To the Fairest Cape

European Encounters in the Cape of Good Hope

Malcolm Jack

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781684480029
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Crossing the remote, southern tip of Africa has fired the imagination of European travellers from the time Bartholomew Dias opened up the passage to the East by rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Dutch, British, French, Danes, and Swedes formed an endless stream of seafarers who made the long journey southwards in pursuit of wealth, adventure, science, and missionary, as well as outright national, interest. Beginning by considering the early hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the Cape and their culture, Malcolm Jack focuses in his account on the encounter that the European visitors had with the Khoisan peoples, sometimes sympathetic but often exploitative from the time of the Portuguese to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. This commercial and colonial background is key to understanding the development of the vibrant city that is modern Cape Town, as well as the rich diversity of the Cape hinterland.Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide byRutgers University Press.

CHAPTER 1

Ancient and Mythical Place

ANCIENT ORIGINS

The grand range of the Cape Mountains and its hinterland has been a place of human habitation from earliest times. The first hominid skull was discovered in 1924 by the paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart, who named it Australopithecus, claiming it was the long sought after “missing link” between men and apes.¹ The oldest evidence of hominids, the first creatures to stand erect, in South Africa has been found at the Sterkfontein caves in Gauteng, where hominid remains date back to between two and three million years ago. The likely provenance of these early ancestors of man is East Africa (modern Kenya and Tanzania), where their existence has been dated to between six and eight million years ago. The evidence suggests that hominids migrated across the continent at a very early stage. It is now thought that a number of different species of man evolved simultaneously rather than descending in a single line from Australopithecus, although the cultural evolution of anatomical man is still the subject of considerable speculation and dispute. One theory is that identifiable humans emerged only between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago; another is that modern people evolved in the Middle Stone Age, about 250,000 years ago. At any rate, the newcomers included Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Neanderthal man.²

Homo habilis (handy man) spread across Africa, hunting animals for food and, wherever possible, living in caves or rock shelters. Homo habilis’s ability to make stone tools marked the beginning of the Stone Age. Homo erectus, a more advanced hominid with a larger brain, pushed forward tool-making technology and showed some signs of being the first “social” human with organising powers.³ Neanderthal man was another species, distinguished by a large brain size (although little of it was used). The remains of primitive tools that Neanderthal man was able to make suggest that he was a formidable hunter, already inhabiting the region of the Cape before the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens from about 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The latest, local discovery is of Homo naledi, also from this period, bones of which were found north of Johannesburg in 2015. Meanwhile, other remains have recently been discovered in North Africa. These species coexisted for some time. DNA studies and physical remains suggest an extended time scale of this period of coexistence, with a slow and gradual evolution of the human species over the millennia. Hominid migration out of Africa to Eurasia had already taken place by this time, although recent discoveries in Bulgaria and Greece of remains from a period substantially earlier may suggest that Europe was already populated with hominids by the time of this migration.⁴

Some indication of human occupation in the Cape area dates back to the Early Stone Age and has been labelled as “Stellenbosch culture”; at the Klasies River site, between Plettenburg Bay and St. Francis, fossil fragments of 120,000 years of age have been discovered. However, most firm evidence of human life in the region dates to about 75,000 years ago. The best remains from that phase have been found in caves, sheltered from sun and rain. Material exposed aboveground has tended to be destroyed by the fierce climatic conditions, which include violent summer winds. The caves were the chosen dwelling places of the Cape inhabitants because, in addition to sheltering them from the elements, they offered some protection from predators.

