114 Squadron

In 1976 the SAAF established the first all-women squadron – 114 Squadron, based at the former AFB Swartkop. It provided invaluable service by providing communication flights, air reconnaissance for the SA Police and the Army, and light transport flights. Sadly, the strength of the squadron could not be maintained and it was disbanded in 1990. The remaining members were transferred to 104 and 111 Squadrons. Three of the original eight pilots were Amalie von Maltitz (became second-in-command at 111 Squadron), Surita Volland (became training officer at 111) and Yvonne van den Dool.

Amalie von Maltitz

Amalie von Maltitz took her first flying lesson in December 1967. She took up flying as her father, Dr. Adrian Archibald von Maltitz, wanted to get to their farms in Botswana and the Free State easily. She joined the SAAF Reserves in 1976 and had more than 2 000 military flying hours when she retired. Amalie is a past president of the South African Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. She is also a commercial pilot who flies clients for an air safari company when she is not creating works of art. Amalie is also a well-known sculptor.

She received her art training at Michaelis School of Art, UCT; Akademie der Bildende Kunste, Stuttgart and RAU. She participated in her first exhibition at RAU in 1968. Las year she co-authored a book on the life of sculptor Edoardo Villa.

Her father, a mining engineer, was one of the founders of RAU. He passed away in 2003 at his farm in Dewetsdorp. He was married to Gerda, a painter, and they had five children – Amalie, Helene (married Kingsley), Alida (married van Deventer), Hanna (married Eason and Rutherford) and Peter. Alida created the Haas Das and Liewe Heksie puppets and Hanna is well-known in the pottery world. The family home is in Westcliff. Amalie is the family historian.

Surita Volland

Surita Volland started flying in 1982 at Wonderboom Airport. She joined the SAAF Reserves in 1989 and later became a Captain on domestic flights for SA Express Airways. With more than 6 000 flying hours, she is a Gr-II multi-engine instructor.

Yvonne van den Dool

Yvonne van den Dool was born in Johannesburg in October 1930 to Hugo van den Dool and Wilhelmina Antonia van ter Horst. Her father was a school principal and her mother a teacher. Yvonne matriculated from Parktown Girls High in 1948. During a trip to the Vaal Dam, she saw a flying boat and she decided to make aviation her career but after finishing school she worked for the SABC. Yvonne applied for the Rhenia Slabbert Bursary and was successful. This enabled her to obtain her A licence after training at the Johannesburg Light Plane Club at Baragwanath. After eight hours of instruction, she went solo and received her licence at the age of 19. Two years later she obtained her B licence (no. 139 C), making her the fourth women to do so in South Africa.

In 1952 she finally landed her first aviation job, transporting passengers and cargo into Lesotho. She also joined the Ninety-Nines Club that year, an organisation of licensed female pilots started by Amelia Earhart. The Lesotho job did not pay well and Yvonne joined SAA as a cabin attendant. In 1953 she married Victor Stephens Lourens, a pilot from Francistown. She started flying Dakotas ferrying miners between South Africa and other African countries. In 1954 she obtained her senior commercial licence (no. 68 S), the first woman in South Africa to do so.

In 1956 she moved to Salisbury where did aerial spraying of the Kariba Dam construction site to keep it free of tsetse fly. The following year she obtained a senior commercial licence in Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1958 Yvonne set an altitude record by flying a Tiger Moth to 6,433 metres. She moved to Zaire where she obtained another senior commercial licence and an instrument rating. Shortly after her daughter Ingrid was born in 1959, the family fled Zaire for Johannesburg, where her second daughter Karen was born. In 1965 Yvonne and Victor divorced and Yvonne moved to her parents’ farm in Tzaneen, where she farmed with fruit and did freelance charters.

In 1966, she started a Ninety-Nines branch in South Africa. During a visit to a Ninety-Nines conference in Washington D.C. Yvonne managed to do an American commercial licence. In 1969 Yvonne won the Amelia Earhart Scholarship, which was presented to her in New York by Amelia’s sister, Muriel Mornsey.

Yvonne placed second in the 1968 State President’s air race. She also took part in the 1970 Argus Tip to Top air race, which was from Brixton Tower in Johannesburg to Table Mountain in Cape Town. When the SAAF’s 114 Squadron was formed in 1977, Yvonne joined up with the rank of Major. She left the SAAF two years later and moved to Lanseria. Yvonne retired from flying after more than 35 years in the air. She worked in Johannesburg before retiring to Hermanus. Yvonne’s parents passed away in 1971. Both her daughters married pilots – Ingrid to Juan van Ginkel (whose parents were also pilots) and Karen to Charlie Rudnick (a former SAAF Silver Falcon)

On the 1st August 1834 slavery was abolished at the Cape. Have you started looking for your slave ancestors? When Robert Semple visited Cape Town in 1804 he correctly noted the significance of the naming pattern for Cape Slave owners:

It ay here be observed that the whole heathen mythology is ransacked find the names which are generally bestowed in a manner not the most honourable to those deities at whose alters one half of the human race formerly bowed down.

