Boer History1682 at the Cape of Good Hope: Van Goens, Stellenbosch Heemraad, and the Joanna
Opening 1682 and Stellenbosch Pressure
The calendar year 1682 opened with Simon van der Stel still commander, the inland freehold district of Stellenbosch already thickened by the several families added in 1681, and the December 1681 Namaqua embassy’s copper specimens and river report lodged in the commander’s northern programme. Rondebosch and Wynberg freeholders had watched the valley’s exceptional wheat of the previous season; the ploughing months ahead would test whether that fruitfulness could absorb a larger migration without exhausting pasture, seed, or neighbourly peace. [3] [4]
Ordinary refreshment-station work continued in parallel: fleets in Table Bay, the Company garden in Table Valley, castle administration, and the still-live dispute over how foreign ships should buy meat and vegetables from burghers. The directors’ reply that foreigners were to be treated as of old—free to purchase refreshments from free households, barred from magazine sea stores except in urgent cases, and forbidden wheat, fuel, and merchandise sales—remained the standing rule while Van der Stel’s own stricter phase lasted into the following year. Against that administrative background the year’s distinctive marks would be a governor-general’s long stay, a May inland removal, an insect plague on the wheat, two new local courts in late August, a wreck on the Agulhas coast, and a first failed probe toward the copper mountains. [3]
Neighbouring Khoikhoi still lived on peaceful commercial terms with the Europeans; Hessequa cattle trade and occasional San molestation of hunters framed the outer pastoral world. Expansion remained slow when counted in households, yet the legal and agricultural skeleton of Stellenbosch—fixed limits, surveys, and title deeds ordered after the commander’s 1681 visit—was firm enough to receive more freeholders and, within months, a court of heemraad of its own. [3] [4]
Governor-General Ryklof van Goens — February to April 1682
On the 16th of February 1682 the governor-general Ryklof van Goens arrived at the Cape on his way to Europe in pursuit of health. Though he was very feeble he managed to visit Stellenbosch and to issue instructions upon a good many subjects. His presence belonged to the same series of visiting higher authorities that had already framed Cape government under Simon van der Stel—Sybrand Abbema’s memorial of 27 March 1680 and Ryklof van Goens the younger’s instructions of 20 March 1681—and the elder Van Goens’s own memorial for the commander and council would be dated 24 April 1682. [3]
The visit was more than a ceremonial call. A retired governor-general who still held enough strength to ride inland and inspect the new freehold district gave Stellenbosch a place on the highest administrative itinerary of the year. Feebleness limited what he could do in person, but the combination of a Stellenbosch inspection and a written memorial left the commander with both local observation and formal orders before the ploughing season opened. [3]
Van Goens remained at the Cape until the end of April. Before embarking he ordered the 13th of May to be kept as a day of prayer that God would be pleased to avert warlike attacks and protect the homeward-bound fleet. He died soon after his return to Europe. In the following year his widow called at the Cape on her way to the fatherland and was treated while there with all possible respect and attention—an epilogue that underlines how completely the 1682 stay had tied the Van Goens name to Cape hospitality and ceremony as well as to standing instructions. [3]
Van Goens on Crops, Tobacco, and the Day of Prayer
Among the instructions issued during the stay, Van Goens directed that experiments should be made in the cultivation of flax, hemp, and indigo. None of these were found on trial to answer sufficiently well to encourage the farmers to undertake their growth. The orders tested whether the Cape’s soils and labour could diversify beyond the grain, garden produce, and vines already in hand; the negative results kept freehold attention on wheat and the ordinary colonial staples rather than on fibre or dye crops. [3]
He strictly prohibited the planting of tobacco, lest it might interfere with the existing trade, from which a large profit was derived. The ban continued a commercial logic already familiar at Stellenbosch freehold—where tobacco had been barred from the first grants—and locked the colony’s cash and barter patterns to Company channels rather than to a local leaf crop that might undercut imported supplies. [3]
The May day of prayer closed the visit’s public religious mark. Ordered before the governor-general embarked at the end of April, the 13th of May observance asked protection for the homeward fleet and against warlike attack at a moment when the Cape’s own calendar was about to turn from inspection to ploughing. Instruction, prohibition, experiment, and public prayer thus formed one commissioner’s package for 1682 rather than four disconnected acts. [3]
May Migration of Fifteen or Sixteen Farmers
