The Lie of 1652. Patric Tariq Mellet
to continue my schooling beyond a trade-school junior certificate, I was an avid reader who sought out books about African, Asian and Latin American struggle heroes and their beliefs. I was particularly drawn to Latin American liberation theologians, some of who were among the most radical leaders of that time. I embarked on a path of self-education and lifelong learning and would eventually attain an MSc degree in my mid-40s through self-funded part-time night study.
Over time I would, by taking the step of commitment to liberation, find myself in a position to learn at the feet of such great leaders as OR Tambo, Dan Thloome, Henry ‘Squire’ Makgothi, Ray Alexander, Ruth Mompati, Sophie de Bruyn, Reg September, Wolfie Kodesh, Archie Sibeko, Joe Slovo and so many more. I was fortunate later to undergo liberation movement training and mentorship under one of South Africa’s foremost academic thinkers, Professor Jack Simons. Jack did much to help me understand and make sense of who I was and what all the ingredients were that made up identity. Joe Slovo and Jabulani Mzala Nxumalo were others who contributed to that learning curve. I was furnished with the basic intellectual tools that assisted me to explore the wonderful world of identity when colour, ‘race’, ethnicity, ideology, primacy and nationalism of any type are removed from the picture.
This is how it came to be that I took my studious interest in Southern African social history to a new level. The themes of subjugation of indigenous peoples, land dispossession and expropriation of labour without compensation, loss of independent livelihoods, loss of African social infrastructure, and the brutalisation of slavery all came into focus. I have travelled the world, visiting and living in over thirty countries, and seen war and peace, affluence and poverty. In none of the societies I observed was the rich–poor divide as great as it is in South Africa. The dialectical relationship between loss and denial of home or land on the one hand, and enslavement or expropriation of unpaid labour on the other, is the theme that runs through every black person’s experience in South Africa. It deeply impacts the soul of people.
In recent years, writers such as Botlhale Tema in Land of My Ancestors (2019) and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi in The Land is Ours (2018) have begun different conversations about land, slavery and the genesis of what we call the ‘land question’ today. The narrative of this book joins in conversation with theirs in exploring what Africans lost through the colonial expropriation of land and, by extension, home, belonging, identity, soul, support systems and social cohesion.
The year 1652 has been presented as the genesis of social history in South Africa, and of human advancement and civilisation of Africans. Our history was relegated to the realm of the natural history framework of Iron Age and Stone Age hominins. African social history as taught by institutions of learning in South Africa was said to have begun with the establishment of a European colony in 1652. This can be referred to as the ‘1652 paradigm’. Despite an abundance of research from a range of academic fields that exposes the fallacy of this paradigm, it is still widely entrenched. The aim of this book is to break out of this constricting approach and look at African social history from long before 1652 and beyond this paradigm, incorporating key parts of history that have been ignored by mainstream studies or have remained restricted to academic debate and discourse that seldom reaches the public arena.
Five themes will be explored in five chapters. The book draws on studies in the fields of history, archaeology, genetics, linguistics, rock art, anthropology, climatology, social history and oral history to contrast some of the latest thinking with colonial and neocolonial interpretations.
The first chapter challenges the colonial myth that presents 17th-century southern Africa as ‘an empty land’ free of Africans, save for a few wandering San and Khoe who conveniently had no interest in or consciousness of land ownership. It also debunks the myth that at about the same time of European exploration of what is now South Africa, a mass invasion of black alien people swooped down from Nigeria, Cameroon and the Great Lakes and tried to wrest the land from the San, Khoe and Europeans. The chapter provides a narrative that contests the colonial ‘empty land’ narrative by looking at the period from 1000 BCE until 1652 CE. By taking a social history approach, it fundamentally challenges the colonial constriction of African people’s progress to a version of natural history. Its focus is on the peopling of southern Africa over 3 000 years and the trajectory of social formation over that time.
The second chapter looks at Khoe and European engagement over 52 years prior to 1652, involving the establishment of a Khoe trader community, and the first ‘hot war’ between the Dutch and the Khoe that led to the expulsion of all Khoe communities from the Cape Peninsula. The loss of the first indigenous direct-trading development by the Khoe at the hands of the Dutch generally does not feature in other historical narratives. This story culminates with Van Riebeeck’s words written by his own hand in his journal: ‘We had to tell them that their land had fallen to us by the sword.’ This debunks the version that all land acquired by Europeans was by means of civilised treaties and fair bargaining.
The third chapter moves from the genesis of land dispossession at the shoreline frontier to look at the four instruments of land dispossession as well as the nineteen wars of dispossession over 227 years that resulted in the formation of the Cape Colony. Along this trajectory, one community of Africans after the other faced a range of atrocities and dispossession of land and livelihoods, and became conquered subjects of colonial rule. Against this background, the chapter raises the issue of ‘crimes against humanity’ as described in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and asks whether politicians’ articulation of restorative justice as a call for ‘expropriation of land without compensation’ should not be formulated differently.
The fourth chapter tackles the often-forgotten question of who added productive value to the land seized by the Europeans from indigenous Africans. This is the story of migrants of colour largely forcibly brought to the Cape as enslaved people from elsewhere in Africa and from Asia. It is made clear that without the skills and labour of enslaved and later also indentured and migrant workers, there would not have been towns and villages, road infrastructure, built environments and land transformed into productive farms. Commanders and governors of the early Cape constantly appealed to the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) for slave labour and skills, as the Europeans were unable to do the required work for ultimate European control of the land and could not meet the increasing demand by passing vessels for produce and services.
The fifth chapter argues that, to understand the loss of land and the historical narrative beyond a 1652 colonial paradigm, we must also deal with the question of alienation from the land and its relationship to loss of identity, namely de-Africanisation as part of an imposed ideological framework. It also looks at the ties that bind us as Africans of diverse ethnicities and cultures, particularly our common cause of facing the adversity of crimes against humanity and transcending that adversity. Divide-and-rule strategies relied on the de-Africanisation of local identities that had evolved over 3 000 years, rationalised local identities, and created two silos of Africans labelled ‘Natives’ and ‘Coloureds’.
In the conclusion, I turn to contemporary times and argue that, in the context of restorative justice, decolonisation should be understood in a much more comprehensive way than is suggested by the narrowly framed ‘land question’.
All histories are versions, and this book, like all works, is a version or interpretation of a lived reality and a path of learning. In making my thoughts and explorations part of public discourse, I am opening this narrative to engagement by others with a wide array of views that may challenge my own – that is the nature of discourse. There are a great many fascinating perspectives in other works, and I encourage all to explore these. My only caution is that, as soon as someone presents their version as being the absolute truth rather than a perspective, healthy distrust should set in.
My sincere wish is for people to explore beyond the imposed borders – physical or mental – no matter whether this comes from the colonial or neocolonial corner or from new gatekeepers of what may be considered to be politically correct or ethnically correct. The citations in this book are not there simply to accredit authors or to back up arguments. They are also intended to assist exploration by providing references to enable readers to consult the sources themselves and formulate their own perspectives.
A need has been expressed for an easy reference work on the subject