Book 2: The Impact and Limitations of Colonialism - Chapter 2 - The Development of a Colonial Slave Society by Wayne Dooling

From the book: Book 2: The Impact and Limitations of Colonialism commissioned by The Department of Education

What were the turning points in southern Africa before colonialism?

There can be little doubt that the imposition of European colonial rule in southern Africa was one of the great turning points in the history of the region. This is not to say that the colonial period was the only, or even the most important, turning point. The societies of southern Africa were by no means unchanging before contact with Europeans. Archaeologists have identified significant earlier turning points.

One of the most important of these was the transition from hunting and gathering societies to agricultural societies where people produced their food. In the latter case, people either herded livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats, or grew crops such as millet and maize, or they combined herding and agriculture to varying degrees.

Such varied forms of subsistence usually coincided with specific forms of technology. People who acquired their food through hunting and gathering tended to fashion their tools from stone (hence archaeologists use the term Stone Age to refer to such peoples). Those who herded and planted crops tended to employ iron technology (thus the use of the term Iron Age). Indeed, the adoption of iron and the expansion of food production are very closely related. One of the uses to which iron was put was the manufacture of stronger implements such as hoes and axes, which allowed for the easier clearing of fields.

The transition from hunting and gathering to food production resulted in widespread changes to the political and social systems of the societies affected. Whereas hunter-gatherer communities had to place strict limits on their numbers, food-producing societies could allow larger populations. Compared to hunter-gatherer societies, food-producing communities were less egalitarian, as certain groups and individuals were able to gain greater access to essential resources. The most important of these resources was livestock, for the ownership of livestock allowed individuals to attract large followings. It is clear, therefore, that long before Europeans stumbled into southern Africa, the societies of the region had undergone significant change.

Nor were the societies of southern Africa isolated. Indeed, changes such as the ones described above prompted African societies to seek contact with societies from which they were far removed. For example, the susceptibility of the Zimbabwean highveld to periodic droughts and famine caused the people of the region to look outwards for economic security. Thus, the Iron Age peoples of the Zimbabwe interior turned to trade. Extensive mining and hunting operations made possible the export of gold and elephant tusks to the east coast of Africa. Cloth was an important import. From the East African coast, exports were carried to the Asian subcontinent. In this way, the peoples of pre-colonial southern Africa were linked to trading networks of truly global proportions.

How did contact with Europeans change southern African societies?

The changes wroughtto African societies by the imposition of European colonial rule were of a qualitatively different kind. It was the speed with which change occurred that set the colonial era apart from earlier periods. Whereas the changes described above took place over centuries, the onset of European colonial rule led to the rapid transformation of societies. Of course, not all societies were equally transformed. Some could resist the forces of colonial intrusion for extended periods. Others, however, such as the Khoikhoi communities of the south-western Cape, disintegratedwithin a matter of decades.

It is important to distinguish between different phases of African contact with Europe. Initially, Europeans had little interest in establishing political control over the societies with which they came into contact. Nor did they have the economic and military means to do so. From the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese first set off on their voyages of exploration down Africa's Atlantic coast, they were mostly interested in putting in place the necessary infrastructure for the smooth running of trade. Thus they established limited political relations with African rulers through signing treaties. To this day the African coast remains dotted with forts built by Europeans, from which they ran their trading operations.

Colonial contact was a two-way process, however, and Africans were far from helpless victims in the initial encounter. Colonial contact was not simply a matter of Europeans imposing themselves upon African societies. For their part, African rulers saw many benefits to be had from maintaining relations with Europeans. For a considerable period of time they engaged with Europeans voluntarily and largely on their own terms.

By and large, the African societies with which Europeans came into contact were demographicallyfragile. The prevalence of diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness made large parts of the African continent particularly inhospitable for human and animal habitation. As a consequence, one of the driving forces behind these societies was the need to increase population numbers and for individuals to build large followings.

Most importantly, trade with Europeans gave African rulers access to a crucial aspect of European technology, namely, firearms. More than anything else, those who had ownership and control over firearms were able to gather around themselves larger and larger groups of people. In short, the ownership of firearms could be turned into status and political power.

Sadly, however, the article of trade in which Europeans showed the greatest interest, and which Africans were prepared to sacrifice, were slaves. The Atlantic slave trade stands at the centre of the long history of European contact with Africa. This was the era of the African Diaspora, an allembracing term historians have used to describe the consequences of the slave trade. Estimates of the number of slaves transported from their African homes to European colonial possessions in the Americas range from nine to fifteen million people. Although a great deal of violence accompanied the trade in slaves, the sheer scale of operations necessarily involved a high degree of organisation, on the part of both Europeans and Africans. In other words, the Atlantic slave trade could not have taken place without the cooperation, or complicity, of many Africans.

