Oba Alaiyeluwa Ademiluyi is the traditional High Priest King of the Yoruba Country, which has one of the most ancient dynasties in Africa. In the mediaval times there was much trade in Yoruba States, most of the business being done with Timbuctoo. A lot of the people of this country adopted the Islamic faith about the seventh century. The chief industries were iron works, agriculture, pepper, ivory, cloth weaving, leather making, carving and bead-work. From iron several articles were being manufactured, both for local use and for export purposes, such as agricultural implements, iron ornaments, weapons of war, utensils and such. The two great mining areas were in Nupe territory and in the Kakanda district at Ile Ife in Yorubaland. Another mining field was near Ilorin. Glass industry was chiefly carried on in Nupe.

The art of sculpture seems to have reached its zenith of development at this period. The chief industries at Ashanti and Gold Coast and Dahomey were gold, diamonds, precious stones, ivory, pepper, agriculture, bead making and carving. Corals were obtained from the sea, and of these all West African royal crowns, beaded thrones, beaded staves, and all other works of beads were usually manufactured. The rights of mining belonged to each and every individual inhabitant of West Africa, although it might seem that some portion of any precious metal mined or dug out used to be offered by the owner as a present to the King. Before the advent of Europeans or Arabs the people of West Africa worshipped God whom they called ” Olorun ” meaning ” One Supreme Being.”

The number of Christians in Yoruba is increasing. Many young people are sent to Europe and America for higher education. Like the rest of Africa, Yoruba and, indeed, the whole of West Africa except Liberia, has been made a colony of some European country. The people are no longer masters in their own land; their Kings having sought protection of European Kings. With such laws as the Crown Land Bill of 1894 (Gold Coast), the Land Ordinance of 1897 (Gold Coast), and the Forest Bill of 1911 (Gold Coast), the Foreshore Case of 1911, Lagos, and the Ikoyi Land Ordinance of 1908, Africans like the late Hon. Casely-Hayford, the late Hon. J. Sarbali, the late Hon. Safara Williams, Mr. Herbert Macauley, and others had a severe and unavailing fight in their efforts to retain some of the rights of their people.

Rev. SIMON P. SIHLALI was born in 1856 at Hankey, Cape Province. His parents were Christians. He attended the Hankey Day-school, and later St. Mark’s Institution. From St. Mark’s he went to Lovedale and in 1880 he matriculated. For a time he was employed as a teacher but soon became a student of Theology, and was ordained a minister of the Independent Free Church of Scotland. During his schooldays Mr. Sihlali was a bright scholar. His sermons-many of them preached to European congregations-were often commented upon by the European Press of the Cape. Was a very industrious man and encouraged improvements in agriculture, and spent many hours in the fields ploughing and gardening. His children are all educated. Rev. Sihali died peacefully in 1910 at his home in Engcobo, Tembuland.

(*Ormiston, East Lothian, Scot., 21.12.1795 – †Leigh, Kent, Eng., 8.8.1883), missionary of the L.M.S., Tswana linguist and Bible translator, was born of humble parentage, the third son in a family of five sons and two daughters. His father, Robert Moffat, was a custom-house officer, his mother was Ann Gardiner, of Ormiston. His sketchy elementary education was supplemented by the teaching of the minister and by the influence of his kind, but sternly religious mother.

After serving his apprenticeship as a gardener he from 1809 found employment first in Fifeshire, then in Cheshire, and, subsequently, in 1815, with a nursery gardener named James Smith at Dukinfield, near Manchester. Smith was of a strongly religious turn and his daughter, Mary, was a pious young woman with ‘a warm missionary heart’. M.’s own heart was set on missionary work and in 1816 he was accepted by the L.M.S. A Presbyterian by upbringing, M. had, while serving as a gardener in Cheshire, come under the influence of some earnest Wesleyan Methodists. He had resolved to devote his life to religious work and to become a missionary.

He sailed for South Africa in October 1816 in the company of the missionaries J. Kitchingman, J. Evans, J. Taylor and John Brownlee and arrived in Cape Town on 13.1.1817. During his stay at Dukinfield he had fallen in love with Mary Smith (1795-1871), and she with him. James Smith, however, was determined that his daughter should not go abroad, and it was not until three years later that this objection was overcome.

M.’s destination was Great Namaqualand, north of the Orange river, but to his disappointment the local authorities, for political reasons, at first refused him permission to proceed there. M. usefully filled in the time of waiting by going to Stellenbosch to acquire a working knowledge of Dutch. He also accompanied the missionary Dr George Thom to mission stations of the L.M.S. and reported many irregularities. Permission was eventually obtained; he left Cape Town in October 1817, crossed the Orange river at Pella drift, and reached Great Namaqualand in the following January.

The people among whom he was to work were ruled by Jager (Christiaan) Afrikaner, formerly a notorious Hottentot freebooter who lived at Afrikanerskraal, some distance to the east of the present Warmbad in South-West Africa. M. made a considerable impression on Afrikaner, and persuaded him to go with him on a joint visit to Cape Town . Meanwhile he had journeyed far north in South-West Africa with Afrikaner, but saw no hope of establishing a mission there, and travelled eastward to Griquatown and Dithakong in Bechuanaland before returning to Afrikanerskraal and to Cape Town. His early observations on the geology of the Griqua and Bechuana country are of particular interest in view of later mineral exploitation of this region.

On his arrival in April 1819, M. found in Cape Town a deputation from the L.M.S. This consisted of Dr John Philip and John Campbell, who had been sent out to investigate various allegations that had been made against the society’s missions and missionaries. The deputation invited M. to accompany them as their interpreter in Dutch, but their tour was cut short by the Fifth Frontier War (1819) on the eastern border of the colony. M. returned to Cape Town in time to welcome his fiancee when she landed in South Africa for the first time. Robert and Mary were married in St George’s church, Cape Town, on 27.12.1819.

It was an ideally happy union; Mary had faith and courage of a high order, for without these she could not have left her home and parents to sail to the other end of the world. She also had a will of her own and her views on people were direct and uncompromising. At the same time she was wholly engrossed in her husband’s work and found her fulfilment in supporting him with a care that grew more constant with the years.

Apart from his marriage M.’s visit to Cape Town had other important consequences. He was persuaded by the deputation to abandon Namaqualand and to take over the society’s station among the Tswana. He arrived at Dithakong, one hundred miles north of Klaarwater (Griquatown) in March 1820. Permission to live there was at first withheld by the authorities, but was given after M. had temporarily returned to Griquatown. In May 1821 the Moffats again took up residence at Dithakong.

The people among whom M. laboured were the Tlhaping, the most southerly of the tribes collectively known as Tswana (Bechuana). They were not unknown to Europeans, having been visited by Truter and Somerville in 1801 and thereafter by several travellers. Their chief was Mothibi, son of Molehabangwe, who in 1813 had invited John Campbell to ‘send instructors’ to his country, at the same time promising to be ‘a father’ to them.

The first missionaries sent in response to his invitation, John Evans and Robert Hamilton, were, in fact, rebuffed, but the. elder James Read and Hamilton obtained a foothold at the end of 1816. In the following year Read persuaded Mothibi to move the tribal capital southwards from Dithakong (Old Lithako) to the Kuruman river. Read was transferred and Hamilton then struggled on alone until M.’s arrival.

The Moffats had not long settled at Dithakong when there began a period of considerable excitement and anxiety. In 1823 one of the hordes, part refugees, part banditti, set in motion by the wars of the Zulu chief Shaka invaded southern Bechuanaland . M. acted promptly and enlisted the help of some of Andries Waterhoer’s Griquas, mounted riflemen, who put the invaders to flight.

Although the immediate danger of invaders from the east had been averted, the following years were difficult and depressing, as can be gauged from M.’s letters and journals of the period 1820-1828, published in 1951 (Schapera, infra ). The people remained deaf to the missionaries’ teaching; bands of marauders roamed the countryside and sometimes threatened the station; Mothibi drifted away with most of his people. The missionaries refused to be discouraged and in 1829, as if miraculously, the sky seemed to clear and thereafter there was peace. In that year, too, the first converts were baptized. Meanwhile the station itself had moved. In 1824 M. persuaded Mothibi to transfer the tribal capital from New Lithako (Maruping) to Seoding, the present site. This was further up-stream and nearer the famous ‘eye’ of Kuruman, where a veritable underground river bursts into the open.

By instinct and training a gardener, M, used the water of the river to raise crops by irrigation. His efforts to teach the natives better agriculture, though not quickly successful, showed results in the long run.