The fruitfulness of the soil, as proved by the abundant crops of the previous season, caused many of the most industrious individuals in Rondebosch and Wynberg to turn their attention toward Stellenbosch. In May 1682, when the ploughing season commenced, a party of fifteen or sixteen farmers removed to the new district. The move was the largest single freehold transfer into the valley since the eight families of May 1680 and the several households added in 1681. [3] [4]
Those fifteen or sixteen households carried peninsula experience—garden and grain habits formed closer to the castle—into a district whose bounds the commander had only recently fixed and whose title deeds were still being ordered. Their arrival thickened the inland neighbourhood at the exact moment when local dispute settlement would require more than occasional visits from Table Valley, and when a single bad season could threaten the ruin of the whole experiment. [3]
The migration also redrew the peninsula map of freehold. As industrious people left Rondebosch and Wynberg for Stellenbosch, the older belt between the castle and the mountain slopes lost some of the households that had once filled it—a thinning later visible when officers of government sought land for themselves on that side of the mountain. In May 1682 the immediate fact was simpler: ploughing season opened with a substantial party already on the road inland. [3]
Insect Plague on the Wheat — 1682
But this year a plague appeared which threatened the ruin of the settlement, for the crops were attacked by prodigious swarms of small insects, which nearly destroyed them. On the same ground where in November 1681 the commander had counted one hundred and five grains of wheat in ear on a single stalk, in November 1682 there was hardly a sound ear to be seen. The contrast between the two Novembers measured how quickly abundance could reverse into near-loss on the same Stellenbosch soil. [3]
The plague continued for several successive seasons to inflict severe loss upon the farmers, though it was never again so destructive, and gradually it disappeared. For 1682 itself the first and worst year of the insects fell on a district just reinforced by fifteen or sixteen new freeholders and still dependent on wheat for the fresh bread that soldiers and burghers had enjoyed after the previous harvest. [3]
Administratively the plague sharpened the need for local institutions. A valley thick enough to support a heemraad was also thick enough for crop failure to become a communal crisis rather than a private misfortune. The insects did not stop freehold expansion, but they stripped the easy confidence that the 105-grain stalk of November 1681 had seemed to promise. [3]
Wreck of the Joanna — 8 June 1682
On the night of the 8th of June 1682 the English Indiaman Joanna, from the Downs bound to Bengal, was wrecked twelve miles to the westward of Cape Agulhas. One hundred and four of her crew saved themselves on a raft; the remainder were drowned. Those who reached the shore found themselves destitute of provisions and were beginning to suffer from hunger when some Khoikhoi made their appearance who conducted them to the kraal of Captain Klaas. [3]
There they were supplied by this hospitable native with abundance of milk and meat as long as they remained, and were provided with food for the journey and guides to conduct them to the Cape. The master of the Joanna, who was too infirm to walk any farther, stayed behind as the guest of Klaas until a waggon could be sent for him. The shipwrecked seamen met with equal kindness from the Company’s officers. They were comfortably lodged and furnished with provisions until they could get away. [3]
The Joanna had a large amount of specie on board, and as the wreck could be reached with a boat in calm weather a party of men was sent from the Cape to try to recover it. They succeeded only in getting coin to the value of twenty-nine thousand florins, but a considerable quantity of cargo and wreckage which was washed ashore was also secured. The June wreck thus joined hospitality at Klaas’s kraal, Company lodging in Table Valley, and a partial salvage operation into a single coastal episode of the year. [3]
Stellenbosch Heemraad — 30 August 1682
To provide for the settlement of trivial disputes between the burghers of the new district, a court of heemraad was established on the 30th of August 1682. This court consisted of four of the leading inhabitants, who held office for two years, without receiving any salaries for their services. The powers of the heemraad were not at first very accurately defined, but its decisions appear in every instance to have been treated with respect. [3]
Two members retired annually, when the court itself sent to the council of policy a list of four names from which to select successors. The first heemraden were Gerrit van der Byl, Henning Huising, Hans Jurgen Grimp, and Hendrik Elberts. At the end of 1683 the two first-named retired, when Douwe Steyn and Matthys Greef were elected to take their places; Grimp and Elberts retired at the end of 1684 and were succeeded by Jan Mostert and Harmen Smit. The 1682 foundation therefore opened a rotating local bench rather than a one-year experiment. [3]
