As late as 1825 all signs pointed to slavery’s remaining a permanent feature of Cape society. In the preceding decade wine farmers had experienced a boom with the reduction of the British tariff on Cape wine, and owners had large amounts of capital locked up in slaves, whose price remained high. Then everything changed rapidly and radically. In 1825 Britain lowered the tariffs on continental wines, making it very difficult for Cape wines to compete. Not only the wine industry but the entire Cape economy sank into a deep depression.
With the value of Western Cape slaves dropping sharply, investment in slaves was suddenly much less profitable. Owners who had bought slaves on credit or had put them up as surety for loans faced economic ruin. Their only hope was that the government would bail them out by paying adequate compensation when it set the slaves free.
A slave rejoices at his freedom, as drawn by F.T. I’Ons.
Many slave-owners believed that their old paternalist world was on the brink of collapse. They were upset by reform measures, such as one ordinance that permitted the courts to accept the evidence of slaves without corroboration from a colonist. An 1826 memorandum from Stellenbosch complained that this practice placed the slave-owner, who had to pay taxes and help defend the colony, in an inferior position to his slave.
De Zuid-Afrikaan, the Dutch-language newspaper that first appeared in 1830, articulated the temper of the Afrikaner slave-owners. It was incensed when the government issued regulations limiting corporal punishment of slaves and banned protest meetings against the measure. In 1831 a new measure gave slave-protectors the right to inspect slave quarters and compelled farmers to hand in their punishment record books twice a year. This caused a near-riot in Stellenbosch. De Zuid-Afrikaan spoke openly of resistance, warning of ‘the rights of Dutch burghers and the length of Boer rifles’.
The imperial government did not seriously consider the burghers’ proposals to free the slaves. It was – with some justification – suspicious of their intentions. It knew also that the anti-slavery agitation in London could not be denied its prize of prompt abolition. It decided on rapid abolition in all its colonies, with monetary compensation to owners. Slaves would be emancipated on 1 December 1834, but they would have to serve their masters a further four years as apprentices before receiving their freedom on 1 December 1838.
Sidelined, slave-owners accepted the inevitable, but were outraged over the inadequacy of the compensation. (The government paid £34 per slave, far less than the £73 computed by the committee appointed to evaluate the financial value of the colony’s slaves.) Another grievance was over the fact that compensation was to be paid out only in London, which few farmers could arrange to reach on their own. Claims therefore had to be handed to agents, who took a hefty slice.
