Boer History1657 at the Cape of Good Hope: The First Free Burghers
The First Burghers — 21 February 1657
Preliminary arrangements to release some Company’s servants from their engagements and help them become farmers were at length complete. On the 21st of February 1657 ground was allotted to the first burghers in South Africa. Before that date individuals had been allowed private gardens while still in Company service — mostly petty officers with families who drew money instead of rations and sold a little produce. The free burghers formed a different class: subjects, not servants, of the Company. [3]
For more than a year workmen and officers had weighed whether free life would better them. At length nine men decided to try. They formed two parties, chose ground, and concluded arrangements before the council in the commander’s hall: van Riebeeck, Sergeant Jan van Harwarden, and bookkeeper Roelof de Man. Secretary Caspar van Weede recorded the proceedings at length. [3]
Herman’s Colony and Stephen’s Colony
The first party of five — Herman Remajenne, Jan de Wacht, Jan van Passel, Warnar Cornelissen, and Roelof Janssen — took land just beyond the Liesbeek and named it Groeneveld (the Green Country). They meant to grow wheat above all. Because Remajenne was the principal man among them, they called themselves Herman’s Colony. [3]
The second party of four — Stephen Botma (recorded then as Stephen Janssen), Hendrik Elbrechts, Otto Janssen, and Jacob Cornelissen — took ground on this side of the Liesbeek and named it Hollandsche Thuin (the Dutch garden). They intended tobacco as well as grain. Henceforth they were Stephen’s Colony. Both companies also wanted vegetables and stock — cattle, pigs, and poultry. [3]
They took possession at once and began houses. Little more than two months remained before the rains; that was enough for sod walls and thatch. Timber lay not far off. They were under shelter and ready to turn the soil when the first rains fell. Implements were scarce at first, then supplied. [3]
The First Conditions of Freedom
The conditions of release were strict. They were to hold in full possession all ground they could bring under cultivation within three years, free of taxes for that time; afterward a reasonable land tax. They might sell, lease, or alienate only after informing the commander. Magazine provisions were to cost the same as for married Company servants. They might fish the rivers for their own use and sell vegetables to ships’ crews when the Company did not need them — but not go aboard until three days after a ship’s arrival, and not bring strong drink ashore. [3]
They were not to keep taps, but to cultivate and rear cattle. They were not to buy horned cattle, sheep, or other goods from the natives, on pain of losing all they owned. Cattle needed were to be bought from the Company — twenty-five gulden for an ox or cow, three for a sheep — and sold only to the Company at those rates. For pasturage they owed one-tenth of cattle reared (not pigs or poultry). The Company would furnish implements, food, and arms on credit at Fatherland cost prices, taking produce in payment and a mortgage on their goods. They remained subject to the laws of the Fatherland and India and to future laws for the Company’s service and the community’s welfare. Those regulations the supreme authorities could alter at will. [3]
Van Goens Revises the Terms — March 1657
On 17 March a ship from home brought Ryklof van Goens, an officer of high rank who later became Governor-General of Netherlands India. He was to rectify what he found amiss. He thought the burghers’ conditions could be improved, altered several clauses, and added others. [3]
Freemen were to have plots along the Liesbeek of forty by two hundred roods — about thirteen morgen — free of taxes for twelve years. Farming tools were to be repaired free for three years. To build breeding stock they might buy from the natives until further orders, paying no more than the Company. The price of horned cattle between freemen and Company fell from twenty-five to twelve gulden. Selling cattle except to the Company cost twenty rixdollars. To push grain, freemen were not to plant tobacco or more vegetables than their own households needed. [3]
Burghers were to keep guard by turns in redoubts built for their protection. They might shoot only noxious animals; premiums rose — twenty-five gulden for a lion, twenty for a hyena, ten for a leopard. Only married men of good character and Dutch or German birth were to receive ground; wives and children might be sent from Europe on request; each was to agree to remain twenty years in South Africa. Unmarried men might be freed as mechanics or useful workers, or to serve ground-holders for a term. [3]
One respectable burgher was to sit and vote in the council of justice when freemen’s cases were tried, holding office a year. Stephen Botma was appointed for the first term. Van Goens’s wider instructions told the commander to encourage the burghers, who would cut the wage bill. There were then exactly one hundred persons on wages in South Africa; once farmers were numerous enough, that number was to fall to seventy. [3]
Many restrictions would later look harsh. In 1657 men expected government interference in almost everything, and free trade in the Eastern seas was not a private option: only a powerful company could sustain war and fleets. The Cape settlement existed for the Company’s benefit; individual interest was subordinate even at home, and more so here. [3]
More Free Papers and Occupations
Once a start was made, many applied for free papers. Most who received them later re-entered Company service or returned to the Fatherland; some names died out; others left long lines of descendants. Within about a year of the first grants, free papers went among others to miller Wouter Mostert (who later built and ran a water mill on shares), gardener Hendrik Boom, and farmers including Caspar Brinkman, Pieter Visagie, Hans Faesbenger, Jacob Cloete, Jan Reyniers, Jacob Theunissen, Jan Rietvelt, Otto van Vrede, and Simon Janssen. [3]
