Anna de Koning
A complex society, drawing from a medley of cultures, developed in the Dutch possessions in the East. Europeans borrowed slavery and the ostentatious display of wealth of the Asian elite; some Asians acquired the dress, manners and religion of the Dutch. With a big imbalance in the sexes, Dutch men commonly formed relationships with Asian or Eurasian women. (The Afrikaans word naai or nai for sexual intercourse derives from the Malay-Indonesian word for the Eastern or Eurasian mistress of a Dutch burgher.) If married, an Eastern woman acquired the national status of her husband. Simon van der Stel, who became Commander of the Cape in 1679, was himself the product of such an intermixture. His mother, Maria Lievens, was born in Batavia, the daughter of a Dutch sea captain and Monica da Costa, an indigenous woman from the East.
As would also happen in Cape Town, the top Company officials and wealthiest burghers clung
Oloff Berg
tenaciously to their rank and right of precedence. Rank determined seats in church and at public functions, and places in funeral processions. The wealthy were ready to display their status ostentatiously, as in a grand mansion, a retinue of servants, a parasol carried by a servant, and festive house parties with dancing on the veranda to music supplied by a slave orchestra. Almost everyone with some pretensions to status keenly aspired to the role of a slave-owner who abstained from manual labour. As in Indonesia, European children at the Cape were left almost entirely to the care of female slaves.
The Reformed Church was the dominant church in the Netherlands and the only church the Company permitted in its overseas possessions. In the Netherlands it was supportive of the state, but retained a fair degree of independence with respect to faith and its internal organisation and the ‘calling’ of ministers.
In the East and at the Cape the government completely dominated the church. The clergy were salaried employees of the state and were expected to be obedient and respectful towards government. Congregations could not issue a call for their own minister, although this was a coveted prerogative of the Protestant churches in Europe.
Reformed Chruch
Until the end of its rule at the Cape, it prevented the establishment of a synod of the different congregations. The official church policy decreed that baptised slaves should be set free; the Company, however, had the last say. It set very tough conditions under which slaves could be freed, and as a result very few were freed in its possessions.
The official categories the Company created, taken from Batavia, profoundly shaped the administration of the colony. There was firstly the distinction between Company servants and free burghers, which came into effect when nine Company servants were released at the Cape in 1657 to become full-time farmers. The other main legal distinction was between these two groups – both free – and the slaves. Finally, there was the distinction between these three groups and the indigenous Khoisan, who, initially at least, were deemed to be outside the Company’s laws.
Thus there were four status groups – Company servants, free burghers, slaves and ‘aliens’ or ‘natives’. The statutory group, rather than one’s race or colour or religion, determined whether and how someone would get on in life. As used by officials and the courts it determined domicile, right of movement, military service and land ownership.
More than 300 years later a system called apartheid was introduced, which was also squarely based on groups defined by the law, each with different rights and obligations. Like the VOC’s system, apartheid functioned in a society with a surprisingly small police force. The system vitally depended on the groups accepting and internalising their official status group, keeping to and policing themselves and not attempting to bring about gelykstelling, or social levelling, of the different status groups.
Baron van Rheede van Oudtshoorn’s funeral, showing the ostentatious display of power and status in the case of burial of a high-ranking offi cial. The Cape took such practices over from the VOC possessions in the East.
