Simon van der Stel’s grandmother was an indigenous woman from Batavia called Mai Monica da Costa – a ‘coloured’ woman in today’s parlance. There is a possibility that both Simon and his son, Willem Adriaan, did not look European, as suggested by this painting.
Between 1707 and 1717 three momentous decisions were taken that would affect the colony’s character and pave the way for white supremacy. The first was not a new decision but an endorsement of an earlier one to leave agricultural production in the hands of free burghers, who were all of European stock. The second was to prefer slaves over whites as labourers. The third was the acceptance of the loan farm system and unsystematic colonisation.
The last of these made rapid European expansion over a large territory possible. Hand in hand with this went the administrative system of the vast interior in which burghers played a key role. At the centre stood the College of Landdrost and Heemraden, assisted by field-cornets in the different wards, who inspected land claims and called up burghers for commando duty. Except for the landdrost, all were burghers. By 1700 there was nothing to indicate that the settlement between the sea and the mountain ranges would burst its seams and become a sizeable colony. The settlement had become self-sufficient in wheat, wine and meat. In the Land van Waveren (later Tulbagh) San offered stout resistance to further expansion. The officials still exerted firm control. Simon van der Stel and his son, Willem Adriaan, who succeeded him, opposed. any expansion beyond the coastal plain. The former predicted that if no obstacles were put in place to extensive cattle farming ‘all of Africa would not be big enough to satisfy this type of people’. The settlement was small enough for officials to act swiftly against recalcitrant burghers.
