Masters and slaves approached Emancipation Day with starkly different expectations. The slaves had fervently prayed for the day, but had no idea what their new status would bring. The masters dreaded a scenario of slaves embarking on an orgy of revenge leading to a total collapse of the social order.
Emancipation Day, 1 December 1838. Ex-slaves celebrate their freedom in a march.
Emancipation Day, 1 December 1838, surprised everyone. Instead of the skies falling, they opened: three days of heavy rain, flooded rivers and snow on the mountaintops compelled all believers to try to fathom the heavenly meaning. For some slaves it symbolised the tears of slaves who had died before liberation, but for slave-owners it signalled some kind of divine intervention to save the colony from all kinds of disasters.
The Tulbagh correspondent of De Zuid-Afrikaan reported that the ex-apprentices were ‘quiet, proper and peaceful’, adding: ‘We look upon the weather as providentially happening . . . [For] a great part [it] occasioned the avoidance of idle assemblages, and its [sic] consequences; and also prevented improper rejoicing and drunkenness from which nothing but evil must have arisen.’ Reports from other parts of the country indicated that the vast majority of the ex-apprentices were sober and orderly and that many went to church. In Stellenbosch they filled the church of the Rhenish Missionary Society on the Braak (the town square), to overflowing for each of the three worship services.
