias Wagenaer was the new commander, did a wedding ceremony at company expense on 2 June 1664 take place.

The next upheaval in Krotoa’s life was in progress. Now a lawfully wedded wife, she had little choice but to accompany her husband to Robben Island now appointed postkeeper overseeing exiled convicts on 19 May 1665. A controversial move, which many researchers suggest was a ruse to keep the undesirable match out of sight, it rendered Krotoa more isolated from her roots than ever. It was while here, after conceiving her third child, Salomon, that her husband was commissioned in 1667 to lead a slaving expedition in Madagascar from which he never returned .

Returning to a house converted from the Company’s old pottery on the mainland together with a Cape Verde slave owned by her husband, the widow Meerhoff sank into a hopeless depression – aided by alcohol, introduced to her people by European explorers. Rumours of prostitution were rife and she gave birth to at least two more children, refused to conform to colonial behaviour codes, remonstrating drunkenly in front of a hypocritical European society which rejected her (as did many of her own who criticised her cross-marriage) and in 1669, she was sent, without trial, to Robben Island away from her children to mend her immoral ways.

Five years later, at the zenith of the second ‘Hottentot’ uprising which saw an unprecedented public execution of indigenes, she was dead. Though she was given a Christian burial at the Old Fort, the Company journal ‘obituary’ makes no pretence at hiding their intolerance of her – and the people they sought to vanquish:

“This day departed this life…Eva…taken…by the Hon:[ourable] van Riebeeck, and educated in his house as well as brought to the knowledge of the Christian faith, and being thus transferred from the female Hottentoo almost into a Netherland woman, was married to a certain Chief Surgeon of the Residency, by whom she had three children…Since his death however at Madagascar, she had brought forth as many illegitimate ones, and for the rest led such an irregular life that for a long while the desire would have existed for getting rid of her, had it not been for the hope of the conversion of this brutal aboriginal. Hence in order not to be accused of tolerating her adulterous and debauched life, she had at various times been relegated to Robben Island…but as soon as she returned, she like the dogs, always returned to her own vomit, so that finally she quenched the fire of her sensuality by death …, affording a manifest example that nature, however, closely and firmly muzzled by imprinted principles, nevertheless at its own time triumphing over all precepts, again rushes back to its inborn qualities …”

Her remains were later moved to a burial site which is now below the foundations of the Groote Kerk in Bureau Street. But the bitter irony of her story, which in many ways set the tone for apartheid, was only to come later.

Today her documented legacy lives on, as paradoxically as her life, in at
least three million previously classified ‘white’ descendants of her daughter,
Pieternella, who married Dutch farmer Daniel Zaaiman. According to
lineages provided by genealogist Keith Meintjes, these descendants include
former premiers Paul Kruger, Jan Smuts and FW de Klerk. Both Pieternella and Salomon were shipped off to Mauritius with a childless Dutch couple and were later joined by Jacobus, who, rejected by his sister, fell mysteriously to his death from the ship returning him to the Cape. Salomon died young but there is a chance that descendants of Krotoa’s sons Jeronimus and Anthonij spawned by liaisons post-Meerhoff escaped being recorded, as many non-Europeans did.

Perhaps, therein, lies the real reason for the spell she casts 330 years on. Many with Khoe ancestry see her as a traitor to her people, and though a photograph of the smiling person believed to be her has been added to the memorabilia at the start of the Robben Island tour, officials decided for this reason against naming a tour boat after her. Others see her as a pawn in the power game the Dutch played with the aborigines – who, sans organised leadership hierarchy, were willing to trade services to hang onto their land. Besides being a voice for the dispossessed , female victims of exploitation and those ‘caught between’ colour and culture bars still today, the Eva story is in many ways the uncut South Africa story, details of which micro-historian Mansell Upham, himself a descendant, has explored in Capensis and other genealogical journals.

The debate about her status as ‘mother of us all’ is not a new one and Upham is documenting her descendants, which include members of the illustrious Diodati family, one of whom was commander of Mauritius and married Pieternella’s eldest daughter. Piecing together previously unexplored documentary evidence – like the diary of Hans Petersen, a Danish visitor who met Krotoa during her stay on Robben Island – with a view to publishing a factual, rather than a ‘factional’, account of the life of this unwittingly powerful matriarch, Upham’s message is one that South Africans cannot afford to ignore. Complex though it may be, only the truth shall set us free.