As the number of those transported increased, African societies could not avoid being deeply transformed - 400 years of slave trading took their toll. Of course, not all African societies were equally affected, but countries such as Angola and Senegal suffered heavily. The most important consequences of the Atlantic slave trade were demographic, economic, and political. There can be no doubt that the Atlantic slave trade greatly retarded African demographic development, a fact that was to have lasting consequences for the history of the continent. At best, African populations remained stagnant. The export of the most economically active men and women led to the disintegration of entire societies. The trade in slaves also led to new political formations. In some cases, as people sought protection from the violence and warfare that went with the slave trade, large centralised states came into being.

How did colonialism develop in the Western Cape?

Once Europeans established political control over the African societies with which they came into contact, change took place even more rapidly. In South Africa this process was initiated in 1652 when the Vereenigde Oost-Indisch Compagnie (VOC), a great merchant corporation with its headquarters in Amsterdam, established a permanent settlement at Table Bay. The Dutch marked their permanence by building a five-pointed stone castle on the shores of the bay, a structure that continues to dominate the city centre of Cape Town today. From within the walls of the Castle, the VOC administered and governed the expanding colony. At first, the Dutch were primarily concerned with supplying their ships with fresh produce as they rounded the Cape en route to the spice-producing islands of the Indonesian archipelagowhere the Dutch had their most important colonial interests.

The establishment of the Dutch settlement at Table Bay gave birth to an entirely new society. It grew out of the interaction and conflict that took place between the cultures of indigenous Africans, immigrant Europeans and imported slaves. The Europeans who settled at the Cape came from societies that were commercial in orientation and Protestant in outlook. They came into contact with people largely untouched by these influences, and they imported slaves about whose cultures they knew little or nothing.

Two features stand out about the colonial society that grew up in South Africa: (a) it quickly developed into a settler society, and (b) it also became a slave society. The VOC unwittingly allowed the Cape to develop into a settler colony when they decided to provide some of their own servants with plots of land close to the port of what came to be called Cape Town. It was hoped that these “free burghers” would be able to provision passing ships with fresh produce.

Over time, those Europeans who migrated to the Cape and made it their permanent home came to dominate the social and economic institutions of the country. Europeans constituted a large percentage of the total population of the colony. The Cape's temperateand disease-free environment permitted a healthy European population that grew rapidly. This was in contrast to other parts of Africa or colonial settlements such as the Caribbean island of Jamaica, where European populations initially struggled to sustain themselves.

Why did the Cape Colony turn into a colonial slave society?

It soon became apparent that if the free burghers were to be successful as agricultural producers, they would need access to large amounts of labour. The indigenous peoples with whom the Dutch first came into contact, the Khoikhoi, had been settled in the region for at least a thousand years before the Dutch arrived; they were an unwilling labour force. The Khoikhoi were a pastoral people; as long as they had their lands, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, they could not be pressed into service for the Dutch settlers. The settlers practiced a form of settled agriculture that came into direct conflict with the pastoral economy of the Khoikhoi, which involved regular and structured seasonal migration.

Thus, as the Dutch settlement expanded, independent Khoikhoi communities were placed under unbearable pressure. Within 50 years of the establishment of the Dutch settlement, the indigenous communities near Table Bay, despite heroic struggles on their part, had been dispossessed of their lands and their independent means of existence had come to an end. Individual Khoikhoi men and women became incorporated into colonial society as low-status servants. Beyond the mountains of Table Valley, communities of Khoisan (as the Khoikhoi and the indigenous hunter-gatherer San are collectively called) survived until the end of the eighteenth century, but there can be little doubt that for the indigenous populations of the Cape the arrival of the Dutch settlers proved to be a major turning point.

The Dutch settlers were forced to look elsewhere for their labour needs. In 1658, the year after the first free burghers had been granted their plots of land, the first slaves were imported into South Africa, specifically for agricultural work.

Slaves were brought from trading posts in the Indian Ocean that included Mozambique, Madagascar, Indonesia, India and Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka).

Thus, unlike the societies of West Africa, South Africa became an importer rather than an exporter of slaves. In this way, the Cape became a colonial slave societyborn out of European overseas expansion.