For Stellenbosch freeholders the heemraad meant that boundary quarrels, neighbourly debts, and the small civil friction of a growing farming district need no longer wait on every sitting of the council of justice at the castle. Unpaid service by leading inhabitants tied local prestige to local order at the same moment when insects and new arrivals made order harder to keep. The court of 30 August is the institutional twin of the May migration: households first, then a bench to keep them at peace. [3] [4]
Court of Commissioners for Petty Cases — 31 August 1682
With the growth of the settlement it was found that too much of the time of the council of justice was taken up with hearing petty civil cases, and it was therefore decided to establish an inferior court to have jurisdiction within the Cape peninsula. This court was to be composed of four members, two of whom were to be servants of the Company and two burghers. It was to sit at least once a week, and had power to adjudicate in all cases wherein the amount in dispute was less than three hundred gulden as current in India—equal to twenty pounds, sixteen shillings, and eight pence of English sterling money. [3]
For convenience it was arranged that the last retired burgher councillor could at any time take a seat instead of one of the burgher members. The body thus constituted was termed the court of commissioners for petty cases. It was first established on the 31st of August 1682—one day after the Stellenbosch heemraad—so that late August produced two inferior civil forums in immediate succession, one for the inland district and one for the peninsula. [3]
The weekly peninsula court and the unpaid heemraad together lightened the higher bench and recognised that free and Company households now generated more small disputes than a single council could efficiently hear. Jurisdiction capped below three hundred gulden kept serious causes at the castle while giving town and country a nearer remedy for everyday claims. [3]
Olof Bergh’s Copper Expedition — October 1682
The specimens of copper ore brought to the Cape by the Namaqua visitors in 1681 excited the curiosity of the directors to know more about the country in which the metal was found, and instructions were sent out to Commander Van der Stel to cause it to be carefully explored. At the end of October 1682 an expedition consisting of thirty soldiers, a journalist, and a chart-maker, under command of Ensign Olof Bergh, was despatched for that purpose. [3]
After a month’s absence the party returned with a report that the country was so parched with drought that it was impossible to proceed. The first organised European probe toward the copper mountains therefore ended in failure of climate rather than of will: thirty soldiers and the technical staff of journalist and chart-maker were enough to begin a route record, not enough to force a way through waterless ground. [3]
The attempt would be renewed on a larger scale in the following year, when a better-equipped column again under Bergh left in late August 1683. For the calendar of 1682 the October–November failure stands as the year’s northern close: directors’ curiosity converted into a field column, drought converted the column into a negative report, and the copper mountain remained unvisited by Europeans while Stellenbosch dealt with insects and new courts closer to home. [3]
Settlement by the Close of 1682
By the close of 1682 Simon van der Stel’s command had absorbed a governor-general’s February–April inspection and the memorial of 24 April, watched fifteen or sixteen farmers remove to Stellenbosch in May, endured an insect plague that left hardly a sound wheat ear by November, and given the inland district its first heemraad on 30 August while the peninsula received a weekly court of commissioners for petty cases on the 31st. [3]
Along the coast the night of 8 June had wrecked the English Indiaman Joanna west of Agulhas, sent survivors through Captain Klaas’s hospitality to the Cape, and recovered twenty-nine thousand florins in coin besides washed-up cargo. To the north, Ensign Olof Bergh’s end-of-October column turned back after a month in drought, leaving the directors’ copper question open. Flax, hemp, and indigo experiments ordered by Van Goens had not answered; tobacco remained prohibited; the 13 May day of prayer had marked the fleet and the fear of warlike attack. [3]
When the year ended, Stellenbosch was no longer only a place-name with freehold titles in progress. It was a district with a larger farming population, a ruined harvest season, and a local civil bench of unpaid leading men—Gerrit van der Byl, Henning Huising, Hans Jurgen Grimp, and Hendrik Elberts—while Table Valley lightened its own justice docket with a mixed Company–burgher petty court. Northern copper and fuller crop recovery still lay ahead; 1682’s own history is the Van Goens visit, the May migration, the insect year, the double court foundation of late August, the Joanna wreck, and Bergh’s drought-stopped first copper march. [3] [4]