Published in Sunday Life. Copyright Sharon Marshall 2004.

 

Whose mountain is it anyway?

The shooting of a baboon in August 2004 by Table Mountain National Park rangers after it attacked and bit a woman at Cape Point has brought to a head the centuries-old conflict between the two primate species on the Peninsula.

The battle of the primates began soon after the Dutch arrived in 1652 and began to establish farms on the lower reaches of Table Mountain — until then the foraging ground of the indigenous chacma baboon and the respectful Khoisan people, who understood baboon language, learnt many gathering skills from them and never killed them for food.

In the wild, baboons spend about 40% of their time foraging for plant material and insects, and, besides feeding on specific parts of over 115 fynbos plants, they supplement their diet with minerals found in clay, and get protein from shellfish and sharks’ eggs found along the seashore. Although they are not predators, they sometimes kill rodents, small buck and birds, but only adult males have large canine teeth.

Before the arrival of Europeans, baboons had free access to the Cape Flats, where they could forage or start new families. But, as their territory has gradually become prime coastal real estate and tourist terrain, the intelligent chacmas, encouraged by baboon-feeding tourists, soon realised they could get fed in a fraction of the time foraging takes — creating a problem for the people whose houses they took to raiding. What the baboons couldn’t realise was that their intelligent, adaptive behaviour would not endear them to their human counterparts.

In short, after 350 years of cohabiting with people who invariably resolved the problem down the barrel of a gun, only 125 mature chacma baboons (98 females and 27 males in 10 troops) remain in the Cape Peninsula today. A survey done between 2000 and 2003 shows a negative growth rate of 8%.

Primatologists Dr David Gaynor and Ruth Kansky believe the present population is unsustainable. As Kansky says, “Humans are becoming more intolerant as the competition for food and territory among primates, especially, intensifies.”

In search of a solution

In 1990, the baboon-human conflict problem reached a zenith when Cape Nature Conservation (now CapeNature) authorities shot a troop of 18 baboons near the rapidly growing suburb of Kommetjie, south of which 74% of the Cape Peninsula baboon population considers home territory. As a result, conservationally aware residents led by Wally Peterson and Jenni Trethowan staged a protest and formed the Kommetjie Environmental Action Group (KEAG) to help protect the remaining baboons.

In 1997, Proclamation 12 was added to Nature and Environmental Ordinance 19 of 1974, declaring that baboons were no longer allowed to be hunted or removed from the area — the first such baboon-protection legislation in Africa. In the same year, South Peninsula Municipality (SPM) councillor Nikki Holderness called an emergency meeting with the South African Police, the navy, the KEAG and other conservation authorities to discuss possible solutions.

In an initial four-month study with funds from the SPM and subsequently the WWF-Table Mountain Fund, Kansky and Gaynor, found that two troops were responsible for raiding in residential areas in the southern peninsula, and it was decided to form a Baboon Management Team (BMT) to coordinate actions between land owners. As the SPM (which now falls under Cape Town Unicity) and the South African National Parks (SANParks), which manages Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), were responsible for the bulk of the baboon home-range area, and CapeNature was responsible for enacting conservation legislation, these three authorities were given joint responsibility for baboon management, together with the representatives of civil society — KEAG and, later, Friends of Tokai Forest, plus the primatologists. Later, additional funding was obtained from the WWF Table Mountain Fund to establish the demography of all troops and devise a management strategy.

In 1999, the BMT adopted a test strategy and employed baboon monitors whose job it was to track two troops of baboons from dawn to dusk and chase them from settlements in Kommetjie, Da Gama Park, Misty Cliffs and Scarborough. The results of the experiment were published in a report which showed that monitors could reduce the proportion of days that baboons raid from 80% to 30% and that the baboon mortality rate could drop from one every month to one every six months. The presence of baboon monitors also changed human attitudes and complaints about baboons by residents dropped by 25%.

The concept of monitors centres on reducing the attraction of foraging in villages rather than in the mountains. “Given that half a loaf of brown bread is equivalent to an adult female baboon’s daily nutritional supplement, which in the wild would take about four hours of foraging, it is not surprising that baboons are attracted to human food,” says Kansky.