Very soon, the number of slaves exceeded the numbers of settlers. Between 1720 and 1790 slave numbers increased from 2 500 to 14 500. At the time of the final ending of slavery in 1838 the slave population stood at around 38 000. However, unlike the European population, which was able to double in number with each generation through natural increase, the harsh living conditions of the Cape's slave population meant that their numbers could only be sustained through the continued importation. Between 1652 and the ending of the slave trade in 1807 about 60 000 slaves were imported into the Colony.

Thus the Cape became not just a society in which some people were slaves, but a fully-fledged slave society. In slave societies, the institution of slavery touched all aspects of life. Slavery was central to the social, economic and legal institutions of Cape society. As the boundaries of the Cape Colony expanded beyond the immediate vicinity of Table Bay, slaves were put to work on the wine and wheat farms of the south-western Cape. Quite simply, the colonial economy could not function without the use of slave labour. Slave-ownership was widespread. Although most of the European settlers of the south-western Cape owned fewer than ten slaves, almost all owned at least some slaves.

The most important social feature of slave societies is that they were polarised between people who were slaves and those who were not. Slaves were also defined by their race. Although the VOC did not institute a codifiedform of racial classification, the fact is that slaves were black and slave owners were white. There were a few slaves who had been freed - they were called “free blacks” - and who had managed to acquire slaves of their own, but these black slave owners were a tiny minority of the slave-owning population. Thus, colonial South Africa was from the very start a society structured along racial lines, in which black people occupied a subordinate position.

Slavery was fully supported by the Roman-Dutch legal systemthat the VOC brought to the Cape. In terms of Roman-Dutch law, slaves were defined, first and foremost, as property. This form of slavery, known as chattel slavery, meant that one human being was the legal belonging of another human being. Slaves could be bought and sold, bequeathed or used as security for loans. Because slaves were kept in a state of slavery against their will, the slave owners and the VOC needed a system of laws to ensure that slaves were kept in their subordinate position; in other words, the law needed to guarantee that slaves remained slaves. Thus, according to law, slaves could be severely punished for acts such as running away or failing to obey their owners’ orders. Slaves were most commonly whipped for such transgressions. For attacking the persons of their owners, slaves could be put to death.

How could slaves limit the power of slavery?

The single largest limitation that the slave owners faced was that they were compelled to acknowledge that their slaves were not merely property, but also human beings, with human values, desires and emotions. On farms and households in the Cape, slaves and slave owners lived very near each other and came into daily contact. The culture that grew out of these regular interactions was one of domination, but it was also one that was based on acknowledging the humanity of the other party. From the very first day when a slave was acquired by a settler and given a new name, slaves and owners struggled to see how much each could impose their will on the other.

We see this clearly in the records of the trial of the slave, Reijnier, a runaway who was caught and tried 22 years later. In the first few decades of the eighteenth century, he lived in the district of Drakenstein in the south-western Cape. Reijnier, who had come from Madagascar, was the property of the free burgher, Matthijs Krugel. On Krugel's farm, Simonsvalleij, Reijnier had built a long-standing relationship with Manika, a female slave who had been imported from India. They had a number of children together, including a daughter named Sabina.

It is clear that Manika and Reijnier's situation was unusual in the context of the Cape, for few slaves were able to build and sustain such longstanding relationships. Since the colonists preferred to import male rather than female slaves, the slave population suffered from great sexual imbalance: until the end of the eighteenth century male slaves outnumbered female slaves by as much as four to one, although this ratio could vary significantly from district to district. The children born to Manika were born into slavery, for slave women passed the status of slavery onto their children. Manika's children would have been among only a small proportion of slaves who were born at the Cape in the course of the eighteenth century. As we mentioned earlier, the slave population grew as a result of continued importation.

We can only speculate as to the nature of the relationship that existed between Reijnier and Manika and the kind of life they would have been able to lead. Since they came from such different places of origin, they would probably have communicated with each other in a type of pidgin. Their owners would have spoken to them in Dutch. Out of this mixture of languages grew Afrikaans, and the slaves contributed their share to the development of this language.

It is clear that Reijnier and Manika's owners, Krugel and his wife, whom they would have called Mijnheer and Mevrou, dominated their lives. Their roles as parents were greatly inhibited by their status as slaves. For some reason, Krugel's wife had taken to regularly beating Reijnier and Manika's daughter, Sabina. Possibly this was a result of sexual jealousy, or perhaps Sabina did not perform her duties to the satisfaction of Mevrou Krugel. As parents, Reijnier and Manika had little control over the maltreatment that Sabina suffered and which they were forced to witness. It is a sad testimony to his lack of power that Reijnier, in an attempt to put an end to the abuse of his daughter, was prepared to ask Krugel to sell Sabina and thus be separated from her, possibly for life.