The year 1829 was not only memorable for an improvement in the fortunes of the mission. It also saw the beginning of M’s extraordinary friendship with Mzilikazi, chief of the Matebele. This chief, his curiosity aroused by tales about the white men, sent two headmen to Kuruman on a visit of inquiry. M. accompanied them to Mzilikazi’s town near the site of future Pretoria. At their first meeting Mzilikazi conceived an extraordinary affection for M. which remained undiminished for thirty years. M. visited Mzilikazi again in 1835 at Mosega in the western Transvaal , this time accompanying the great expedition to the interior led by Dr Andrew Smith. After the Matebele had moved beyond the Limpopo to Bulawayo , M. paid three more visits to Mzilikazi in 1854, 1857 and 1859. The extensive journals kept by M. and dealing with these occasions were discovered in 1942 and published in 1945 (cf. L P. R. Wallis, infra).

It was never remotely likely that Mzilikazi would become a Christian, but, short of that, he went to extraordinary lengths to please the man whom he revered. He moderated his laws, mitigated his punishments, submitted meekly to many harsh reproofs for his depravity, and in his old age actually permitted the L.M.S. to establish a station in his country at Inyati.

Almost as soon as he had mastered the Tlhaping dialect of the Tswana language, M. began to translate the Bible and to prepare other devotional and educational publications in this language. Of his first Tswana spelling and reading book (published in London in 1826) only a fragment has survived. With the help of Rogers Edwards this became the Buka ea Likaélo tsa ntla … (Kuruman, 1842), of which a third edition, with variation of contents, appeared in 1843, other editions following in 1850 and 1857.

In his early years at Kuruman M. also prepared the first Tswana catechism, a translation of the catechism of Dr Brown, of Edinburgh , to which he added the third chapter of St John (printed in Holborn, London, in 1826). Various later editions appeared at Kuruman and in London until 1848, all containing, besides questions, extracts from the Holy Scriptures.

By 1830 M. had completed his translation of St Luke, which he took to Cape Town and composed for printing with his own hands at the government press. The book was printed under the supervision of B. J. van de Sandt, from whom M. learned to set up type, to print and to bind. This knowledge he was to apply when, in 1831, he brought his hand printing-press by ox-wagon to Kuruman and started the printing of his own Tlhaping work, as well as literature produced by his missionary colleagues of the Paris Evangelical mission society at Mothito, who used the Rolong dialect of Tswana.

While working on his Bible translation, M. published a collection of hymns ( Lihela tsa tuto le puloko tsa Yesu Kereste, Kuruman , 1831), with later editions and a supplement in 1855. With Edwards he wrote and printed at Kuruman a book of Bible lessons ( Likaelo tsa ri tlauchoeng mo Bibelieng … ) in 1833, with a second edition of 5,000 copies in 1841, and this was evidently used in teaching at other mission stations, too.

M.’s publication of the gospel of St Luke in 1830 had been the first published translation of a portion of the Bible in any South African native language. By 1836 he had struck off on his press part of his translation of St James, and in 1839 took to Cape Town for printing his translation of the whole New Testament. As he could not arrange for the printing to be done in Cape Town, he took his manuscript to Britain where his Tswana New Testament appeared the following year ( Kholagano enca ea Yesu Keresete … London, 1840). This was the first complete translation of its kind into a South African native language, and was followed in 1841 by the publication in London of his translation of Psalms, which he had actually done while in Britain.

On his return to Kuruman M. continued his monumental task of also translating the Old Testament with the help of his colleague, William Ashton (1817-1897), also printing it on his trusty old mission press (now preserved in the Kimberley public library) in two parts: the first in 1853, the second in 1857. When M. presented the final parts of his Bibela ea boitsépho to Sir George Grey in November 1857, it was the first full translation of the Bible in any South African native tongue. Likewise, through M.’s initiative and energy, Tswana was the fifth language in Africa to have a translation of the New Testament, and the third to have a complete translation of the Bible. At the same time M. had confirmed his claim to a place among the great translators by completing this herculean labour.

During his sojourn in Britain from June 1839 to the beginning of 1843, he wrote and published his Missionary labours and scenes in southern Africa ( London, 1840), which aroused unprecedented public interest. The fourth edition appeared in 1842 while he was still in Britain, and by 1846 eleven thousand copies and a French edition had been printed. M. appeared before enthusiastic gatherings, preaching and lecturing, and some of his addresses were published: Africa: or, gospel light shining in the midst of heathen darkness. A sermon on Isaiah IX2 … preached … before the directors of the London missionary society ( London, 1840); African scenes; being a series of anecdotes … related by the Rev. R. Moffat, at public meetings … (Sunderland, 1843); Incidents in the life of the Rev. R. Moll at, being an address delivered by him … 1842 ( Birmingham, 1842); The farewell services of Robert Moffat, in Edinburgh, Manchester, and London. Edited by John Campbell ( London, 1843).

His visit also gave rise to a number of publications by others on his work in South Africa . It was in 1841, too, that M. met young David Livingstone, then studying for his ordination in London, directed his interest to Africa and secured his services for the mission to the Kwena. By the end of 1843 he was back at Kuruman.

M.’s fourth visit to Mzilikazi in 1857 had as its object a mission to the Matebele. It was on this journey that he persuaded Mzilikazi to release from military servitude Matsheng, rightful chief of the Ngwato. In doing so he innocently brought much trouble on that tribe (cf. Sekgoma I and John Mackenzie).

In 1858 irresponsible Tlhapings raided the O.F.S. and the Transvaal republic, suspecting that the Kuruman missionaries were in league with the tribesmen. The Transvaal seemed disposed to frustrate the expedition which Moffat was to lead to Matebeleland. At the same time burghers were reported to be making preparations to attack Kuruman. M. appealed to Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape Colony, who obtained from President M. W. Pretorius a repudiation of the plan to attack Kuruman; nor was anything more done to stop the proposed journey. M. accordingly led a missionary party to Matebeleland and returned to Kuruman in August 1860, leaving his companions at the new station of Inyati. One of the Matebele party was his own son, John Smith Moffat.

After this date M. did not undertake any more long journeys. He remained at Kuruman, devoting himself to the work of the station and out-stations, where there was more than enough for him to do.

In 1848 he had translated and published at Kuruman Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s progress; his third visit to Mzilikazi he described in a pamphlet in 1856, and in 1863 appeared an account of his work in the mission field, entitled Rivers of water in a dry place. An account of the introduction of Christianity into southern Africa, and of Mr. Moffat’s missionary labours.

(London, 1863, with new editions in 1867 and 1869).

M.’s last years were saddened by family bereavements. He preached at Kuruman for the last time on 20.3.1870 and a few days later the patriarchal pair set out for Britain and retirement. Mary Moffat died in Brixton in January 1871. M. continued to travel about the United kingdom, preaching and advancing the cause of missions. He revised his translation of the New Testament, of which a new edition, as well as an edition of the whole Tswana Bible appeared in 1872. In the same year the University of Edinburgh conferred on him the honorary degree of D.D.

He went to live in London, where he was present at the funeral of David Livingstone in 1874, and at the unveiling of the Livingstone statue in Edinburgh in 1876. In 1877 he visited Paris by invitation to address a great gathering of French children. In 1879 he went to live at Leigh, near Tunbridge, and on 7.5.1881 he was publicly honoured in London at a dinner attended by leading figures in the religious, and philanthropic world, and representatives of both houses of parliament.

M. lies buried in Norwood cemetery, beside the remains of his wife. There is a monument to his memory in Ormiston, his birthplace. He and his wife had ten children, four sons and six daughters, of whom two daughters and a son died young. His eldest daughter, Mary Moffat (1821-1862), was the wife of David Livingstone; the second daughter, Anne Moffat (1823-1893), married a French missionary, Jean Fr6doux (1823-1866), of Mothitho; the eldest surviving son, Robert Moffat (1827-1862), was a trader; Helen Moffat (1829-1902) married J. Vavasseur; the youngest son, the missionary John Smith Moffat, was also the biographer of his parents; Elizabeth (Bessie) Lees Moffat (1839-1919) became the wife of Roger Price, and the youngest daughter, Jane Gardiner Moffat (1840 to 1927), died unmarried.

M. was a simple man of extraordinary zeal, de-termination and courage. He was essentially evangelical, holding that the missionary’s chief task, indeed his only task, was to ‘teach poor heathen to know the Saviour’. Any other interest he held to be irrelevant and likely to obscure this supreme objective. He disapproved strongly; for example, of John Philip’s ‘political’ activities, al-though these were aimed at improving the lot of the native peoples. He had no interest in native customs and traditional usages, which he either condemned as sinful or dismissed as silly and squalid.