Thus Jupiter cleans the shoes, Hercules rubs down the horses, and Juno lights the fire. Yet [this] is it not done through any disrespect towards these once remarkable names, as those in Scripture are applied with as little ceremony, and in as unappropriate a manner,  being daily sent for water and Solomon up to Table Mountain for firewood.

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One might think that naming slaves might have reflected conscious – if the jocular and harmless – references to be patriarchal or imperial patrician life-styles, which the slaves made possible, but there was actually a more sinister logic to the choice of Cape slave names. Naming salves was a domestic ruse to diminish the dignity of the slaves in daily life and to establish differences among slave groups. There were six distinctive types of first names for slaves. These types represented a spectrum.

Day 0.8%

Protestant 31%

Catholic 0.4%

Old Testament 12.6%

Indigenous 10.1%

Muslim 0.5%

Classical 24.8%

Month 4.3%

Facetious 5.9%

Toponyms 0.3%

Unknown 9.25%

Facetious Names
The settlers’ facetious spirit found its fullest expression in ridiculous or pejorative nicknames given to slaves, faithfully copied in the transfers. The most common name was Fortune (Fortuijn), presumably an ironical reminder of where household wealth lay. Pickle Herring was the nickname of one slave; Winter Butter was another, a racial joke referring to the slave’s pale skin colour. The list is endless as it is demeaning. Thickleg (Dikbeen), Long-time-coming (Lang onderweg) Watch-out (Pasop), Sweet Potato, (Pattat), Teawater (Theewater), Blixem, (Buckslam – an expletive), Welcome (Wellekom), Sabbath Ape-child (Domingo Aapkind), or simply Ape (Aap), Evil (Slegt), Clever (Slim), and Servidor and Shitato, which require as little translation as they require imagination.

Presumably thigh-slapping humor was explained, or perhaps the joke grew old, but the names stuck. When the slave was sold again the name reappeared in the records.

Calendar Names
In between the facetious and classical or biblical names were calendar names, unlike West African day names, were at least partly facetious. Friday was most common day name, perhaps because the person on whom Daniel Defoe based his famous character – the real Robinson Crusoe – had convalesced Cape . But month names were the most popular calendar names, especially enslaved persons from the Indian subcontinent. One oceanic slave trader, after selling a particularly large lot of slaves from the quayside in Cape Town, and having exhausted his imagination and classical learning, reeled off, as their own, the names of the months, in order of the slaves’ appearance on the auction block. This month-naming practice, repeated quite often in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, may explain the haunting yet quite maddening lyrics of an old Cape dirge, or Moppie- “January, February, April, …” – which the slaves sang to help themselves get through the quotidian ordeals of Cape slavery. Possibly, the moppie had an educational purpose too.

Classical Names
One scholar of the American South has argued that the slave owners’ use of classical and historical names for their slaves was evidence that the slaves stood in the relation to their owner as did the owner’s dogs, at that time also commonly named for classical figures.

In this way, too, the slave owner invited the slave-owning into a cultural “joke,” (supposedly) hidden from the slave. That the Cape owners considered this joke to be a good one is attested to by the 81 Titus’s, Cupido’s, 50 Coridons, 35 Hannibal’s, and 39 Scipios in sale transfers from the period. In the 4,076 slave transfers used in this study, only one Cromwell and Diogenes testified to a different level of education among the masters. Most n were at the firmament level of Mars and Venus. To name a slave after a god or emperor was a common household device; the joke would be revealed when slave came upon livestock or pets that had his or her own name.

Old Testament Names
It was also a custom in the early Cape to name slaves after Old Testament figures The Old Testament provided many important precedents for the Dutch Reformed tradition, so it is difficult to separate sacred from profane naming practices. However, certain names such as Solomon and Moses were never used by the settlers for naming their own children.

Indigenous Names
Some slaves were allowed to keep their given, indigenous names. This was true for all imported Lodge slaves, but a few private owners also allowed their slaves to keep their given names. Since the Lodge was internally run (except for baptisms) one assumes that allowing the slaves to keep their names was a form of Lodge autonomy. Among private owners this practice was rare and did not extend to the second, creole generation. Such names as Affans, Assar, Caftiaan, Chachista, Cosambij, Doole, Galba, Jo-ombie, Jofta, Moensat, Nalk, Origo, Orsous, Pagolet, Pantsiko, Pasi, Soutanij, Thijmon, Towaijo, and Trimmatas all fell out of use.

Inclusion and the Owners’ Pool of Names
Only a tiny minority of urban patrician owners baptized their slaves and used the same name pool as they did for their own natural children. But some owners used names from their own pool and did not baptize their slaves. Aside from baptizing slaves, using family names for slaves represents the highest level of inclusion into the owners’ domestic circle. These naming patterns, when cross-tabulated with the sex and age of the slave, provide several statistically significant and revealing patterns.