However, to say that Reijnier lacked power is not to say that he was absolutely powerless. There were clear limits to the level of domination that slave owners could exercise over their slaves. On one occasion, on a Saturday in a year around 1737, Mevrou Krugel had gone too far in her maltreatment of Sabina. She had clearly overstepped the boundaries that maintained the delicate balance of power between masters and slaves. On this occasion Krugel's wife stripped Sabina naked, tied her to a post and beat her mercilessly with a sjambok. Afterwards, to accentuate the pain, she rubbed salt into the wounds, a tactic commonly employed by Cape slave owners. The event obviously scarred Manika deeply because she could tell the story clearly when she appeared before the law courts 22 years later. When Reijnier returned to the homestead after having worked in the fields he did not hesitate to vent his anger at the maltreatment of his daughter. His wife, Manika, was the unfortunate victim of his wrath. These were human actions and emotions, not the actions of people who could be defined simply as property.

By now, Krugel and his wife had lost control over the slaves on Simonsvalleij. In an attempt to restore his authority, Krugel beat all the slaves on the farm. This was to no avail, for, as Manika testified, Reijnier turned on his master and assaulted him, although she did not witness the assault herself. As a consequence, Reijnier had to flee the farm.

The mountains and valleys of the south-western Cape provided many hiding places for slaves who had deserted their owners. For more than two decades Reijnier lived in the mountains around the Berg River as a droster, as runaway slaves were called. For all this time Krugel had lost the labour of his slave. Reijnier had turned out to be a poor investment. It seemed that Krugel and his wife could not control their slaves. Slave owners often found physical violence essential to maintaining authority over their labour force, but if such violence was allowed to spiral out of control, it could be counterproductive. By his actions, Reijnier had shown the limitations of the use of slave labour in a colonial society.

What was the impact of runaway slaves on the Cape slave society?

Reijnier was one of many slave runaways. He never ventured too far from the settler farms, and it is probably this that led to his eventual capture. Manika may not have been entirely truthful when she testified that she had not seen him in all the years after he had fled. Runaway slaves were frequently supplied with foodstuffs from surrounding farms, since they often lacked the knowledge that would allow them to feed themselves from the natural environment.

Individual runaways were thus very vulnerable. It made sense for them to join into bands and they found strength in numbers. Thus there existed throughout the eighteenth century and until the ending of slavery a community of runaway slaves in the caves of the Hottentots Holland Mountains overlooking False Bay. This was the maroon community of Hangklip.

This community survived as long as they did because of their protected physical environment. The series of caves in which the runaways lived had only two entrances. On the one side, they were protected by the ocean, which made entry difficult and very dangerous. The other entrance, from the mountain, could be easily defended.

The maroon community at Hangklip was never able to cut itself off from the rest of colonial society and for this reason they were vulnerable. By attacking wagons crossing the Hottentots Holland Mountains, they exposed themselves to the possibility of recapture. Although they could to some extent live off fish caught from the ocean, mostly they were dependent for their survival on goods obtained from slaves who lived on surrounding farms and from other runaways who lived as far away as Table Mountain across the Cape Flats.

Although the Hangklip maroons were not as successful as the maroon communities of slaves that existed in Brazil, for example, where colonial authorities were compelled to recognise their independence, the fact remains that the Dutch authorities were never able to wipe out the community. The Hangklip maroons continued to live on the margins of colonial society.

It became clear to the colonial authorities at the Cape, especially after the British took over political power from the Dutch, that the use of slave labour had severe limitations. Two minor rebellions of slaves in 1808 and 1825, in which a number of white settlers were killed, made the continued use of slave labour even less appealing. Moreover, by the second decade of the nineteenth century the use of slave labour was no longer as profitable as it had been in earlier decades. Thus, when the British government finally ended slavery in 1838, the Cape ceased to be a slave society. It remained a colonial society, but the ending of slavery was another turning point of major significance in the history of South Africa.

What was the impact of colonialism on African societies in the interior?

So far our discussion has been confined to the colonial society of the southwestern Cape. It should be remembered that the Colony expanded its boundaries to the north and east almost as soon as the first free burghers took possession of plots of land. We noted earlier that the settler population grew rapidly in numbers. One of the consequences of this growth was a never-ending appetite for land on the part of the white settlers.