Monitors, who work in shifts, discourage baboons from entering villages by chasing them at least two kilometres up the mountainside and, if they do enter villages, ensuring they are kept on the move and waving red warning flags to motorists.

Even though monitors only work during daylight hours, the good results suggested that a solution was in sight. But the battle has other dimensions.

Who’s footing the bill?

On completion of the WWF study in 2000, consultant De Villiers Brownlie, in consultation with interested parties, compiled a detailed policy and plan for managing baboons on the peninsula, with the aim “to maintain a sustainable baboon population in the Cape Peninsula, while minimising conflict between people and baboons”. The three BMT partners approved the policy in principle, but only CapeNature and the Unicity signed it – on condition that no financial responsibility be undertaken, because funding needs would reach beyond the metropolitan areas, says newly appointed BMT manager and CapeNature representative Melakhaya Pantsi.

Despite the lack of written financial commitment, baboon monitors were employed for three raiding groups until the end of 2002 with funds contributed by the three authorities, residents, corporates and non-governmental conservation organisations. Then, in 2003, CapeNature withdrew its funding. Though some of the deficit was made up by residents and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), funds dried up and monitors’ hours were reduced, which defeated the aim as continuity was interrupted. The situation was exacerbated by fires which destroyed a large section of the baboon’s foraging ground.

The budget nightmare is also a logistical and political one. Until May 1998, when large sections of the peninsula mountain chain came under the umbrella of SANParks, the TMNP had been managed by 14 different public bodies and 200 private land owners. The extension of the TMNP also meant more funds for preservation of the Cape floral region, removal of invasive alien plants and sustainable development projects for disadvantaged human communities.

With regard to baboons, according to the minutes of a BMT meeting held in July 2004, the TMNP signed the Brownlie Policy with the following proviso: “Although TMNP is 100% committed to its role in, and funding of, the BMT, due to the nature of our business and the potential for lack of budget or funding, there could come a time when we are unable to come up with the requisite funding. We are therefore unable to write this into a contract.”

This view was endorsed by the Unicity and CapeNature. In addition, TMNP pointed out that, in terms of the Brownlie Plan, SANParks and not the BMT remains the decision-making authority about problem animals on its land.

Although CapeNature cannot provide funding, Pantsi says the BMT is doing all it can to ensure baboons stay. “Baboons were here before we were, and we must learn to live with them,” he says.

CapeNature contributes a secretariat, communications and a research centre for genetics studies. Pantsi believes the community, at least in the urban areas not covered by SANParks, should be involved at every level, so the BMT is running an education programme for schools and residents, to teach them how to interpret baboon language and about security strategies.

“The community must come to the party; we can’t do it on our own,” stresses Pantsi, who has set up a Baboon Monitor Fund to which the public may contribute. The BMT has also applied to national government for assistance and, to this end, is doing a feasibility study.

Three months ago, the BMT also granted a tender to enable two experienced monitors to form a private service-provider company which will oversee all monitors in the Scarborough/Kommetjie area.

Teach the tourists

But the buck doesn’t stop there — the troops with the most human conflict are in SANParks territory and come with a turbulent history. This is about to change, says Brett Myrdal, who took over the reins of the TMNP in mid-2003.

Even though TMNP and Unicity could not make the financial commitment, they are major sponsors of the BMT and committed to maintaining the biodiversity of the peninsula.

Earlier this year, in a letter to all BMT members, the civil society group complained that baboon monitors were not employed in the Cape of Good Hope section, a tourist hot spot with the highest incidence of conflict with humans. Because baboon numbers in unmonitored high-conflict areas have declined, in contrast to population increases in both monitored areas and unmanaged areas with low incidents of conflict, they asked for urgent action to be taken.

The Cape Point area attracts the most tourists and the highest revenue — some R28-million a year in gate takings alone. Gaynor believes R1-million is needed to implement an effective baboon management strategy in all areas, and, because seven of the 10 troops are in TMNP territory, the Parks Board could contribute more.

But Gavin Bell of TMNP says at least two of these troops spend the bulk of their time, which includes sleeping time, on both private or public land, which makes more than one party responsible.