What is most surprising is that the big variation is by sex, when one might reasonably have expected to find creole status and age the determinants. Female slaves, whether young or old, had the highest percentage of owners’ names. Young were named, like men, with names drawn from outside the owners’ pool. But here one is also seeing up the “capon” effect, because young male slaves were more often targeted in the oceanic slave trade. The socialization of male slaves as outsiders, at least so far as the names reveal, started early.

Slave women born in the colony were much more likely to have names from owners’ pool. Imported African slaves, male and female, were the next most to have owners’ names, but it must be remembered that the African slaves early in the colony’s history – in the first two decades – when there was a strong idealistic and inclusive Reformed tradition. African slaves also had the biggest proportion of facetious names.

Creole slaves, some of whom were born in the owner’s house, are a special as they were rarely sold. Their naming patterns are also revealing. Girls were named most closely in accordance with their owners’ naming patterns, then women. Creole boy slaves had fewer owners’ names the men, but all male slaves were obviously scheduled for the periphery of the household. The socialization of creole slaves was fierce, the patterns stark. Young creole boys had the highest percentage of facetious names of all groups apart from imported African slaves.

Some slaves did see through the naming schemes and rejected the facetious names – usually reserved for imported slaves – in favor of names of their own choosing. For example, in the more detailed crime records a slave might identified by a formal and a self-chosen name, as “Scipio of Bengal, known round about as Kees.”. Such a name was called a skuilnaam (literally, “a hiding name”). Over time, more and more slaves rejected their slavish names, and by the nine­teenth century, slave aliases and Muslim names were common, for example, Dort van de Kaap, Achmat van Bengal, Abdul Malik van Batavia, and so on. These illustrate the growth of an alternative culture, but the three-level naming pattern nevertheless remained constant.

Slaves were named, for ease of identification, by origin, and if this conflicted with a similar name, as noted earlier, a physical identification was added and finally, if there was still some repetition of names, yet another name. The three-level naming system for full-breed slaves at the Cape , similar to the European system, differed in the frequency and geographical range of the use of toponyms: slaves invariably had a broad toponym; Europeans usually had a narrow toponym. Creole slaves’ naming pattern followed the system of the contemporary dominant European order, but still disclosed the slave’s descent status. Mulatto slaves’ names were almost indistinguishable from owners’ names. Once manumitted, there was no change in their names and they smoothly entered the ranks of the free – and sometimes became slave owners themselves.

These points go some way toward explaining the plethora of racial and ethnic stereotyping found scattered throughout the later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources on the Cape . The early practice of systematically recording in the region of origin suggests that this was considered the single most useful bit of information about a slave, even when the age was sometimes left out the transfer. As the slave population became increasingly creolized, the system was modified, but by then some identities had become established. For instance, favoured, locally born slaves were still considered “Malay” in the nineteenth

Like the European Christian master class, they too, forged an identity on descent.

The slave names at the Cape were descriptive tags that constantly reminded householders of their slaves’ racial descent, origin, language, sometimes parenthood, but always their slave status. The more facetious names were often reserved for male imported slaves, young and old, but even creole children were often named in this way. Based on the evidence of naming slave women were on the inside track in Cape household slavery. Their total incorporation into the household as nannies, concubines, or wives prompts comparison with other lineage slavery systems on the African continent. The slave naming system was certainly only a minor part of the hegemonic apparatus the owners had constructed, but it was an aspect adumbrated, meticulously recorded, deeply imbedded, and universal. Relics system still survive, as any telephone directory in the Cape Province will bear.

With kind permission – Prof. Robert Shell

An almanac is here taken to be a book containing a full calendar as well as information on social, economic and similar topics. It becomes a directory if it contains a list of people’s names and addresses, and in its most comprehensive form it becomes a year-book. The old almanacs and their successors are of great value in research into social, economic and cultural history, because they often contain data not easily found elsewhere. A complete survey of those published in South Africa cannot possibly be given, and only those preserved in public libraries will be dealt with here.The earliest South African almanacs appeared at the Cape in 1795-1797 and were printed by J. C. Ritter. A fragment of his Almanach for 1796 is the oldest piece of South African printing that has come down to us. Cape Town was the main centre for the publication of almanacs all through the 19th century. The most important issues, or series of issues, were the following:

1801-27 (1801 is preserved only in manuscript, and 1803 is missing. Known as The African Court Calendar (De Afrikaansche Staatsalmanak), this publication was published ‘under Government approval’ and consisted principally of an account of the Colony’s government as well as the civil list, the army list and the calendar itself, which was bilingual. The 1807 issue gives a summary of the history of the Cape Colony and has a supplement, African theatricals. From 1815 onward each issue includes Governor W. A. van der Stel’s century-old gardening calendar, and from 1810 a list of the principal inhabitants of the Cape.

1828-35. The South African Almanack and Directory , issued by the well-known publisher and printer George Greig. This was a private undertaking, as were all the succeeding almanacs. From 1830 it was considerably enlarged, and contained advertisements, articles and a ground-plan of Cape Town. From 1832 it included lithographs by H.C. de Meillon of important Cape buildings.