The process of expansion, of course, involved the conquest and dispossession of the indigenous Khoisan population. As early as 1690 the first settlers had moved across the Hottentots Holland Mountains. By 1770 the Colony had expanded as far east as the Fish River, where expansion was halted for a long time due to fierce resistance by the Xhosa. By the 1820s white farmers had begun to settle north of the Gariep (Orange River). In the 1830s the number of white settlers leaving the Cape Colony increased dramatically, as a downturn in the Cape economy prompted them to look elsewhere for economic opportunities. They were also particularly unhappy with what they perceived to be British intervention in the relations between masters and servants. As a consequence of the Great Trek, as this exodus of settlers later became known, colonial politics intersected with developments in African societies to a far greater extent than had previously been the case.

From the 1820s in particular, the African societies of southern Africa experienced a great deal of turmoil, violence and instability. Historians are by no means agreed on the origins of these changes. However, they are related to increased raids for goods such as ivory and slaves by bands that existed on the margins of the Cape Colony, and to the changes that occurred within African societies as a result of ecological changes in the natural environment. One of the most important consequences of this instability was the rise of powerful new African states, the most notable of which was the Zulu kingdom under Shaka.

Another powerful state that came into existence was the kingdom of Lesotho. This state owed its existence to the considerable skills of its founder, Moshoeshoe. Moshoeshoe's greatest gifts were his political and diplomatic skills, even though he had never become literate. First, he had succeeded in bringing large numbers of African followers into his kingdom. By 1848 his followers, who came to be known as the Basotho, were said to number approximately 80 000 people. Second, Moshoeshoe skilfully negotiated a path for Lesotho between the British colonial state and the Boers (as the migrant settlers from the Cape Colony became known) who had founded the Orange Free State north of the Gariep.

A significant part of Moshoeshoe's diplomatic skills emerged from military triumph. The British were defeated in battle at Berea when they went to war against the Basotho at the end of 1852. But Moshoeshoe's greatest victory was a diplomatic one. He sought to bring about peace, not the continuation of war. In a letter to the commander of the British forces written in December 1852, Moshoeshoe sued for peace. Most importantly, he allowed the British to retreat with their honour intact. The Basotho, for their part, retained their independence. Thus, through a combination of military and diplomatic skill, Moshoeshoe had shown the limitations of midnineteenth-century British colonialism in southern Africa.

What was the role of missionaries in the colonial process?

Moshoeshoe had concluded the peace treaty at Berea in close consultation with one Eugéne Casalis, a representative of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS). One cannot separate colonial rule from the presence of Christian missionaries in southern Africa. The missionaries of the PEMS had been deeply involved in Basotho affairs. Although Moshoeshoe himself never converted to Christianity, he had maintained extensive contact with the missionaries of the PEMS and regularly attended their Sunday services.

It is perhaps in the interactions between Africans and European Christian missionaries that we can see the ironies of European rule most clearly. The presence of the French missionaries did not leave Moshoeshoe's kingdom untouched; it resulted in significant changes to cultural practices. For instance, Moshoeshoe put an end to circumcision practices for his own sons and those of his immediate followers. Under the influence of missionaries, he also allowed two of his wives to be separated from him by divorce. This was of major significance, for polygamywas an institution central to many African societies. Thus, although there were limitations to how much change European missionaries could bring to African societies, the fact that they initiated major transformations in cultural practices is undeniable.

In 1858, the Boers and the Basotho were again at war. Neither side emerged as a clear victor, but the Boers had destroyed the PEMS mission at Morija. When the fighting was over, Moshoeshoe again sought a diplomatic solution. He sent a letter to the Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Grey, in which he lay out the history of the region as he saw it. He made particular mention of the destruction of PEMS property during the war of 1858. Most importantly, Moshoeshoe warned of the dangers and ravages of war.

Conclusion

Colonial rule in southern African had brought new societies into existence, and profoundly transformed those societies that had existed before. But colonialism had its limitations. The case of the Basotho shows that African societies did not accept colonial values and institutions wholesale. Nor did they reject them out of hand. The fertile lands of the Caledon River Valley served to feed much of the population north of the Gariep, and it was these lands that were at the root of the conflict between the Basotho and the Boers. The Basotho grew rich off trade in foodstuffs; they were able to acquire European goods such as firearms, horses and guns. Ironically, it was through the acquisition of these goods that they were able to resist European intrusion for as long as they did. Furthermore, their contact with missionaries suggested a degree of openness to European ideas that further enabled Africans to negotiate with Europeans as equals and so delay the processes of colonial conquest.