After the recent attack, Myrdal said TMNP supports the introduction of monitors to the Cape Point area, and that the TMNP and Unicity were prepared to donate R120 000 towards training new monitors in addition to the year’s R240 000 budget because it is essential that visitors are protected. In the interim, however, one of the “problem” males from Cape Point had been transferred to Olifantsbos, but he has since led part of this troop back to Scarborough, and this “had to be sorted out first”. The two bodies are motivating for a budget of R180 000 each next year for the monitor project, says a TMNP spokesperson.

Besides funding the baboon monitor programme, which has won international awards, the grievance letter said funding should be used for clear signage and a public education strategy to explain why baboons can be a threat and how to avoid conflict with them – a scheme with which Myrdal agrees. Although IFAW has already done much in the way of providing pamphlets and signage, it can only be improved upon. In particular, signs in different languages must stress why tourists should not feed baboons. “This is a problem,” Myrdal says, because people do not read the pamphlets.

Concerning the shooting of “problem” baboons, the grievance letter maintains that parks officials are not proactive enough about preventing conflict situations, as recommended by the Brownlie Policy, and shooting offending baboons only worsens the situation.

Gaynor estimates that between 10 and 15 adult males have been shot at Cape Point in the past eight years and not one has lasted longer than a year in this high-conflict area — a major problem, acknowledges Myrdal, as it causes a social imbalance. As in disadvantaged human communities, without adequate role models, adolescent males start to behave like delinquents.

Rogue baboons are usually dominant males and, if shot, a male from another troop often moves in and kills the young of the previous ringleader – a natural way to strengthen his own gene pool.

“Females don’t ovulate while their young are suckling so the quickest way for a new male to reproduce is to kill the young,” says Gaynor. “Once he sees the troop getting food from tourists, he’ll become bolder and do it too. And so the cycle begins again.”

The Policy recommends that a baboon should only be destroyed as a last resort if it repeatedly behaves in a manner which endangers public health and safety, and then only after due consideration by the BMT, which will first consider translocation.

Living with baboons

Experience has shown that baboons are too intelligent to fall for scare tactics based on broad Pavlovian principles. Gunfire does not teach a baboon to be scared of guns; it merely learns to avoid a person with a gun. Similarly, eating food laced with nausea-inducing substances will not stop baboons from ever eating that type of food again. Painting rogue baboons white has also had no effect, and playing leopard noises over a loudspeaker only invites their insatiable child like curiosity.

The most obvious deterrent, says Gaynor, is to remove takeaway food outlets from the reserve, or at least the outdoor tables. Since the recent attack, Myrdal has persuaded the operators to swap the positions of the curio and takeaway shops, which will give visitors better protection. Baboon-proof electric fences have also been strengthened, he says, but Gaynor maintains these are not adequate.

Other measures include the imposition of fines for feeding baboons, but none have been recorded to date, although there has been one successful conviction for shooting a baboon meted out by CapeNature to a Scarborough resident.

Pantsi, who works closely with KEAG, says the illegal shooting of baboons remains a problem, but, because it is a criminal offence, it is near-impossible to find witnesses willing to come forward and testify.

You stay, you pay

Although Myrdal supports Pantsi’s contention that those who choose to live near baboon home-ranges should contribute towards baboon monitors, he believes residents should implement a number of cost-effective strategies, especially baboon-proof dustbins and burglar bars.

Jenni Trethowan of Baboon Matters agrees. The majority of residents do want baboons to stay. “This is our biggest problem, besides money to support monitors. If residents want to live in baboon territory, they have to take the necessary precautions.”

Towards a truce

Though it has not been researched, it is believed that monitors also generate a fair amount of stress in baboons, but all parties agree, for now, it is the best solution. Myrdal candidly admits that the ideal solution has yet to be found, but says that the kind of sensational headlines which have reached as afar afield as Washington DC should be avoided. Instead, he suggests, if we concentrate on modifying the behaviour of baboons and humans alike, all the citizens of Table Mountain could live together in peace.

As Nelson Mandela, surely a worthy spokesman for the marginalised, says: “If we do not do something to prevent it, Africa’s animals, and the places in which they live, will be lost to our world, and her children … forever.”

To contribute towards the protection of Cape Peninsula Chacma baboons, donations can be made to the Baboon Monitor Fund. Contact Melakhaya Pantsi on 021 957 5901 or Jenni Trethowan on 021 783 2630.

Published in Earth Life, South Africa. Copyright Sharon Marshall 2004.

 

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