1836-50. Continuation of the previous almanac by B. J. van de Sandt. The name varies, but from 1841 is The Cape of Good Hope Almanack and Annual Register. In 1843 it contains an etching of Table Mountain and an account of the fight of Comdt. J. I. Rademeyer near Trompetter’s Drift in the Frontier War of 1835. The issues for 1845 and 1846 are, typographically and otherwise, editions de luxe, for example in the advertisements, which give a good picture of the times.

1852-62. Continuation of the preceding by Van de Sandt’s foster-son, B. J. van de Sandt de Villiers. The almanac has now a smaller and handier format. Attention is given to new parts of South Africa : Natal , the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, to the explorations of Livingstone and others, and to local events and politics. The almanac for 1853 contains lists of edible fishes, and that for 1855 lists of indigenous trees by C. W. L. Pappe.

1863. Continuation of the preceding by a new proprietor, John Noble. There was no issue in 1864.

1865-67. Continuation by C. Goode under the title of The Cape Town Directory . There are interesting articles on the history of the Cape Colony by A. Wilmot.

1868-97. The Almanac was taken over by Saul Solomon & Co., at first under the title (sometimes slightly changed) of The General Directory and Guide Book to the Cape of Good Hope and its Dependencies. In 1888 this became The Argus Annual and Cape of Good Hope Directory , from 1889 to 1894 The Argus Annual and South African Directory, and from 1895 to 1897 The Argus Annual and South African Gazetteer. The almanac had now become a statistical year-book and directory; it is comprehensive and instructive, and crammed with information about the whole of South Africa. Other important publications were the following: 1819: The Cape of Good Hope Calendar and Agriculturists’ Guide, by Geo. Ross, published for the British Settlers of 1820.

1826: The Cape of Good Hope Almanack, by W. Bridekirk, which contains a chronological list of events at the Cape in 1824-25.

1832-54 (probably with interruptions): De Kaapsche Almanak en Naamboek, by Joseph Suasso de Lima.

1840: De Zuid-Afrikaansche Blygeestige Almanak en Naamlyst, by J. J. de Kock (Cape Town), a remarkable literary almanac.

1850-1926: Almanak voor de Ned. Geref. Kerk van (since 1885: in) Zuid-Afrika. With alterations to its title from time to time, the well-known ‘Kerkalmanak’ has appeared regularly up to the present day. Its founder and compiler – until his death in 1882 – was Dr. Philip Faure. Immediately afterwards the Cape Synod accepted responsibility for the work, which was since then undertaken by the church administration of the N.G. Kerk. After 1926 the title appears in Afrikaans as hereafter.

1927-29: Almanak vir die Nederduits(-)Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika. In 1927 the Almanak was taken over by the Raad van Kerke (Council of Churches) with the archivist of the N.G. Kerk, the Rev. A. Dreyer, mainly responsible for its compilation. He remained the central figure in the evolution of this work until his death in 1938. He changed its title.

1930-43: Jaarboek van die Ned. Geref. Kerke in SuidAfrika. In 1940 the work was entrusted to the Church archivist, Dr. J. A. S. Oberholster. He continued it until 1950, with a slight change in the title as hereafter.

1944-62: Jaarboek van die Gefedereerde Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerke. From 1950 until his death in 1964 the Rev. J. Norval Geldenhuys was the chief compiler.

1963- : Jaarboek van die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerke (Mother, Mission and Bantu churches). Under its new title this work remains an indispensable source of information regarding ecclesiastical and related matters and is by far the oldest South African work of reference in this field.

1870 until today : Almanak voor de Geref. Kerk in Zuid-Afrika. The title later appears in Afrikaans.

1907 until today: Almanak voor de Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk in Zuid-Afrika (later: Afrika). From 1930 in Afrikaans, it developed greatly under Prof S. P. Engelbrecht.

1866-1908: The S.A. Agriculturists’ Almanac, by J. H. F. von Wurzburg-Schade (Wynberg).

1877-1918 with some interruptions: Die Afrikaanse Almanak, burgerlik en kerkelik , by the Rev. S. J. du Toit and others (Paarl). One of the principal publica ions of the First Afrikaans Language Movement.

1887: Deutscher Volkskalender , published by Hermann Michaelis at Cape Town . Continued 1912-14 as (Illustrierter ) Sud-Afrikanischer Volkskalender in Johannesburg. A rich source of knowledge about the German community and literature in South Africa.

1875: Descriptive Handbook of the Cape Colony : its condition and resources, by J. Noble.

1886: Official Handbook: History, productions, and resources of the Cape of Good Hope, by J. Noble.

1893 and 1896: Illustrated Official Handbook of the Cape and South Africa, by J. Noble.

1848-72: Eastern Province Annual Directory and Almanac, continued as Eastern Province Year-book and Commercial Directory, Grahamstown, 1872-78 (?).

1872-1874-8; 1883-90; 1892-93: Port Elizabeth Directory and Guide to the Eastern Province, Port Elizabeth.

1896-1910: P.E. Year-book and Directory, Port Elizabeth.

