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A1132-C407-001-Jpeg.Pdf /Vb 7^^ Or ^l/te ‘Dnótítute }or the <Study o} c Yï[an in cCjnca czbie ^)nótituut vir die íStudie van die c17lcnó in cA]rika MUSEUM OF MAN AND SCIENCE MUSEUM VAN DIE MENS EN WETENSKAP 'ossrip^ PUBLICATION ISMA= THE ORIGINS OF THE NORTHERN CAPE GRIQUA b y Dr. George T. Nurse ISMA PAPER NO. 34 - AUGUST 1975 c/o MEDICAL SCHOOL, HOSPITAL STREET, JOHANNESBURG. TELEPHONE 724.1561 (EXTN. Y3/S& 156) The Origins of the Northern Cape Griqua Lecture delivered to the Institute for the Study of Man in Africa on 13th August 1975 2 . The people who are today described as "Cape Coloured" are well known to be of mixed racial descent. There have been a number of theories put forward about the social reasons for their having come into existence; but no-one has ever denied that they are descended from the Khoi, or Hottentots, or that they have also inherited a certain proportion of their genes from Caucasoid, or White, ancestors. There are in addition good historical reasons, summarized by Marais (1939) and De Kock (1963), for believing that Negro and East Asian slaves of assorted provenance contributed to their ancestry. Where controversy exists, it centres on the relative size of these various contributions; and the controversy is one which can have no simple resolution, because the Cape Coloured are not and never have been a single homogeneous population. The reasons for this must be sought in the history of Caucasoid settlement in South Africa. Even if, as some people claim, the ancestors of the modern "White" South Africans played no biological part in the origins of the Cape Coloureds, they were nevertheless responsible for the social circumstances which gave rise to them. These circumstances permitted perhaps substantially mythical passing sailors to make their incidental genetic donations in the stews around the Castle before hurrying on to the Orient or back to Europe. How numerous such sailors actually were, and how large their genetic influence was, are questions so difficult to answer now that they can safely be passed over. By the nature of their callings neither sailors nor the whores who haunt harbours are likely to drift very far from the sound of the sea; yet by the middle of the eighteenth 3 . century persons of mixed ancestry formed an appreciable part of the population of the interior. It is with one such group of inland people that we are here concerned. As the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope grew out of a refreshment station for ships on the East Indian run into a permanent and productive colony, so did the demand for labour increase. The demand became acute after a smallpox epidemic in 1713 had so ravaged the Khoi tribes that many of them became totally extinct. The East India Company tried to relieve the shortage by hiring out soldiers to private employers (Mentzel 1921) and by increasing the importation of slaves. Many of the slaves came from Madagascar and Mocambique, but there were also a number brought from India, principally Bengal, and from Indonesia and the Malay peninsula (De Kock 1963). It seems probable that the varying treatment from employer to employer of both slaves and soldiers could have contributed to the foundation of the Griqua nation. A humane act may have been the most decisive factor. Both Stow (1905) and Halford (n.d.) relate a possibly unreliable tradition that the first Adam Kok was the slave of a Dutch governor. A surviving portrait lends some weight to the tradition; Adam Kok is shown as very Negroid in feature, with a broad flat nose, thick lips, dark complexion and a mass of frizzy hair; and all or almost all the Negroes at the Cape at that time were slaves. He is said either to have been manumitted or to have purchased his freedom, and to have been given, or earned, wealth in the form of lands and stock. If this is true, it would be most 4 . likely to have happened after the customary 30 years of good service, which would make his age about 40 and the year about 1750. His prosperity could therefore have resulted either from the retirement of Swellengrebel or an act of charity on the part of Tulbagh, the following governor. Swellengrebel had been born in the colony, and Tulbagh had lived there for 33 years, so it is equally possible that Adam Kok could have served either of them for the requisite length of time (Theal 1910). The lands which he acquired lay around Piketberg, just beyond the effective boundary of Company administration. There he provided a place of refuge for those less fortunate than he : for deserting soldiers, runaway slaves, and the remnants of at least one of the devastated and impoverished Khoi tribes, the ??Karixurikwa (Katzen 1969). It seems probable that the dissident elements which Adam Kok attracted were either not numerous, or consisted of