He was also strangely insensitive to the devotion which he inspired in Mzilikazi, which he neither understood nor appreciated. Although M. missed so much, his writings, which consist of letters, reports and an autobiography, nevertheless contain much historical material concerning the native peoples, as well as many vivid sidelights on the trials and triumphs of a missionary’s life. It has been suggested that his overwhelming personality allowed little scope for the development of a strong succession; that he centralized too much and fostered initiative too little; that his prestige obscured the contribution made by other workers in his field. Even if true, this does not detract from his achievements. Under his guidance Kuruman became not only the focus of Christian civilization in southern Bechuanaland, but also a springboard for the exploration and evangelization of the still more remote interior. M.’s place is among the great nineteenth-century missionaries.

Portraits of M. are to be found in the three volumes of his published journals and letters, the biography by his son, and most other works on his life. The frontispiece of the 1843 edition of his Missionary labours contains the Baxter print of the youthful missionary; an etching of the portrait by Leon Richelson at the time of M.’s visit to Paris in April 1877 is in the Africana museum, Johannesburg. The stone church at Kuruman, built by M. from 1830 to 1833, was proclaimed as a national monument in 1939. M.’s home, though dilapidated, was still in existence in 1964.

Source: Dictionary of South African Biography (Volume 1)

Some information on Robert Moffat’s wife, Mary Smith Moffat:

Mary Smith Moffat (1795-1871) was missionary wife of Robert Moffat, and mother of Mary, the wife of David Livingstone. Born in New Windsor, England, she married Robert Moffat in December, 1819 at Cape Town, South Africa. They settled at Kuruman in Bechuanaland and established a mission there. They had ten children: Mary (who married David Livingstone), Ann, Robert (died as an infant), Robert, Helen, Elizabeth (died as an infant), James, John, Elizabeth, and Jean. The Moffats returned to England in 1839 for their only furlough. In 1870, the aged missionaries returned to England to stay. Mary died shortly thereafter.

Robert Moffat

Mary Smith

A Synopsis

The outstanding character of all living organisms – from viruses and bacteria to elephants and huge trees – is that they contain genetic material that enables them to multiply. This genetic material is the blueprint for all characters that are passed on to the offspring. The following is a brief summary of the processes involved.

Genetic material

The genetic material of all organisms on Earth is nuclein acids. They form long chains of which the active constituents are linked molecules known as nitrogen bases. There are only four different nitrogen bases in every type of nuclein acid – but by occurring in different sequences, they form an infinite variation of codes.

The two types of genetic material are ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). In organisms with cells – therefore all known organisms with the exception of viruses -DNA forms the blueprint for new body cells and sex cells, while RNA acts as “messengers” in the cell and is involved in the formation of proteins. Viruses, however, have only either RNA or DNA.
Procaryotes (bacteria and proto bacteria) have no separate cell nuclei, the DNA forming a single circle. In eucaryotes (organisms with cell nuclei) the genetic material is more or less arranged in X-shaped structures called chromosomes.
Eucaryote cells also contain organelles (mini-organs) called mitochondria and – in plants – plastids with their own genetic material. They are circular, indicating that the organelles descend from free-living prokaryotes. The heredity units on the chromosomes are called genes.

Chromosome numbers and ploidy

Each eucaryote organism has a fixed number of chromosomes, although this may differ in the sexes of some species. In man this number is 46 – but it can vary from as little as one in certain male ants to more than a thousand in some ferns.
Human chromosomes occur in two sets, which means that for each of the 23 chromosomes in a set, there is one in the other set with more or less the same composition. The exception is the sex chromosomes, of which humans have one pair.

Females have two identical sex chromosomes, called X chromosomes, but men have only one X chromosome and a much smaller so-called Y chromosome. This form of sex determination occurs in nearly all mammals and many other organisms. The number of chromosomes per set is abbreviated to n. In the case of man, it is written as n=23 and 2n=46 in its abbreviated form.

Organisms with two sets of chromosomes are called diploid (noun as well as adjective), those with only one haploid and those with more than two poliploid. Poliploids can be triploid (3n), tetraploid (4n), and so forth.
Most organisms are diploids. Haploids are extremely vulnerable because they do not have an extra copy should anything go wrong with a chromosome. In honeybees and many related insects of the order Hymenoptera, males – which are relatively unimportant in this species – are haploid.

Poliploidy may cause problems with, among others, organ formation and propagation and is rare in animals. It is reasonably common in plants that have fewer specialised organs, a less specific build and usually no special sex chromosomes. Unequal ploidy tends to cause more sterility than equal ploidy. For example, bananas, which are triploid, very seldom contain seeds – but hexaploid (6n) wheat is fertile.

When sets are complete, they are referred to as euploids. Aneuploidy arises when there are one or more chromosomes too few or too many. This usually has a far-reaching effect on the organism and is often fatal.
In man only a few types of aneuploids are viable. The best-known form of aneuploidy is Down Syndrome, which is caused by an additional chromosome 21.

Cell division

Cell division is essential for growth and renewal, as well as for the formation of sex cells. Two different types of cell division occur.

The division of body cells is known as mitosis. During this division the number of chromosomes remain constant and the original cell divides into two, each a replica of the original cell. This is possible because each chromosome “zips open” and divides into two.

While the process is taking place, the removed part is substituted piece by piece out of building substances in the cell and linked together. These replicated, identical chromosomes of each pair move to opposite poles of the cell and constriction takes place between them.

Another process is necessary for the formation of sex cells as they are to be fertilised: the chromosome number must be halved so that the new cell that is formed after fertilisation will have the original number of chromosomes. This takes place through meiosis, or reduction division.

Here the chromosomes separate from each pair and temporarily attach to each other. The chromosomes exchange genetic material before they move to opposite poles. The difference between mitosis and this stage of meiosis is that the chromosomes do not divide.

The two cells that are formed each have only half of the normal chromosome number. A second division similar to mitosis now takes place: the four cells are forerunners of sperma, ovicells or other sex cells. The number of chromosomes in a sex cell is known as x. (Compare this with n above – although x and n are often the same for a certain organism, the concepts are not the same.)

Traditional applications of genetics

Man has realised for many centuries that characters are transferred from one generation to the next – and this knowledge has been used long before the nature of genes was known. Thousands of years ago farmers all over the world realised that they could improve the quality of their field crops by selecting and sowing only the best seed, while in the choice of marriage partners family history of serious diseases was taken into account.

More recently it became possible, among others:

To identify the carriers of certain genetic diseases and to determine through prenatal tests whether women in high-risk groups were expecting affected babies.

To cure certain genetic diseases, for example through organ transplants, and to control others with treatment.

To exclude paternity through blood tests in many cases. More recently, tests were developed to prove paternity.

To determine the sex of babies before birth.

To breed many new garden and agriculture plants and animals.

New and future applications of genetics

During the past decade or two tremendous development took place in the area of genetic research. It not only became possible to study genes close-up, but also to manipulate them and to change the genetic composition of organisms. These techniques are often controversial.

Some people have ethical and religious problems with tampering with the blueprint for life. Others foresee serious practical consequences should manipulated organisms get out of control. It is also feared that only the privileged will have access to the new technology products, and that the gap between rich and poor will further increase.

On the other hand, proponents of biotechnology are of the opinion that genetic manipulation has many possibilities for the treatment of diseases, the development of agricultural supercrops that will help alleviate famine, and the limitation of the use of insecticides.

Of the latest developments are:
The Human Genome Project (see also article by this name), whereby almost the entire genetic code of man has been determined. Deciphering of the code is at present done internationally and researchers hope to be able to eventually determine precisely where every gene is located on every chromosome.

It might soon be possible to analyse the genetic composition of an embryo and to discover what the baby developing from it will look like, as well as to which diseases he or she will be susceptible. In future parents will probably be able to choose which of various embryos they wish to have implanted and doctors will be able to correct genetic abnormalities early in pregnancy.

It will even be possible to compile an individual health programme for every person that would be ideal for his or her specific genetic profile. The emphasis can be shifted to the prevention rather than the treatment of serious diseases such as cancer and heart diseases.

Genetic manipulation of agricultural crops. Instead of only relying on cross-breeding to improve crops, genes from other species are transferred to improve yields or to render plants more resistant to insect pests.
Cloning. After a sheep, Dolly, was the first mammal to be cloned in 1997 from the cell of a dead animal, a variety of other clones have been created. Cloning can be used to create whole herds of exceptionally superior animals, to increase stocks of endangered species and even to cultivate organs for transplantation.

Research on the relationship between organisms. By studying certain genes that occur in a variety of organisms, the relationship between different forms of life can be determined. This does not only make the classification of living organisms much more accurate than in the past, but should also provide important information on how certain structures, tissues and organs have developed through evolution.