1888-89 et sqq.: The General Directory of South Africa, etc. by Dennis Edwards. This gradually supplanted the Argus Annual (see above). From 1909/10 it bore the title United South Africa.

Outside the Cape may be mentioned:
1863-?: The Natal Almanac, Directory and Yearly Register, P. Davis & Sons (Pietermaritzburg). A comprehensive and compendious almanac, which continued at least into the 1920′s.

1876: De Oranjevrijstaatsdshe Almanak ( Bloemfontein ). A kind of almanac of public affairs, which two years later became:

1878- 1939(?): De Boerenvriend Huisalmanak (Bloemfontein). Its title was afterwards preceded by the word ‘Express’; it was eventually published in Afrikaans. Carl Borckenhagen was the principal figure in its production.

1904-32 (or after): De Boerenvriend (afterwards Die Boerevriend ) Huisalmanak ( Bloemfontein ). An imitation of the above-mentioned almanac, which in consequence added the word Express to its title.

1893-94: Vijstaatsch Jaarboek en Almanak – Free State Annual and Trades Directory, Bloemfontein.

1892-99: Staats-Almanak der (later: voor de ) Zuid Afrihaansche Republiek. This was an official publication, a complete and dependable annual review of the government institutions of the Transvaal, with a historical calendar.

1877-98(?) with interruptions: Jeppe’s Transvaal Almanac and Directory. Compiled by the well-known F. H. Jeppe, cartographer and publisher.

1893 et sqq.: De Kaap Annual (Transvaal), printed at Barberton.

Towards the end of the 19th cent. the transition from almanacs to directories is much clearer, as appears from the following list:

1891; 1893-97: Natal Directory, later Braby’s Natal Directory.

1893: 1897-98: The Dennis Edwards Cape Town Directory

1894; 1896: Longland’s Johannesburg and Districts Directory

1897: Juta’s Directory of Cape Town

1898: Juta’s Directory of Cape Town and Suburbs

1899-1927: Juta’s Directory of Cape Town, Suburbs and Simonstown. There are further changes of title to Cape Peninsula, etc.

1899: The Dennis Edwards S.A. Year-book and Directory of Cape Town. This year-book appeared until 2932.

1899: Longland’s Transvaal and Rhodesian Directory

1900-03; 1906-0: Kimberley Year-book and Directory, by Mark Henderson.

1900; 1904-05: Donaldson and Hill’s Eastern Province ( Cape Colony ) Directory

1901 : Complete Guide to Cradock – professional and trade directory, compiled by W. Taylor and published by Thomas Scanes, Cradock.

1901/2; 1905/06;1908/09; 1909/10 et sqq.: Guide to South Africa for the use of tourists, sportsmen, invalids and settlers. This continued until at least 1949, with a change of title to Guide to South and East Africa, etc.

1901; 1902-04: Longland’s Cape Town and District

Owing to the growth of communal life year-books and directories became dominant in the 20th century as information and reference books concerning social, political and commercial conditions. The contents are usually sufficiently indicated by the titles. Among the most important should be mentioned:

1902/03 ; 1903/04: The South African Year Book , by S. M. Gluckstein ( London and Cape Town ).

1905-10: Het Z.A. Jaarboek en Algemene Gids, by G. R. Hofmeyr and C. G. Murray ( Cape Town ), (later B. J. van de Sandt de Villiers), the first complete general South African year-book in Nederlands.

1910 until today: Official South African Municipal Year Book. An indispensable source of information about cities and towns.

1911-12: The South African Almanack and Reference Book, by E. Glanville, Cape Town . Excellent summaries of a diversified nature.

1914 et sqq. (?): The South African Year Book, by H. W. Hosking, London

1914 et sqq.: Laite’s Commercial Blue Book for South Africa. A good and popular work in its field. Along with the General Directory of South Africa of Dennis Edwards, it belongs to the stream of bulky South African directories published during the present century, among which those of Donaldson and Hill (afterwards Ken Donaldson and Co., or Donaldson and Braby, or Braby, etc.) are particularly important.

They are indispensable sources of social and commercial information. Mention must also be made of:

1898 et sqq.: The Transvaal and Rhodesia Directory

1901 et sqq.: The Natal Directory

1902 et sqq.: The Orange River Colony Directory

1902/03 et sqq.: The Western Province ( Cape Colony ) Directory

1907 et sqq.: The United Transvaal Directory

1912/13 et sqq.: Cape Province Directory

In due course titles change (e.g. Colony becomes Province), as do regional divisions. So there are now Cape Times Directory of Southern Africa (1964, 31 st edition), Directory of Southern Africa and Buyers’ Guide (1964, 31 st edition ), Braby’s Commercial Directory of South, East and Central Africa (1964, 40th edition), to which may be added the special Braby’s Directories for Natal , Transvaal, the O.F.S. and the Cape, and many city directories.