persons of whom the Company was glad to rid itself, for his authority came to be recognized officially, and he was presented with a staff of office by the Government (Marais 1939, Stow 1905). It should be emphasized, though, that although Adam Kok was the first, and remains the best known, of the Griqua leaders, not all the people who today call themselves Griqua are descended from his people. His lands were fertile, well-watered and rich. Their main short­ coming was that they were rather remote from the principal markets in Roodezand (now Tulbagh), Stellenbosch, Paarl and Cape Town. But as the century advanced communications improved and White settlement expanded, and in his old age Adam Kok, in company with his dependants 5 . and in common with a number of other mixed parties, was forced to migrate northwards. For a time the Kok group settled around the Kamiesberg, and then moved onwards towards the Orange River. In 1788 Adam Kok established himself on the banks of the river, and in 1795 handed over his staff of office to his son Cornelius (Stow 1905). At that time all the mixed groups around the periphery of the colony were known, and described themselves, as Basters. Though the name is not exceptionable in Dutch, it proved unacceptable to the British missionaries who moved into the area after the British occupation of the Cape. The first of these to obtain an ascendancy among the followers of the Koks was the Rev. John Campbell, who persuaded them to assume instead the name by which they are described in history. It appears that they still cherished some partiality towards the Khoi group which had contributed most to their formation. They conferred on themselves a shortened version of the name ^Karixurikwa, adapted to be more agreeable to Dutch and British tongues and ears, and called themselves Griqua (Campbell 1815). They were not the only people to do so. The respectable party of Basters led by Barend Barends also came to refer to themselves as Griqua. So did the Baster group which was later to be commanded by Andries Waterboer, who was himself probably of San, or Bushman, extraction (Marais 1939). Many of these people had no true ancestral link with the party led by the Koks or with the original ^Karixurikwa. It is thus that we find developing very early a characteristic of Griqua society which is in some ways very puzzling. There seems from the beginning to have been an attraction about 6 . being or becoming Griqua, and the people have always been quite remarkably receptive of those who wished to join them. Had this happened later it would not be so difficult to explain. The Griqua are remembered as having come close to establishing a lasting Khoi, or at least Coloured, polity in South Africa. They failed through defects in their leadership, through the opposition of better organized and marginally more efficient rival economies, and through a curious oecumenical shiftlessness perhaps to be expected in a community derived from a blend of the most restless Negro, Caucasoid and Oriental elements at the Cape with Khoi pastoralists powerless in the face of trade. This statement may be criticized as unnecessarily harsh, but it is certainly true that the northern Cape Griqua, who were once fairly rich, have become poor, and that their present poverty is in part due to the mismanagement of wealth by their ancestors. They not only proved unable to resist pressures exerted on them by more sophisticated peoples, but seem at times even to have cooperated eagerly in their own downfall. They sold land and stock at absurd prices and bought consumable goods, and neglected opportunities to acquire skills which could have preserved them in the face of competition (Halford n.d.). They were certainly unfortunate inasmuch as their lands were successively coveted by later migrants. Even among the stones of the deserts to which they were relegated there turned out to be diamonds. It is very revealing to compare the fate of the Griqua with that of the Rehoboth Basters, who are descended from a population with which the Griqua had some dealings near the Orange River. There seems to have been a small-scale exchange of members between the two groups, for they share certain surnames. The Rehoboth Basters appear to have originated from the restlessness and ambition of landless younger sons of large frontier Afrikaner families, especially those deriving from Stellenbosch. Of the 23 Baster founder families discussed in detail by Fischer (1913), 14 descend almost certainly from men from Stellenbosch. As was only to be expected in view of the great shortage of White women at the Cape during the eighteenth century, these lads took Khoi wives; and the result is a population which still in many respects resembles a prosperous eighteenth-century European farming community.
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