The first British in SA
Sir Francis Drake rounded the Cape in 1580 and was probably the first Briton to see what he called “the fairest Cape in all the world”. But the first Englishmen to go ashore, a party led by James Lancaster, only landed at Saldanha Bay 11 years later. The Dutch and the English were interested in the Cape’s strategic position on the sea route to the East, and it was inevitable that one or the other would annex it.

In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe attempted to land some deported British criminals, but those who were not drowned or killed by Khoi were soon removed. In June 1620 captains Andrew Shillinge and Humphrey Fitzherbert formally annexed Table Bay for King James I, naming the Lion’s Rump King James’ Mountain. Their sovereign refused to confirm the act. It was left to the Dutch to act, after the wreck of the Haarlem in 1647. A previous visitor, Jan van Riebeeck, returned in 1652 to administer the territory for the benefit of the Dutch East India Company.

During the 18th century the rich Cape flora excited the interest of several British botanists who made long, arduous journeys through the interior in search of plants. Francis Masson, a Scot from Kew, arrived in 1772, a few months after the Swedes C P Thunberg and A Sparrman. Many plant species which Masson collected and classified remain European favourites. His work was continued by several British researchers, including W J Burchell, who arrived in 1810, after the Cape had become a British colony. About 8 700 South African plants are recorded in Burchell’s Catalogus geographicus plantarum.

William Harvey, who arrived in 1835 and later became Treasurer-General of the Cape Colony, produced his Genera of South African Plants in 1838. In collaboration with the German Otto Sender he produced the first three volumes of Flora Capensis, the work being taken over by the staff of the Kew Herbarium, London . This monumental work on the flora of the Cape was completed in England in 1933. British-born botanist, Professor H Pearson founded the National Botanic Gardens at Kirstenbosch in 1913. In its first half-century all three directors of Kirstenbosch, Profs Pearson, R H Compton and H B Rycroft, were of British descent.

The British occupied the Cape in 1795, but it was administered by the Batavian Republic from 1803 to 1806, before reverting to British control. The objective was to secure the trade route to India but British army units also kept Xhosa tribes at bay and allowed British influence to spread. The army was a safety net allowing government and education to develop and its presence encouraged the growth of eastern frontier towns such as Port Elizabeth, Cradock, Grahamstown, King William’s Town and East London.

Various governors attempted to keep the frontier peaceful, the most successful being those who sought to establish settlements as a barrier to incursions. The first group of settlers for this purpose arrived in 1820. It is a tribute to their courage that, knowing nothing of the country, they remained after the Voortrekkers had left. Many of their descendants are established in the Eastern Cape, where a distinct British culture is rooted.
This holds true for much of KwaZulu-Natal, where British settlement dates to 1824, when Lieutenant Francis Farewell obtained a grant of Port Natal and the surrounding country from the Zulu king, Shaka. This settlement was mainly for the purpose of trading. In 1835 the township of Durban was laid out on the site of Port Natal.

Two years later the first Boer settlers arrived, but their short-lived republic ended in 1843, when British sovereignty was proclaimed over Natal. Large parties of British settlers arrived in Natal from the late 1840s onward.

The British of the Eastern Cape and Natal were not content merely to settle. They adapted to a completely new environment and, imbued with the progressive spirit of 19th-century Britain, were often eager to alter and improve their new homeland.

South African agriculture benefited immensely. Agricultural machinery was introduced to a country which had few. The 1820 Settlers realised that the Eastern Cape and adjacent karoo were potentially good sheep country and merino wool became a leading export.

The British introduced sugar to the KwaZulu-Natal coastal belt and developed it into a major industry. Although deciduous fruit and citrus had long been grown in South Africa , the British were primarily responsible for the rise of commercial fruit-growing at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

British explorers
British explorers played a major part in opening up Africa’s interior. Early in the 19th century John Barrow traveled widely in the arid parts of the Cape Colony. Burchell reached the Vaal and Orange Rivers, and John Campbell explored north of the Orange. In the 1800s Farewell, James King, Henry Fynn and others explored Natal, and in 1835 Allen Gardiner became the first to describe the Drakensberg.

Robert Moffat established a settlement north of the Orange River and surveyed the greater part of the river’s course. In 1836 William Cornwallis-Harris and Richard Williamson journeyed through Bechuanaland and the western Transvaal. Francis Galton was apparently the first European to reach Ovamboland, and his friend Charles Andersson, the Anglicised son of an English father and a Swedish mother, traveled through the desert of the Kaokoveld to reach the Okavango in 1858.

The meeting between Gen Louis Botha (second from left, front row) and Lord Kitchener (third from left, front row). After the Anglo-Boer War hostility between the Boers and the British continued. Transvaal and the Free State lost their independence and were governed as British crown colonies.

The greatest of all explorers was the Scottish missionary, David Livingstone. In 1849, accompanied by W C Oswell, he arrived at Lake Ngami, and in 1851 reached the Zambezi River. In 1855, while traversing the continent from Luanda to the Zambezi delta, he was shown the Victoria Falls . Later he explored and mapped lakes Malawi and Tanganyika. Henry Hartley discovered gold in what is now Zimbabwe in 1867, and shortly afterwards the hunter Frederick Selous began his explorations from there.

British missionaries
British missionaries played a major part in the development of South Africa. They preached the gospel at a time when religious fervour ran high in Britain and they believed that Christianity and European civilisation were inseparable. They strove to introduce western ideas, including the inherent equality of man before the law, a notion which found expression in Cape law even before the emancipation of slaves in 1834. Five years later civil rights were extended to all in the Cape, a principle kept after responsible government was granted in 1872.
The breaking down of the legal colour bar was the greatest striving of the missionaries in the Cape. Exploration was an important second. English missionaries were early travelers to the Free State and former Transvaal, which Thomas Hodgson and Samuel Broadbent reached in 1823 coincident with a period of deep unrest. They settled among the Barolong who later helped the Voortrekkers after their cattle were stolen by the Matabele.

Missionaries founded many schools, including famed East Cape institutions such as Lovedale and Healdtown. Settler education was not neglected. Scottish missionaries and teachers resisted the plans of Governor Somerset to use the schools to anglicise pupils. Andrew Murray, Alexander Smith, William Ritchie Thomson, Henry Sutherland, George Morgan and Colin Fraser had an important part in strengthening and developing the Dutch Reformed Church. Of schoolmasters recruited by Somerset, James Rose Innes became the Cape’s first Superintendent of Education in 1839 and set about providing a firm educational grounding for people of all races. John Fairbairn and James Adamson founded the South African College in 1829, later to become the University of Cape Town.

English media
The first South African newspaper, The Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser, appeared on August 16, 1800 during the first British occupation. It was published in English and Dutch and later became the Cape Government Gazette, which has continued in modified form to the present day. The first unofficial newspaper, the South African Commercial Advertiser, was founded in 1824 by Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn, settlers of Scottish descent. George Greig, the printer, was also a British settler.

The establishment led to a dispute about censorship which had far-reaching effects for the South African press. The paper was suppressed by Governor Somerset, but in 1829, an ordinance removed from the Government the power of interfering with the Press and made newspapers subject only to the law of libel.

This success led to the first unofficial Dutch newspaper, De Zuid-Afrihaan, being established in 1830. The following year the Graham’s Town Journal was launched in the East Cape. Press freedom was later accepted in other parts of South Africa, with the result that newspapers played an important political role.

Government
The Cape developed a system of parliamentary government modeled on Westminster. In 1834 it received its first bicameral governing institution with the creation of a Legislative Council and an Executive Council. For the first time a clear distinction was drawn between legislative and executive functions.

John Campbell

As a result of agitation for a form of representative government, mainly by British colonists, the Cape in 1854 was granted an elected parliament. Another 18 years elapsed before the constitution was changed to provide for an executive chosen from the party which commanded the majority in the lower house, to which it was also responsible.

In 1834 the Cape received its first bicameral governing institution with the creation of a Legislative Council and an Executive Council. Until the end of the 19th century, in both the Transvaal (ZAR) and Free State republics, there was an elected Volksraad and an Executive Council with an elected President. Thomas François Burgers (above) was the second president of the ZAR.

The other territories also had representative governments. In Natal the colonists got theirs in 1856 and responsible government in 1893. Until the end of the 19th century, in both the Transvaal and Free State republics, there was an elected Volksraad and an Executive Council with an elected President. With Union in 1910 it was the Cape and Natal form of responsible parliamentary government which had served as the model for parliament.

Politics
English-speaking South Africans played a far greater role in politics prior to Union than afterwards. Between 1872 and 1910 all but one of the prime ministers of the Cape were of British descent. The influence of two, Cecil Rhodes and Dr Leander Jameson, was felt far beyond the borders of the Cape. By contrast, between 1948 when the National Party took office and 1990 when a decision was made to negotiate a democratic future the number of English-speakers who reached cabinet rank numbered barely the fingers of a hand.