Since 1907 Donaldson produced an annual South African Who’s Who, with photographs; the title for a time included the words Social, Business and Farming. Since 1961 Who’s Who of Southern Africa, under this new title, has been published by Wootton & Gibson, Johannesburg. It is an indispensable work of reference about people. The following English works of this Directory nature, with photographs, may also be mentioned:

1905, 1907, 1909: Anglo-African Who’s Who and Biographical Sketch Book with photos in 1909, by W. H. Wills ( London ).

1905: Men of the Times: Pioneers of the Transvaal and glimpses of South Africa, Transvaal Publishing Company, Johannesburg

1906: Men of the Times: Old Colonists of the Cape Colony and Orange River Colony , Transvaal Publishing Company, Johannesburg. A particularly valuable work, with excellent pictures.

1910: Souvenir of the Union of South Africa, Cape Town. People of political importance in the Union and the four provinces.

1913 : Women of South Africa, Cape Town, by C. I. Lewis.

1926: Sports and Sportsmen in South Africa, Cape Town

1929: Sports and Sportsmen in South Africa and Rhodesia, Cape Town

1933-34: The Arts in South Africa, W. H. Knox. Knox Printing and Publishing Co., Durban. Photos of artists are included.

1938: The South African Woman’s Who’s Who, Biographies Ltd., Johannesburg

1958/9 and 1959/60: Who’s Who in Entertainment and Sport in South Africa, by Don Barrigo, Johannesburg

Smaller, sporadic publications were The Natal Who’s Who, 1906.

Who is Who – Wie is Wie in Pretoria, 1951.

In Afrikaans there are no regular publications of this nature. The following sporadic publications may, however, be mentioned:

1930: Die Nasionale Boek, compiled by I. M. Goodman, Johannesburg, and dealing with the history, leaders and members of the National Party.

1942: Die Afrikaner Personeregister, Johannesburg, compiled by N. Diederichs and others.

1953: Die Triomf van Nasionalisme in Suid-Afrika (1910-53), compiled by D. P. Goosen and others. A commemorative album of the National Party.

1955: Die Afrikanerfamilienaamboek en Personalia, Cape Town, by J. J. Redelinghuis.

1958 et sqq. (irregularly): Wie is Wie in Suid-Afrika, Johannesburg, compiled by D. F. Kruger. Bilingual.

There are also, mainly in English, numerous national, provincial, and municipal handbooks and guide-books, generally well illustrated. Only a few can be mentioned here. From the S.A. Railways we have Natal, 1903; Cape Colony today, by A. R. E. Burton, 190 et sqq.; Natal Province, 1911; Travel in South Africa, 1921 et sqq. The Cape Town City Council came out with a series of handbooks: The Cape of Good Hope, 1909 et sqq., and the Pretoria City Council (with the Railways) with The City of Pretoria and Districts, 1913. An excellent handbook dealing with economic and social matters, Die Afrikanergids (1942-1944/5) by J. J. Haywood, was’specifically intended for the Afrikaner.

Particularly important is the Government’s Official Year Book of the Union of South Africa -Offisiele jaarboek van die Unie van Suid-Afrika, 1910-60, though it did not actually appear every year. In 1964 it was supplemented by a Statistical Year Book – Statistiese Jaarboek. Since 1957 there has also appeared an unofficial year-book State of the Union , in 1962 renamed State of South Africa. There are also the calendars of the various universities. Another important private publication is the Year Book and Guide to Southern Africa, compiled by the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company since 1893, of which the 67th edition appeared in 1967. It was divided into two volumes in 1950, since when the Year Book and Guide to East Africa has been appearing separately each year. Both were edited by A. Gordon-Brown until 1967.

Another type of annual, of a literary nature, is represented by the many Christmas and New Year annuals appearing from time to time. Mention may be made, for example, of the Cape Times Christmas Number, 1899-1905, and Cape Times Annual, 1910-41; Ons Land Kerstmisnummer, 1906-29; Die Burger Nuwejaarsnommer (at first Kerstmis Nummer ), 1915-25; Suid-Afrika, 1938/39-40/41; the British S.A. Annual, 1915/16 et sqq.; the South African Annual , 1906 et sqq.; De (afterwards Die) Koningsbode Kerstnummer (afterwards Kersnommer), 1914 up to the present, etc. At the year’s end popular magazines such as Die Huisgenoot and Sarie Marais regularly issue bulky Christmas or holiday numbers.

Today there are also year-books for almost every industry in South Africa – for farming, mining, engineering, fisheries, textiles, footwear, finance, the hotel industry, medical services, etc.

The Cape of Good Hope was a small, but not unimportant, part of the whole picture of slavery and colonisation. Firstly, there was no important trade here as in the East. Therefore the refreshment station at the southern tip of Africa was a natural halfway house in a long and exhausting sea journey, there and back.

Only people who were sent in the first ships in 1652 originally attempted it. Apart from a number of experts who were required to lay the foundations of a new community, the majority of the crew consisted of ordinary sailors and soldiers. Some of them were skilled artisans who had been trained in a particular field. The majority were considered suitable to perform the everyday backbreaking work.