Artefacts, including rare ochre pieces, bones, and scrapers, of about 77,000 years of age have been excavated at Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape coast. At Hopefield, north of Cape Town, skulls 75,000 years old have been found. Flake stone remnants have been uncovered in the area around Elands Bay Cave further north, indicating habitation in the Late Stone Age. A good example of a sheltered cave used by Stone Age man was discovered at Peers Cave, near Cape Town in 1927. Situated high above sea level, complete protection from the northeasterly wind is afforded by a projecting roof, rock talus, and growth. The cave is likely to have been inhabited during this early period, although the skeletal remains found there date to a much later time.⁵

Recent discoveries at the Pinnacle Point Caves in Mossel Bay suggest that the use of fire to make materials might be dated as early as 72,000 years ago, pushing back the date of heat technology from the previously understood 25,000 years ago in Europe. The technique involved using fire to convert local silcrete stone, which was not suitable for making stone tools, into a raw material from which knives and hunting weapons could be made. Kyle Brown is reported to have suggested that the experiment probably began with a “eureka” moment when someone pulled a stone out of the fire, realizing that with its flaking quality it would be easier to make tools. This process indicates complex cognition, and probably the use of language, on the part of these early technologists.⁶ At the same site the oldest engraved ochre has been found, evidence of the earliest form of art, also suggesting the development of cognitive capacity and intellectual application, with symbolic meaning ascribed to various colours, particularly black, white, and red.

The use of more advanced tools, such as stone hand axes and pointed sharp ends, dates from a much more recent period (approximately 8,000 years ago). As technology advanced, better tools could be made. These advances in tool-making techniques marked an important stage in man’s prowess as an effective hunter. Some of the smaller microliths of this period were still being made when Europeans arrived at the Cape, thereby providing evidence of lifestyles in ancient times. At the same time scrapers and other implements were used to produce art in the form of petroglyphs scraped on the walls of caves over a wide region. The discovery of the Boskop skull, with an enlarged brain and small face, suggests that during the Middle Stone Age, the evolving aboriginal race was already of mixed stock, even before the arrival of later tribes. Middens revealing the existence of fish traps and fossil remains at the Rock Shelter at Keurboomstrand provide further links to the Middle Stone Age.

The oldest of the known indigenous people are the San, or “Bushmen,” who may have evolved from Homo sapiens sapiens but in any case have been inhabitants of Southern Africa for over 150,000 years. They too are likely to have migrated to Southern Africa from East Africa, where ancient fossil remains indicate a hunting culture in the Early Stone Age. The Khoikhoi, known as “Hottentots,” arrived about two thousand years ago at the dawn of the Common Era and were the principal people the first Europeans encountered in the fifteenth century.⁷ This so-called Second Transition takes us into the Late Stone Age, a true blade and scraper phase, typified mainly by the Smithfield and Wilton complexes.⁸ The tools then being used included bored stones and were part of a hunting, coastal culture with habitation in rock caves similar to patterns found in parts of Europe, such as southwestern France, in the Stone Age. Hand axes and other implements show a considerable advance in the production of tools and weapons.

Although reconstruction of the past from scraps of archaeological evidence is an important addition to travellers’ accounts gleaned from contact with indigenous peoples whose tradition was entirely oral, it can also lead to distortions of view—for example, by concluding that man was predominantly carnivorous because of the longer survival of bone than of perishable materials such as vegetable matter, and by stressing the importance of cave dwellings, sheltered from sun and rain, in comparison with structures above ground that would have been destroyed by the elements. Overall, the abundance of game, together with the richness of grassland and ready supplies of fruits and other edible plants, would have made the southern Cape area hospitable enough for prehistoric man arriving from East Africa to sustain a nomadic life.

THE TERRITORY

The territory occupied by the indigenous inhabitants of western and central South Africa was a vast, solid land mass covering an area of approximately 2,370,000 square kilometres. The interior of the region consists of a high plateau, at its highest elevation 1,500 to 2,000 metres above sea level; the escarpment bounding it southward and westward consists of extensive mountain ranges that fall steeply toward the lower level of the country on the coast to the west and south. The Sneeuburg, Nieuwveld, Roggeveld, and Kamiesberg ranges provide barriers to the west and south, with the semi-arid Karoo extending southward. The Cape Fold Mountains cut off the coastal strip from the interior; the coastline itself is marked by headlands and promontories battered by the sea and stormy winds. Rivers wash down through gorges in the mountain to the sea in torrents in rainy seasons but dry up into sand beds during much of the year. In the high plateau the climate is more continental, with scorching summers and cold, even frosty, winters, while the southern coastal area is more temperate and damp—although there can be wide variations of daily temperature at all times of the year. There is a marked difference in the rainfall pattern: most of the country receives the bulk of its rain in the summer, but on the Cape coast, the rain falls in winter. As a result of this climate, the coastal plains to the south are rich in vegetation and flora, with good supplies of forest and woodland. Further north and west, stretching toward Namibia, rainfall is much less, and arid, desert conditions prevail.