An ambitious British imperialist Rhodes had by 1890 made Bechuanaland and the territory north of the Limpopo River part of empire. Most British immigrants to the Transvaal were denied full franchise rights. Rhodes used Jameson to raid the Transvaal in 1895 to stir rebellion but the venture was easily crushed. At the national convention of 1908-09 to draft a constitution for South Africa, English-speakers were well represented, among them being John X. Merriman, Jameson, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, Sir Frederick Moor and Sir Thomas Smartt.

Infrastructure
Road-building was a great contribution of the British. The arrival of the settlers and the many frontier wars made good roads essential. The route to Grahamstown was the Cape’s main thoroughfare. An early engineering feat was the Franschhoek Pass, begun in 1823, followed in 1830 by the road over the Hottentots Holland range and named for the governor, Sir Lowry Cole.

In 1837 Scotsman Andrew Geddes Bain began to build an excellent military road across rugged terrain between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort . The so-called Queen’s Road, was a continuation of the main route from Cape Town. The work led to Bain making palaentological fossil finds, many of them new to science.

John Montagu, who arrived at the Cape in 1843, helped establish a central and divisional road boards. Both were involved in systematically extending the road network. In the Free State and Transvaal road building awaited the revenue which accrued from gold mining.

Ports and coasts
In 1824 the British built the first lighthouse and in 1860 a start was made on a breakwater and docks at Cape Town. They were also responsible for the construction of all other harbours along the Cape and Natal coast.

Railways
The first railways operated privately around Durban and Cape Town. By 1885 there was a railway from Cape Town to Kimberley, built by British engineers to serve the diamond-fields, then being developed chiefly with British capital. The Transvaal and Orange Free State were without railways, and it was the progressive extension of railways by the colonial governments which led to rail development in the Boer republics.

By September 1892 Johannesburg was linked to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, two years before the line, sponsored by President Paul Kruger and built by the a Dutch company, was completed to Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.

Mineral Revolution
Diamond-mining led to the establishment of South Africa’s first capitalist concern organised on a national basis, and very largely dependent on capital from Great Britain. This was De Beers Consolidated Mines, stated by Rhodes, son of a Hertfordshire parson, whose chief rival had been Barney Barnato, a London-born Jew.

The nature of the gold deposits of the Witwatersrand also favoured capitalist concerns. Were it not for the advanced technology and chemistry of the predominantly British Uitlanders, the finely disseminated gold could not have been extracted from the hard quartzite conglomerate of the Witwatersrand, the richest gold-field of the world.

Gold-mining revolutionised the economy of South Africa. They gave birth to manufacturing industries and boosted agriculture. Factories established directly or indirectly through British capital have drawn millions to the cities, transforming the demographic landscape.

Law
The common law in South Africa is Roman-Dutch, derived from the 17th century law of the Netherlands. When the Cape was ceded to the British in 1806 the common law remained unaltered. In certain fields, however, English law, being seldom in conflict with Roman-Dutch law, was gradually absorbed into the South African system.
Reference has already been made to the role of the British missionaries in the field of South African law. They succeeded in persuading the Cape government to open the courts to people of all races, a policy eventually adopted throughout South Africa.

The British were always a minority group and their influence has come to be expressed through their control of major mining and industrial concerns rather than politics.
Source: South African Encyclopedia

Indian Migrants

When sugar was first produced from cane in Natal in 1851, the colony seemed set for a major economic boom. But there was just one snag: the plantation owners lacked a source of cheap labour. At first they hoped that the indigenous people would be able to supply their needs.

But once it became obvious that toiling in the fields for the white capitalist held no attraction for most Zulu`s, planters began to turn their attentions elsewhere.

And they looked – as planters throughout the empire had looked – to India.
Davarum was 30 years old when he put his thumb-print to a document he could not even read: ‘We the adult male emigrants,’ it said, ‘do hereby agree to serve the employer to whom we may respectively be allotted by the Natal Government under the Natal Act No. 14 of 1859 and we all understand the terms under which we are engaged …’

Davarum – or Coolie No.1, as the recruiting officer named him, had no idea where Natal was, let alone the implications of Act No. 14 – but for 10 shillings a month he, and hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, were pre-pared to travel anywhere to escape the poverty and starvation of India.

On 12 October 1860, he and his wife (Coolie No. 2), and their two children (Coolies 3 and 4), joined 338 others aboard the Truro at Madras harbour. A few hours later, the dangerously overloaded vessel began its long journey to south-east Africa.

The fight for “coolie” labour
The go-ahead for Natal to recruit ‘coolies’ in Madras (and Calcutta ) followed protracted and often bitter negotiation between the governments of the colony, Britain and a far from-keen India. As far back as 1851, plantation owners had been demanding the importation of workers from India.

In 1855, Cape Governor Sir George Grey, acting on behalf of a group of Natal farmers, tried to ‘requisition’ 300 ‘coolies’ from Calcutta. Although the Indian Government turned down this request, it promised to reconsider once the colony had stipulated the terms of indenture.

In 1856 the Natal legislature passed an ordinance em-powering the Lieutenant-Governor ‘to make rules and regulations for Coolies introduced into this District from the East Indies’. But in the next year, much of India erupted in rebellion against the rule of the English East India Company that, for decades, had systematically plundered, taxed and exploited the country and its people. By the time the last mutineer had been blown from the muzzle of a cannon, rule in India had passed to the British Crown and, as memory of the horrors of war faded, Indians were given a greater say in the new system of government which developed. Mindful of the racist attitudes of white colonists in southern Africa, and therefore unconvinced that workers would be properly treated, the new Indian administration again turned down a Natal request for ‘coolie’ labour.

By 1859 the labour shortage in Natal had reached crisis proportions – and the ‘Natal Mercury’ proclaimed that ‘the fate of the Colony hangs on a thread, and that thread is labour’. Legislation was rushed through to enable colonists to bring in labour from India at their own expense, and also to allow the colonial government to introduce Indian labourers ‘at the public expense’. Although the government bore the major share of the expenses, planters to whom the labourers were assigned had to pay three-fifths of their passage money of some £8 per head, as well as certain other costs.
The contract, or indenture, provided that a labourer would be assigned to a particular planter for a period of three years (later amended to five years) and then be re-indentured, perhaps to the same planter, for another two years. After a residence in Natal of a further five years as a ‘free’ worker, the labourer had the choice of accepting a free return passage to India or of remaining in Natal on a small grant of Crown land. While they were indentured, their welfare was the responsibility of a ‘Coolie Immigration Agent’, who also assigned them to plantations.

Once on the plantation, treatment of the indentured labourer was not subject to the ordinary master and servant ordinance. Special regulations demanded that the employer provide food and lodging, clothing and any necessary medical attention. He was also obliged to pay wages of 10 shillings a month for the first year, followed by an annual increase of a shilling a month thereafter in each successive year. His workers’ welfare would be guarded by the Coolie Immigration Agent, who would visit each plantation at least twice a year. On the other hand, if a labourer missed work for what his employer regarded as an inadequate reason, a portion of his already meagre wages could be deducted as a fine. If he left his employer’s plantation without a signed Pass, he was liable to imprisonment. Once his five years of indentured service were over, the immigrant Indian was subject to the ordinary law of the colony. It was scarcely an attractive package, but ever-increasing pressure on the land in India led to growing impoverishment of a rural class that owned no land and was scarcely able to survive. Emigration, whether to Natal or any other part of the empire, was an act of desperation in an attempt to secure survival.

The pioneers
On 16 November 1860 the Truro dropped anchor in Natal Bay under the curious gaze of a crowd of white spectators who had come to see the arrival of the Indians. The Coolie Immigration Agent was not at the dockside because, to save money, the Natal Government had not yet formalised his appointment (they did not do so until two days later). Once ashore, the immigrants were herded by armed police into an uncompleted barracks with no toilet, washing or cooking facilities, set amid pools of stagnant water. Here they remained under guard for eight days (during which time four of them died), waiting for their new masters to collect them. The planters wanted only strong, healthy young men – and as rumours began circulating that families would be split up, some of the workers tried to abscond in a bid for freedom. The reaction of the authorities was to build high walls around the barracks.

Although the terms of the agreement between the governments of India and Natal stipulated that families were not to be separated, this did, in fact, occur: a 34-year old woman, Choureamah Arokuim (Coolie No. 99), arrived with her daughters, eight-year-old Megaleamah (Coolie No. 100) and three-year-old Susanah (Coolie No. 101). Although the family was originally assigned to Grey’s Hospital, just over six months later Magaleamah was apprenticed to A Brewer, and Susanah – perhaps aged four by this time – to Isabella O’Hara. Once assigned, the immigrants walked to their plantations, clutching a few pathetic possessions and their rations for the road.