Others were freed as farm servants; as hunters with a game monopoly and leave to keep a tap (Christian Janssen and Peter Cornelissen); as timber cutter (Leendert Cornelissen); as tailors; as surgeon Jan Vetteman with professional privileges; as waggon and plough maker Roelof Zieuwerts; as fishermen; as sawyers and carpenters. The free class was not only ploughmen — it was a small colonial labour and service economy under Company price lists. [3]
Van Goens also barred ordinary Company servants from large private gardens, but granted the commander the whole of Green Point as a private farm. Foreign crews were as a rule not to receive vegetables or meat, only water, though the commander kept some discretion; the tenor was not to encourage foreign calls at Table Bay. [3]
Roelof de Man Secunde and the April Count
Regarding the natives, Van Goens ordered kind treatment to win goodwill; suspected assailants or robbers might be held on Robben Island until offenders were named; murderers should die, if possible by native hands. No foreign language was to continue among slaves later brought in. Weights and measures were to be those of the Fatherland: twelve Rhynland inches to the foot, twelve feet to the rood, two thousand roods to the mile; six hundred square roods to the morgen — land measure that long remained in use at the Cape. [3]
The vacant office of secunde was filled by promoting bookkeeper Roelof de Man. Caspar van Weede went to Batavia; clerk Abraham Gabbema became secretary of the council. In April 1657, when these instructions issued, the European population was one hundred and thirty-four souls — Company’s servants and burghers, men, women, and children. There were three male and eight female slaves at the Cape. [3]
Hottentots Holland and Harry on Pasture
Van Goens had allowed burghers to buy cattle from the natives if they paid no more than the Company. A few weeks after he left, three farmers equipped a trading journey inland. Eastward they reached a district of five or six hundred Khoikhoi who received them friendly. The Europeans could not sleep in the huts for vermin and dirt, nor without shelter for lions; the residents built a high circular thorn hedge so the strangers could sleep safe. Already well supplied with copper, the people sold little — only two oxen and three sheep. The visitors understood them to call the district the choicest of the country and named it Hottentots Holland. [3]
For many months few pastoral Khoikhoi had come to the fort when, one day in July, Harry appeared. He asked where their cattle might graze, seeing Europeans till the Liesbeek. Van Riebeeck told them to remain where they were — eight or ten hours’ walk from the fort. Harry said it was not their custom to stay long in one place, and that without a retreat here enemies would ruin them. The commander offered ground behind the mountains toward Hout Bay or on the Lion’s Head slope if they would trade; Harry refused, saying they lived on their cattle’s produce. [3]
The commander’s favourite scheme at this time was a chain of redoubts across the isthmus linked by a wall, with a large Kaapman party enticed inside and held so that cattle sales could be compelled — an experiment the directors refused for cost. Five years at the Cape had taught that local clans (Goringhaikonas, Gorachouquas, Goringhaiquas) were divisions of one tribe under Gogosoa; inland names such as Chariguriqua, Cochoqua, and Chainouqua were only beginning to be placed on the map. [3]
Eva Interpreter and Inland Stories
After the beachrangers returned to Table Valley, Eva again lived in van Riebeeck’s house. At fifteen or sixteen she spoke Dutch fluently. Doman had gone to Batavia with Van Goens; Eva interpreted in his place. She told of Namaquas inland with white skins and long hair, clothes, stone houses, and religion like Netherlanders, and of others rich in gold and jewels — tales a cattle-bringer partly backed with inventive detail. The commander pressed for inland roads toward Monomotapa and the Spirito Sancto; Van Goens saw little difficulty and ordered reasonable exertion. [3]
Gabbema, the Berg River, and the Paarl — October 1657
The next inland party’s immediate aim was cattle for an expected fleet, not Ophir. On 19 October seven Company servants, eight freemen, and four Khoikhoi left under Abraham Gabbema, fiscal and council secretary, with pack oxen for goods and food. They made first for the mountain already called Klapmuts for its nightcap shape, passed round it and over the low watershed, and came to a stream running north along a mountain chain they judged impassable — the Great Berg River. In it they caught barbel. [3]
They were in a broad fair valley. To the west a long isolated mountain showed green faces and streamlets; its granite domes caught the morning light so that the travellers named them the Paarl and the Diamant. Eastward the range glowed at evening. Trees dotted the floor; grass and flowers stood thick in October. Hippopotami thronged the river; zebras browsed the slopes; rhinoceroses trampled grass Gabbema said was fit for hay. [3]
Little kraals lined the Berg River, but people were slow to sell stock. More than a week’s moving among them brought only ten oxen and forty-one sheep back to the fort. Geographical knowledge advanced a step; legendary gold centres slipped further back on the charts. [3]
Public Works in 1657
Several public works marked the year. On Robben Island’s highest point a platform was raised so a fire could burn at night when Company ships were seen off the port. At the Company’s Rondebosch farm a grain magazine was begun — one hundred and eight by forty feet — later known as the Groote Schuur, of solid build. In Table Valley the Fresh River’s lower course was shifted: winter floods had damaged gardens, so a new broader channel was cut to enter the sea southeast of the fort; the old bed became a canal with sluices so the moat could still be filled. [3]