TABLE MOUNTAIN: GEOLOGY, LANDSCAPE, AND MYTH

Table Mountain itself has a special geology that, in its topographical effect, has fired human imagination. When John Barrow ascended its slopes in 1797, he found a mass of white and flat-lying sandstone (“Table Mountain sandstone”) supported by a base of granite and stones (the latter known as “Malmesbury beds”) from the region below. These slates form the mass of Signal Hill and the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, giving rise to smooth topographical features in contrast to the rugged features of Table Mountain sandstone. The junction between slates and granites led to the formation of jagged, barren gorges, but the slopes of the mountain contain sufficient soil to support a diverse floral life. At several points the basal layer of sandstone can be seen resting horizontally on the upturned edges of the slates. The hard Table Mountain sandstone was bent by movements of the earth into great arches, forming the inspiring range of the Cape Fold Mountains. From the summit of Table Mountain, about 1,100 metres above sea level, the peninsula can be seen stretching to Cape Point, with a range of peaked mountains, the Apostles, hugging the Atlantic coast.

The Castilian explorer, António de Saldanha, employed by the Portuguese Crown, was the first European to climb Table Mountain, in 1503. It seems that Saldanha evoked the image of a table because of the flatness that he found; what is certain is that Joris van Spilbergen, arriving in 1601 with the Dutch fleet, used the term “Tafel Baay” “by reason of the high hill, flat above a square like a table, and visible for 14 to 16 kilometres to seaward, whereby the said bay is recognised.”⁹ Saldanha’s ascent began a long tradition of climbers in the decades that followed, the markings of some of whom were found in the mid-seventeenth century by Jan van Riebeeck when he founded the Dutch settlement.¹⁰ In the late eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist Carl Thunberg remarks upon “plants and trees that grow nowhere else in the world.”¹¹ A succession of keen flower hunters marvelled at the rich flora found only on the mountain itself, including the red Disa known as “The Pride of Table Mountain.”¹² Barrow himself discovered a curious relic—an anchor—when he climbed Table Mountain; other monuments, such as a stone marking of Simon van der Stel, have vanished. The intrepid Lady Anne Barnard insisted on having a picnic on the summit. William Hickey, visiting in the early nineteenth century, sets the whole scene in glowing terms: “The approach to Cape Town is extremely beautiful and romantic. In one direction is Table Bay, where during the summer months, which are the reverse of ours, the ships anchor. To the southward and eastward is a long range of stupendous mountains, the nearest of which is the Table Land, so called from the top of it, for many miles in extent, being quite flat and, when seen from a distance, appearing like a table”¹³ (see figure 7).

The rugged and fantastical mountain range and the expanse of ocean, stretching in one direction across the Atlantic to South America and in the other to the Antarctica and the South Pole, could hardly be more inspirational for those intent on mythmaking. The Russian writer Ivan Goncharov captures the romance of the scene in his visit in 1853: “Gigantic cliffs, almost completely black from the wind, guard the southern shore of Africa like the battlements of a huge fortress. It is an everlasting clash of titans—the sea, the winds and the mountains, the endless surf, the almost endless gales.”¹⁴

Wild and exaggerated features of the mountain and the choppy waters of Table Bay feature in many early European images of the Cape (see figure 21). Mountains have been associated with gods in all cultures and the fathomless ocean, battered by incessant waves, might be the home of all kinds of imagined creatures. Climate added to this sense of myth: the sheer unpre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Malcolm Jack
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chronology
• 1. Ancient and Mythical Place
• 2. Adamastor’s Reign
• 3. Paradise Lost
• 4. Enlightenment Visitors
• 5. Ennobling the Savage
• 6. Paradise Regained
• 7. A Call for Freedom
• Photographs
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author