At first, the plantation workers erected their own shacks and were able to cultivate small patches of the surrounding ground for their own account – if they were not exhausted by the day’s work. Later, however, planters were obliged to provide accommodation, building barracks, known as ‘coolie lines’, of corrugated iron, mud, or stone, in which the workers led a cramped and uncomfortable existence devoid of any privacy. A lean-to shed, generally without a chimney, was used for cooking the rations of rice, mealie-meal and ghee, a clarified form of butter.

About 250 grams of dried fish each week was their only luxury. Few barracks were provided with toilets, and analysis of samples of water used for drinking revealed them to be ‘quite unsafe for use’.
Before dawn every day, the sirdar (foreman) rang a bell or, more commonly, struck a bar of iron suspended from a tree, to wake the workers who, after an unappetising breakfast of cold ‘porridge’, marched to the fields so as to begin work as the sun rose. And they worked, planting, digging, breaking new soil, cutting, harvesting, carrying, building, until the sun set. There was a brief break for lunch, which was a repeat of breakfast. It was dark by the time they reached their homes, where they managed another brief meal before falling into exhausted sleep. Sundays were supposed to be free, but few planters observed this.

Also unobserved was the condition that employers of more than 20 Indians should provide elementary hospitals. The ‘hospital’ at the receiving depot lumped all patients` together – men, women and children – regardless of whether or not any were suffering from infectious diseases. Latrines were four holes in the ground, and there were neither water basins nor baths. Corpses were laid out in the open. By 1885 only three plantations had set up sick rooms, and these were worse than that at the depot.

Despite the appalling conditions, few complaints reached the courts. Principally, this was because the worker could not leave the estate without his employer’s per-mission, and because the over-worked Coolie Immigration Agent was unable to visit the estates as he was supposed to. When he did, he was rarely able to speak to the workers in private and, in the presence of employers and sirdars, the workers were afraid to complain, knowing that they could expect even worse treatment if they were found out.

If some part of the worker found peace in death, it was not his body. Cremation, customary in India, was not permitted. In Durban, some ground near a butchery was allocated as an Indian and African cemetery. Workers, anxious to return to work to forestall pay stoppages, sometimes did not bury the corpses deep enough, and they were rooted out and eaten by pigs that had acquired a taste for flesh from offal thrown out by the butchery. Not even in death was there dignity.

Tales of horror
The fact that ‘coolies’ were regarded as units of labour rather than people left them open to widespread abuse. In an editorial which aptly summed up the attitude of white colonists, the ‘Natal Witness’ commented: ‘The ordinary Coolie … and his family cannot be admitted into close fellowship and union with us and our families. He is introduced for the same reason as mules might be introduced from Montevideo, oxen from Madagascar or sugar machinery from Glasgow. The object for which he is brought is to supply labour and that alone. He is not one of us, he is in every respect an alien; he only comes to perform a certain amount of work, and return to India …’

Many did, in fact, return to India, carrying with them horrific tales of life on the sugar plantations of Natal. 

Illegal punishments meted out by employers included flogging. A 10-year-old Indian shepherd, afraid to return to his employer because a sheep had strayed from the flock, was suspended from a rafter for two hours and thrashed with a hunting crop. When released, he ran away and was not seen again. His parents, who worked for the same planter, were beaten on suspicion of taking food to the boy at night. This was an extreme case, but the prevailing callousness is summed up in the case of a man called Narayanan, who returned to his hut one evening to find that his ill wife and child had gone. He walked the plantations for months, vainly searching for his family – until he eventually discovered that the authorities had decided, because of his wife’s illness, to return her and the child to India.

In 1871, confronted by reports and filed statements of abuses, India halted emigration to southern Africa – and the Governor-General of India explained: ‘We cannot permit emigration (to Natal) to be resumed until we are satisfied that the colonial authorities are aware of their duties towards Indian emigrants and that effectual measures have been taken to ensure that class of Her Majesty’s subjects full protection in Natal.’ A commission hastily set up in Natal recommended that flogging be abolished, medical services be improved, and that the Coolie Immigration Agent be given wider powers and the new title of Protector of Indian Immigrants. Once these recommendations had passed into Natal law, together with another that safeguarded the immigrants’ wages, the Indian Government allowed recruiting to resume, and the next group arrived in 1874.

Improvements, however, turned out to be mainly cosmetic and, although the Protector claimed that their fair treatment of immigrants ‘was a credit to the Natal Planters’, the Indian Government raised further objections, claiming that wages were far too low, and that unfairly large deductions were made when a labourer was unable to work because of illness. Living conditions were unsatisfactory, and many labourers were obliged to use water supplies that were dangerously contaminated.

By that time bigotry and discrimination were being increasingly written into the law. In Pietermaritzburg and Durban local legislation provided for the arrest of ‘all per-sons of Colour, if found in the streets after 9 o’clock (at night) without a Pass’. A law of the Natal Parliament restricted Indian rights by classifying them as ‘an uncivilised race’. Natal then unsuccessfully approached the Indian Government with its proposal that labourers should be indentured for the full 10-year period, which provoked indignant reaction. A Bengali newspaper declared: ‘The only difference between Negro slavery and coolie emigration is that the former was open slavery and the latter is slavery in disguise.’ Natal’s reaction was to cease issuing grants of land in lieu of passage money to Indians who had been resident for 10 years and who wished to remain.

Despite their many hardships, Indians, after serving their period of indenture, filled many positions in the colony, some of them to the great indignation and resentment of whites. They were active in agriculture, and by 1885 were virtually the sole producers of fruit and vegetables for Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Others established a fishing and fish-curing industry based on Salisbury Island, while yet others were occupied in coal mining and on the Natal Government Railways. Some went into domestic service or practised a variety of trades. In reply to demands that time-expired workers be repatriated, the Protector was able to say that ‘with but very few exceptions every industry in existence at the present time (1894) would collapse … if the Indian population should be withdrawn’. Their numbers were considerable, sometimes exceeding the total white population, and between 1860 and 1911, when the practice of indentured immigration ceased, some 152 000 Indians had entered Natal.

Not all Indians came to Natal to sell their labour: there were others who came at their own expense, most of them as traders.

Known as Arabs or ‘Passengers’, and most of them Muslims from the state of Gujarat, they began to arrive in the 1870s and constituted the upper stratum of Indians in southern Africa. They associated with the indentured or ex-indentured Indians only so far as trade and labour required it. Yet, racial discrimination did not distinguish one from the other.
The ‘Passenger’ merchants arrived in Natal with considerable capital, and soon set themselves up as storekeepers selling not only to Africans and Indians but, increasingly, to whites. With their shops staffed by members of their families, ‘Passenger’ merchants were able to keep prices below the level the white trader regarded as the minimum on which he could make a profit.

When the first ‘Passenger’ merchants arrived, there were already 10 stores owned by ex-indentured labourers, whose customers were their still-indentured compatriots. By 1880, ex-labourers held 30 of the 37 retail trading licences issued to Indians in Durban – but, from then on, the assertion of the ‘Passengers’ was rapid: within five years, they owned 60 of the 66 Indian stores in Natal.

Wealthier, more confident and ambitious, they formed an elite group, members of which submitted the first petition of grievances to the Colonial Secretary in London. They complained, among other things, of the 9 o’clock curfew, of the lack of interpreters in many courts, of the absence of Indians from juries, and of police brutality and harassment. They also requested permission to open their shops on Sundays, the only time when indentured Indians could do their shopping.

Faced by white hostility and rejection, groups of ‘Passengers’ who in India would never have associated with one another, were drawn together in the fight for political and civil rights. Their situation grew more serious from 1893 when Natal was granted responsible government. It meant that appeals to England or to India were much less likely to succeed.
But in the same year of 1893 a young, London-trained lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi left India to act in a matter concerning two Indian merchants in southern Africa. In Durban, he bought a first-class railway ticket and took his seat in a coach where, during the journey, a white traveller objected to sharing with an Indian. Ejected after refusing to move to a third-class compartment, Gandhi spent a thoughtful night on Pietermaritzburg station, pondering over what he was to call the ‘most important factor’ in directing his future political life.

Article Source: Illustrated History of South Africa
Images: Acknowledgment – Natal Archives
Image Captions (From top to bottom):
Indian Immigrants
Indian Pass
Cane Workers
Natal Immigrants – Port Natal
p Registers: Elliott Collection

It is a difficult matter to realise what a voyage must have been two hundred years ago when we think of our large modern liners plying between Europe and South Africa.
Today the distance is covered within seventeen days, then it took anywhere from four to six months; today the food is kept in ice chambers, then the meat had to be salted and cured. The ships then were small, and living and sleeping space was limited; some of the vessels were no longer than one hundred and fifteen feet. Not only were the people faced by the danger of tempestuous seas, stranding or fire, but they also ran the risk of capture by pirates or a foreign enemy.

