Travelling by ox-wagon was slow, uncomfortable and demanding. This illustration is from Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa by W.J. Burchell.
In 1657, when the first free burghers began farming, the Company issued firm instructions that officials were not to supply the market with food since the burghers, who depended on food production, would otherwise be unable to survive. However, Simon van der Stel received the farm Constantia (later Groot Constantia) from the Lords Seventeen. A few years later, his son Willem Adriaan van der Stel received another farm, called Vergelegen, at the foot of the Hottentots-Holland mountains.
Other land was granted to several high officials and the governor’s brother, a free burgher. By 1705 land covering a third of the farming area of the colony was in the hands of twenty Company officials. They had set in motion a plan to give them a monopoly in the sale of wine, meat, fish and wheat.
The wealthier farmers felt the most threatened. Adam Tas sent a petition accusing the Cape officials of
When Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel entered the produce market in competition with the free burghers, they complained to the Directorate in Holland. As documentary proof of the gains reaped by the governor, they forwarded this drawing of the farm Vergelegen with their complaint.
misconduct to the authorities in Batavia, who forwarded it to Amsterdam. The Lords Seventeen demanded that the Cape officials explain their conduct. Outraged, the officials locked up Tas and some ringleaders in the ‘Dark Hole’ in the Castle (the seat of government).
By now, the colony was in turmoil, while in Amsterdam some leading Cape burghers lobbied against the Cape officials. Early in 1707 the Cape received the dramatic news that the Lords Seventeen in Amsterdam were recalling Van der Stel and certain officials, including Johannes Starrenburg, landdrost of Stellenbosch. They forbade all officials to own land or trade on the Cape market and they had to dispose of all their land-holdings. It was a resounding burgher victory. A coalition of burghers had defeated the officials and entrenched their role as the sole suppliers of food. It was in these circumstances that the young Hendrik Biebouw and his friends, who lived on the periphery of burgher society, staged a celebration in the hamlet of Stellenbosch. It would have gone unnoticed by history but for Biebouw’s identification of himself as an Afrikaner, at least 80 years before the burghers began to use the term widely for themselves (see Hendrik Biebouw – the first Afrikaner?).
The accused Van der Stel sent an extensive defence, accompanied by another drawing. This drawing shows the house from the opposite side. Van der Stel had deliberately hidden the huge octagonal garden in front of his house.