Gradually the real problems presented themselves. One of these, as often also in respect of various settlements in the East and the West, was the urgent need for more people, ordinary labourers in particular. Locally there was no labour system with which the newcomers could integrate or of which they could make use.

As the case elsewhere, it also appeared here that the Cape was not a popular place for a large-scale flow of European immigration – especially not on the scale of the English colonies of North America. Earlier ambitious, optimistic attempts to attract Dutch immigrants to the East or the West were for various reasons not very successful. The Cape would therefore not be an exception. Apart from the French Huguenots – originally a mere one hundred and fifty – there was never a large-scale flow of immigrants to the southern tip of Africa during the Company period.

Free burghers
Initially the authorities considered importing Chinese farmers to cultivate the wheat needed. With their experience in Batavia there were soon doubts about the wisdom of such a step. The only step that was really moderately successful elsewhere, was releasing some of the VOC officials, who were willing, from their contracts and thus ‘free’ them to earn their bread and butter by their own labours and skills. In 1657 the first nine officials were granted letters of freedom as well as land.

At the commencement of their service the VOC officials signed a contract for three years or longer. They could usually choose to have their monthly wages paid to their families that stayed behind, with the employee receiving only accommodation, clothing and rations from the Company. If at any stage he chose to become a free burgher, his family had to join him at his own cost or face a life of permanent separation.

Almost everything else that the free burgher needed to start his new career, he had to obtain on credit from the Company (except what the Company kindly provided). The prospects for a free burgher therefore really had to look rosy before such a risk could be taken.

As was the experience from early on in the East, there were never a great number of officials who regarded being free burghers attractive enough. In addition not everyone who became a free burgher went to live on farms. Some of them immediately moved to the booming town at the foot of Table Mountain.

The settlement in the vicinity of Stellenbosch by 1679 is usually used as an example of successful growth and expansion into the interior. It is never mentioned that only a few years after the initial settlement the authorities had to make rules to force the free burghers to stay on their farms. It became necessary because many left their land after a while and returned to the Cape. Without this action by the authorities the gradual permanent settlement of the interior would not have progressed far.

Slaves
Gradually the distribution of slaves among the farmers did benefit them. The first slaves, who came from Angola and elsewhere in West Africa, were brought to the Cape by the Hasselt in 1658 after they were captured by a Portuguese ship. Only a few were earmarked to remain behind when the ship left en route to the East, where the slaves were required for the mines.

No free burgher obtained slaves from this first small group. They were meant for the Company. A few officials acquired personal serfs. During the early period the free burghers were by far not the biggest owners of slaves at the Cape.

In time the Company built up a considerable labour force of about four hundred slaves, comprising men and women, who worked mainly in the Company garden. In those days the garden was much bigger than the one we know today. The more outposts the Company established elsewhere, the more its slaves were spread throughout the colony.

Then came the group of Company officials with their personal slaves. They were the first ones to own slaves privately because that had been the custom in the East for some time. There was no rule against this. High officials usually had a number of slaves, while the lower ranks often had to do without slaves because they could not afford them.

Other big slave-owners at the Cape were the rich free burghers who usually lived in town or were the owners of the gardens just outside the town on the slopes of the mountain. These lands were much bigger than the small town plots, but considerably smaller than the farms parcelled out to the farmers. In time some of the farm owners on the east side of the mountain also began to share in the wealth. The further a farmer lived from the town centre (Castle), the greater was the probability that he would have no slaves at all.

Apart from the slaves collected from time to time by the Company along the coast of Madagascar or East Africa, there was no regular large-scale flow of slaves to the Cape. During the Company’s hundred and fifty years at the Cape, about thirty trips were undertaken to Madagascar – not all equally successful. Not all the collected slaves were intended for the Cape either. In the East, especially, the need for slaves for the mines was more important.

Demand
By 1720 the Cape authorities were allowed to establish a post on the coast of East Africa, called Fort Lydsaamheid (today Maputo), to supply the Cape with a regular consignment of slaves from that region. In the end the undertaking proved to be too expensive to maintain and it also did not provide the results hoped for. After a few years it was abandoned.

Gradually a demand for slaves from East Africa developed. By the last years of the Company’s existence the diminishing of its ship crews due to Eastern diseases and their dissatisfaction with the low wages earned became so severe that the once mighty Dutch fleet had to rely on recruiting black sailors if it wanted to keep its ships at sea. For this large numbers of blacks were collected along the coast of East Africa to serve as sailors. However, in dangerous moments they displayed less loyalty toward the Company and also mutinied more readily.

During the Company period there was no large importation of slaves at the Cape as had happened in the West in particular. Now and again ships of foreign powers- Portuguese, English, French or Danes – ran aground somewhere along the coast, and the slaves on the ships were then seized by the Cape authorities in terms of international law. The Company, company servants and rich town-dwellers were usually the first buyers of these slaves. Then came the turn of some of the farmers who lived near the place where the ship ran aground.