Death was of frequent occurrence during the voyage, and the means for combating it limited. The want of fresh food, vegetables and a limited allowance of water caused scurvy. This played havoc with a great number, and it often ended fatally. Water was a precious thing on board, and every precaution was taken to preserve it. To eke out the fresh water as long as possible, the meat and salt pork were cooked in the salt water and thus consumed by those on board. Water was given out on short allowance, but one or two glasses of wine were distributed to make up for it.

Poor people, what agonies they must have suffered sometimes, especially when passing through the tropics! Such, however, were the risks and discomforts which the French Refugees who ventured to leave their country had to run before they found an asylum in the southern hemisphere.

The ships of the Dutch East India Company that brought out the first batches of Refugees were the Voorschooten, Borssenburg, Oosterlandt, Berg China, Schelde, Zuid Beveland, and ‘t Wapen van Alkmaar. The Voorschooten was the first ship to leave Holland, and sailed on the 31st December, 1687. On the 13th April following she was obliged to drop her anchors in Saldanha Bay on account of a strong south-east wind, although her destination was Table Bay.’ Her officers considered it necessary to remain in the bay to effect some repairs. When the Commander at the Castle was informed of her arrival, he despatched the cutter Jupiter from Table Bay with fresh provisions. On her return she brought the Refugees safely to the Cape.
The Voorschooten was a flute of one hundred and thirty feet (Dutch) long. Twenty-two French emigrants were on board. Amongst them were Charles Marais of Plessis, his wife and four children, Philippe Fouché with wife and three children, also eight young bachelors, amongst whom were the brothers Jean and Gabriel le Roux of Blois, and Gideon Malherbe. Jacques Pinard and his wife Esther Fouché had been married previous to the sailing of the Voorschooten from Holland.
The Oosterlandt left Middelburg on the 29th January. 1688, and reached Table Bay on the 26th April, 1688, after a most successful voyage of two months and ten days. She was a much larger built ship than the Voorschooten, measuring one hundred and sixty feet. She brought out twenty-four Refugees. One of then was Jacques de Savoye of Aeth, a wealthy merchant. Jean Prier du Plessis of Poitiers, who had practised as a surgeon, and Isaac Taillefert of Chateau Thierry, a hat-maker, were also on board; they all brought out their wives and children.

Another of the boats to have a most successful voyage was the flute Borssenburg, which left Texel on the 6th January, 1688. She was the smallest of the ships, as she was only one hundred and fifteen feet in length. She cast anchor in the Bay on May 12th, having suffered no deaths amongst the passengers or crew during the voyage, and landed all those on board in a healthy condition at the Cape. Among her passengers was a party of “French Piedmontese fugitives.” The list of names is wanting. I have been unable to trace any particular individual who came out in her.
A most exciting voyage was experienced by the Schelde, a boat of one hundred and forty feet long. She brought out twenty-three French Refugees, men, women and children. Seven or eight days out at sea a terrible storm sprang up, and the skipper was compelled to put into St. Jago. On her arrival at Porto Pravo, he was told that on the previous day an English pirate ship had captured three ships belonging to the English, Portuguese and Dutch respectively. She sailed away almost immediately, and when five days from the Cape ran into another storm. On board were several members of the des Pres family.

On the 4th August, 1688, there arrived in Table Bay the Berg China, which had lett Rotterdam on the 20th March previously. The Berg China was of the same dimensions as the Oosterlandt. There were thirty-four French fugitives on board when she set sail, but the greater portion of the thirty who died on the voyage were Refugees.
When the Zuid Beveland, a vessel as big as the Voorschooten, sailed from Holland on the 22nd April, 1688, she had on board twenty-five Refugees, eleven men, four women and ten children. Amongst them was an important person whose arrival had been eagerly looked forward to by those who had come earlier to the Cape shores. This person was the Revd. Pierre Simond of Embrun in Dauphine, lately minister at Zirikzee. He was to play an active part in the early history of the French community at Drakenstein. Reverend Simond, whose name has been perpetuated today in the Drakenstein Valley by the place Simondium, was accompanied by his wife, Anne de Berault. Amongst the soldiers on board belonging to the Dutch East India Company was Sergeant Louis de Berault, brother of the minister’s wife. In October, 1688, Sergeant de Berault accompanied an expedition to Rio de la Goa to search for some wrecked seamen of the ship Stavinisse. He afterwards settled down as a burgher.

After a run of nearly four months the Zuid Beveland dropped anchor in Table Bay on the 19th August, but it was too late that day for anyone to come ashore. Between eight and nine o’clock next morning the first boat shoved off for land, but a squall of wind suddenly sprang up and upset the boat. Soon everyone was floundering in the sea. Several of the occupants were drowned, including Mr. Cornelis Moerkerke, who was on his way to Malacca to take up his appointment as Fiscal. Both the Schelde and Zuid Beveland lost a number of the French Refugees by death during the voyage. The lists of Refugees who came out in these two vessels are not to be found in the Archives at the Cape nor in Holland. From other documents, however, the names of some are found mentioned as having arrived with her. For instance, the Schelde brought out Charles Prévot, wife and three children, Hercules des Pres with wife and four children, and Abraham Bleuset, which makes a total of twelve out of the twenty-three who embarked.
In the Zuid Beveland came Rev. Simond and his wife, Jean le Long, wife and two children, Estienne Viret, Salomon de Gournay and David Senecal, eight souls out of the number of twenty-five known to have embarked. From the number of Refugees who had sailed by the 1st April, 1688, it is seen that more men than women came out. After the Zuid Beveland had left, sixty-seven men, thirty-three women and fifty-one children had embarked in the various boats, but, as we find upon comparing the lists of those we know set sail and those who landed here, several of them died on the voyage or shortly after their arrival.

About forty Refugees set sail from Texel on the 27th July, 1688, on board ‘t Wapen van Alkmaar, commanded by Captain Carel Goske, and arrived six months after, i.e., the 27th January, 1689. They lost thirty-seven persons by death and brought one hundred and four sick ones, the latter being placed immediately in the Company’s hospital at Cape Town. The French emigrants were sent into the country to their new homes on the 1st February, after they had been given all the necessaries to carry on their agricultural pursuits. The only name I have been able to trace of those who sailed in the Alkmaar is that of Antonie Martin.
About one thousand souls represented by two hundred families, Piedmontese and Vaudois refugees, had taken refuge in Nuremberg. Their number included agriculturists, experienced tradesmen, and four ministers; they all expressed a wish to go to any of the Colonies of the Dutch East or Dutch West India Companies, but on condition that they be allowed to settle close to each other and exercise their own religion. Commissioners, appointed by the Chamber of Seventeen, enquired into the matter, and meanwhile the French and Vaudois fugitives presented a petition asking that certain other conditions be allowed. The petitioners had deputed Jean Pastre Marchand as their spokesmen, who stated that he had been requested by the Refugees at Erlagh and the Vaudois near Nuremberg to plead their cause.
A kindly and compassionate view was taken of the matter by the Seventeen, who decided to settle these people at the Cape of Good Hope, and provide them with free passages and money, and to supply them with building materials on credit. They were to be given provisions and treated on the same footing as the Dutch emigrants. It was thought that after the aged, lame and sick persons had been deducted, there would be between six and seven hundred souls who would be prepared to emigrate.
Arrangements were made for sending out two or three hundred Waldenses or Vaudoisen in the Company’s ship the Schielandt, but afterwards in ‘t Wapen van Alkmaar. Everything was in readiness, but the emigrants declined to go, and the Seventeen wrote to the Cape that “these people, being averse to the sea and long voyage, had changed their minds and settled in Germany, and that forty French Refugees bred to agriculture were being sent out in ‘t Wapen van Alkmaar.”

The above ships brought out the greater portion of the French emigrés to the Cape between 1688 and 1700, and after the former date we find them arriving in small batches. The other ships which brought some of them out were the Zion, Vosmaar, Westhoven, Donkervliet and Driebergen. In the Zion, which left Holland on the 8th January, 1689, and arrived on the 6th May following, came three brothers, Pierre, Abraham and Jacob de Villiers. Writing to the Cape on the 16th December, 1688, the Chamber at Delft said of them: “With this ship (the Zion) we have again permitted the following French Refugees to sail to the Cape and earn their living as freemen, Pierre de Villiers, Abraham de Villiers and Jacob de Villiers, all three brothers born near la Rochelle. We are informed that these persons have a good knowledge of laying out vineyards and managing the same, and thus we hope that the Company will acquire their good service. You are recommended to give them a helping hand.”

Today the name of de Villiers is to be found throughout the sub-continent, and descendants of Pierre de Villiers have given us some of the cleverest men in the legal profession, one of whom was the late Baron de Villiers of Wynberg, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Union of South Africa.
A sad fate overtook the ten men and women Refugees who sailed from Holland in April, 1616, in the Vosmaar. The voyage had been most disastrous. When she arrived in October she had lost ninety-three persons by death, five of whom were of the French emigrants. Of the remainder of two hundred and thirty-six persons who were mostly sick and in a weak condition, only four were left in a good state of health. The Middelburg Chamber wrote to van der Stel that at the request of these French Refugees they had been given permission to proceed to the Cape, and that the Company in granting this did so with the object of populating the Colony. The Directors expressed the hope that they would not be a trouble to the Colony, but that each one would be able to maintain himself honestly by his trade or handicraft. To enable them to do so they were to be given as much help as the orders of the Seventeen required.
Of the five survivors who arrived in the Vosmaar the only name to be found is that of Jacques Bisseux of Picardy, who became a baker.
The Donkervliet and Westhoven both came out in 1699 and arrived on the 20th July and 16th June respectively.4 On the 25th May 1698, the Driebergen, in command of Captain Martin de Jeugd, destined for Batavia, left Holland. On board were five French refugees who, upon their arrival at the Cape on the 3rd September, 1698, settled at Drakenstein as agriculturists. When north of the Canary Islands the Driebergen encountered a pirate vessel, which she took to be Turkish although the boat flew an English flag, and after Captain de Jeugd had warned her to keep off he fired a broadside and shattered her sails. She left the pirate without Damage. A despatch, dated 7th May, 1698, from the Chamber at Delft mentioned the names of the five fugitives sent out with the Driebergen:
Louwys de Ryck alais Louis le Riche, Pieter Cronier alias Pierre Crosnier, Stephen Cronier alias Estienne Cronier, Jean van het tichelje alias Jean du Tuillet, Philip van Renan alias Philippe Drouin.

When the newcomers landed everything had been arranged to receive and convey them to their new homes along the Berg River in the Drakenstein Valley. In 1687 this beautiful and fertile valley had been named by Commander Simon van der Stel after one of the family seats in Holland of the High Commissioner, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede, Lord of Mydrecht, who had come out to the Cape in 1685 to inspect the Company’s affairs. In the same year twenty-three farms along the Berg River were marked out, each measuring 60 morgen in extent, and given to a like number of agriculturists.’ Six wagons were supplied by the Burgher Councillors of the Cape and six by the Heemraden of Stellenbosch, to transfer the new arrivals and their baggage to Drakenstein. The Company supplied provisions which would last them for a few months, and planks to build temporary shelters.

When the farms were allotted care was taken to scatter the French among the Dutch farmers already settled there and those arriving at the same time. Some were given ground in the Stellenbosch district, but the greater number were at Drakenstein and French Hoek. This intermingling of the Dutch and French caused dissatisfaction among the latter. The Landdrost and Heemraden of Stellenbosch were requested to receive the Reverend Simond with the respect and reverence which his office and position demanded, and to assist him, as much as lay in their power, in erecting a house for himself. Upon his arrival he was conveyed to his destination in comfort and ease.
The majority of the Refugees to the Cape possessed little or nothing when they landed. Many had escaped with only their lives. They erected shelters which could be put up rapidly, and did not waste time upon buildings of an elaborate nature. It is reasonable to suppose that the first structures which they built were of a primitive nature, and none would have been of the class so general during the eighteenth century.
What pioneer in a strange land has ever built his first house with all the comforts and architectural beauty in which he indulges when he has made headway and reaped the good results of his work?

We must look back upon the time, two centuries ago, and imagine these Refugees arriving in a beautiful, extensive and wooded valley, where wild animals such as lions and tigers made their lair, where Hottentots in their wild state roamed about ready to plunder the homestead. Under such conditions and with little money or material, only simple and small dwellings would have been erected. Later on, however, when the Colony expanded and the emigrants saw the good fruits of their labours, they built themselves better houses with many lofty and spacious rooms.
Not long after their coming a subscription list was sent round on their behalf among the older settlers of the Colony and Company’s servants. This was readily responded to by contributions of money, cattle and grain. The fund was given to Reverend Simond and the deacons of the Stellenbosch church for distribution. The records in referring to this collection say that it did the older colonists credit and was most acceptable to the Refugees.
Two years later pecuniary assistance from quite a different source was given to the Huguenots. On the 22nd April, 1689, Commander van der Stel wrote to the Batavian Government and complained of the extreme poverty of the French Refugees, who, he said, would not be able to enjoy the fruits of their work for three or four years to come; they were being supported by the Company and from such means as were available from the poor fund. The settlers had no easy task in preparing their land for cultivation. The ground, which had never been tilled since the world began, was overgrown with bush and roots, and it would take several years to produce some return. Their life at first was full of trials; tools and implements had to be obtained from the Company, to whom they became debtors. He asked that a collection might be made for these poor people; this would relieve the Company of supporting them. The petition was not in vain. Although a collection was not made, a bill of exchange for 6,000 rixdollars, or £1,250, was immediately sent over. This bill was drawn on the Cape Government in favour of the Reverend Pierre Simond, the pastor of the French congregation at Drakenstein.

The money had been in the Batavian Treasury for many years, and represented the poor fund of a church at Formosa, one of the Dutch possessions which had been seized by the Chinese pirate Coxinga, who had compelled the Dutch to evacuate it. This money was taken away and placed in the treasury at Batavia. On the 18th and 19th April, 1690, the Cape Government distributed the amount amongst the French community, who were greatly pleased with a present so welcome in their dire distress.’ Another surprise was in store for them the next day; they received from the Commander, through the Landdrost of Stellenbosch, a present of oxen. They returned to their homes highly pleased, alter having thanked the Commander for his kindly feeling and thought for them.
Article: Extracted from: “The French Refugees at the Cape” – C Graham Botha

Aberdeen in the Cape is the Principal town of the magisterial district and division of Aberdeen, 32.2 km south of the Camdeboo Mountains on the national road from Cape Town via Graaff-Reinet, 54.7 km. south-west of Graaff-Reinet. A road motor service links the town with the nearest railway station at Aberdeen Road, 37 km away.

The altitude is 2,400 ft and annual rainfall is 10.5 in. Population in 1960 consisted of Whites 1,353; Coloureds 2,363; Asiatics 1 and 940 Bantu.

 History

On 10 September 1855 the council of the N.G. Kerk of Graaff-Reinet gave permission for the establishment of a new congregation on the farm Brakkefontein, which was bought for the purpose from Jan Vorster for £4,875. The village which sprang up was named after Aberdeen in Scotland, birthplace of Andrew Murray senior, who was minister at Graaff-Reinet and relieving minister of the new congregation. The large church which can seat 2,000 has the highest steeple in South Africa (164 ft. 2 in.), and is 18 in. out of plumb. The first village management board established in 1858 developed into a municipality soon afterwards. The irrigation water-supply is from a permanent fountain, and domestic water from boreholes. Electricity is supplied by the municipal power station.

Local newspaper: Aberdeen Pos, weekly, bilingual.

District: Area 4,266 square km. It is principally a stock-farming district with Merino sheep and cattle, but agriculture is also practised. Cattle auctions are held in the town every month. The Camdeboo and Kraai Rivers flow through the district.

Source: Text and Image – Standard Encyclopaedia of South Africa

Acknowledgment: kind permission Nasou Via Afrika

Financier, merchant, civil servant and author. Born in Coventry 2nd July 1758 and died in Cape Town 19th April 1836. He was a cousin of the philanthropist William Wilberforce and he too was greatly interested in the well-being of slaves. He came to the Cape in 1807 and was the founder of the Cape Philanthropic Society. He had a share in the import and export trade, especially with St. Helena and Mauritius, carrying his cargo in his own ships. In 1810  he joined the Cape civil service as Controller of Customs and remained in that position to his death. He became a confidant of Lord Charles Somerset but never a subservient 'yes'-man. Bird had a fair knowledge of law and assisted in drawing up the Colony's game laws. It is claimed that he suggested the name 'St. George's Cathedral' for the first English church in Southern Africa. His memorial can be seen in the church. His comprehensive book, The State of the Cape of Good Hope in 1822, was written anonymously. It covers in detail the system of government at the Cape, the law courts, the burgher senate, registration of slaves, agriculture, trade and the customs of the population. He was highly critical of the way in which such ceremonies as weddings and funerals were conducted. Bird served on several bodies because of his knowledge of finance and management which was rare in such a small community.