In time some of these slaves made their appearance in the rural areas as the purchasers in turn sold their slaves with the objective of making a profit from the next transaction. In a few cases slave speculators were identified, but apparently it did not become an extensive industry as the Company strictly controlled all trade in the colony.

For this reason there never existed a public slave market, as all trade was in the hands of the Company. With the exception of a few slaves who had a change in ownership as a result of punishment and offences, or in the case of deceased estate sales, there were occasional auctions at the places concerned, but not at a fixed market place.

Controls
Because a slave was owned as property in terms of the Statute of Batavia, the purchase had to be registered with the authorities. The same applied to every resale of a slave or transfers by means of wills and legacies, as well as in respect of manumission. It also had to be signed in front of officials and witnesses.

The biggest importers of slaves were the high officers of passing VOC ships as well as high officials returning from the East. These activities took place despite miscellaneous strict legislation. For example, proclamations were issued against the transportation of stowaways on board ship; especially slaves (see previous articles). Every sailor on board was required to report stowaways immediately; otherwise he would forfeit his entire wage.

In the harbours called at en route, like the Cape, the local fiscal and his crew had to examine the recently arrived ships first for any contraband or infectious diseases before they could dock. However, it was common practice among the sailors to take slaves with them. The Cape was a convenient place to get rid of those not required, as there were eager buyers.

Trade
The slaves brought with these ship’s officers and returning officials usually came from a wide variety of places in the East. The importers definitely did not capture or enslave them themselves, but were mere intermediaries. The many Malaysian islands – from Coromandel to Malabar (the east and west coasts of India), the bight of Bengal, the island of Ceylon and many others were of the most popular places.

The slaves from every region had their own characteristics and attitude: the gentle, the energetic, the hard-working or the cruel – characteristics that determined their purchase price.

There could have been a well-organised slave trade between an agent in the East and his clients at the Cape. It was as if the client had ordered a slave by mail to be delivered with the next returning fleet. Because of the strict measures controlling the illegal transportation of slaves – the travelling expenses would be recouped from the salary of the captain if discovered – ship’s officers used a number of other channels.

One was by simply signing on the slaves as crew and paying the VOC salaries earned by them to the officers as reward for the courage required. In addition, the slave was sold on arrival at the Cape.

It is calculated that more than sixty percent of returning ships illegally transported slaves who were sold at the Cape. On this particular route there was a particularly large number of returning ships every year. Yet too many slaves were never made available and there never remained unsold slaves.

The extent of this industry leaked out when the Bennebroek ran aground along the Cape coast in 1714. The shipwrecked, including twenty illegal slaves, followed the coast to the Cape. The matter had to be reported in detail to the Netherlands, especially because of the valuable cargo that was lost. This is how the smuggling of slaves came to light.

Immediately stricter measures were imposed. Old proclamations regarding the non-importation of ‘black’ slaves into the Netherlands were reiterated. Gradually, as concessions were again made to high officials, these laws were relaxed. For the convenience of their families, returning officials were again allowed to bring a number of slaves (calculated in accordance with rank and status) with them. The only condition was that the return ticket for every slave had to be paid in advance.

Other powers
In addition to the company ships, English ships calling at the Cape proved to be the biggest traders. By the end of the seventeenth century there was a period of peace and friendship between England and the Netherlands. William of Orange, the Dutch king, in 1677 married Mary, the English queen, and then also became king of England (William III). The new friendship was a bit forced, as the Cape had to welcome all English ships with open arms while shortly before they had been enemies that attacked each other. While mutual civilian friendship was shown, the opportunity was also used to spy on each other.

In this way much needed information was obtained of Madagascar being a supplier of slaves at the Cape. It also became clear that the English had long enthusiastically taken part in the importation of slaves from Madagascar. The outbreak of the smallpox epidemic at the Cape in 1714 deterred the English and other foreign ships anew, which placed a damper on the trade. After that the English trade in slaves at the Cape dried up for many years. In any case, they then found much more profitable markets in America.

In addition, the few Danish and Portuguese ships that called at the Cape for one reason or another made use of these opportunities to sell slaves here – usually to the burghers. As the Danes had a post on the Bengal coast, their slaves mostly came from those regions.

The Portuguese also sailed regularly around the Cape en route to Brazil with big cargoes of slaves from Portuguese territories in the East and East Africa, but they did not call here – unless there was an emergency or they were shipwrecked somewhere. According to the Catholic custom their slaves were baptised by the chaplain on coming aboard and were therefore Portuguese-speaking Catholics. Those who went ashore at the Cape remained life-long Catholics, despite Protestant pressure.

As a consequence of this fragmented manner in which slaves were brought to the Cape (and not, as elsewhere in other colonies, in large numbers at a time from one place of origin), the Cape slaves show a large variety of origins equalled nowhere else in the world in any former slave community.

Source: By Prof J L Hattingh

Acknowledgements: South African Encyclopaedia

Images (from top to bottom):
National Archives
This picture, of an old slave of the household of Mr. [Melt J.] Brink’s parents, appeared in the Cape Times supplement on 2nd August 1932. (Courtesy of the South African Library.)