Brave slaves reveal owner’s home indiscretions The way we were

IN January 1775, four slaves belonging to Coenraad Appel left his farm during the night and walked to Stellenbosch to report he was having regular sexual relations with his stepdaughter, Elsie Anna, aged 20. Filida of the Cape, October and Caesar of Bougies and Louis of Madagascar had all observed the pair coupling in the veld and believed they were violating the moral and legal codes that prevailed at the Cape.

Their sympathies lay with their duped mistress, Anna Mijburgh, mother of eight of Appel’s children. They believed that her eldest daughter, Elsie, should have told her mother about her stepfather’s advances.

Filida had previously taken the girl to task, reproaching her and asking whether she fully realised the evil she had committed. Elsie replied she could do nothing because her stepfather forced her to yield, but promised to tell everything once the scandal became public knowledge.

Having failed to convince Elsie to confide in her mother, Filida managed to alert her mistress to what was going on during a mother-and-daughter argument in the kitchen.

At first, Anna couldn’t believe her ears, especially when Elsie denied the accusation, but the girl’s resolve crumbled after a few days and she confessed.

Appel, meanwhile, denied involvement and refused to discuss the matter with his wife until shortly before his arrest, when he admitted his guilt and showed remorse. Instead, he took his anger out on his slaves, beating October and Louis in the yard and striking Filida about the head for being a “schemer”.

Filida and three male slaves decamped that night in order to alert the authorities and complain of the shame their owner had brought to his wife – grievances that received gratifying attention.

Appel, then approaching 40, was charged with repeatedly perpetrating adultery and incest and sentenced to a private whipping and permanent banishment from the colony at his own expense.

He sailed to the Netherlands, where he joined the VOC as a soldier and left for Batavia in the new 850-ton ship, Diana, in November 1775.

The Diana reached the Cape in March 1776 after a four-month passage and left again 17 days later. Appel died in Asia after 15 months’ VOC service.

His humiliated wife outlived him by 14 years and died in August 1791. She was buried in the farm cemetery on the historic wine estate, Meerlust, purchased by her uncle, Johannes Albertus Mijburgh, in 1757 and owned by her cousin, Philippus Albertus Mijburgh, at the time of her burial.

There was little sympathy for young Elsie, who was regarded as a willing participant rather than a helpless victim.

She was sentenced to be locked up for four weeks on bread and water, followed by an indefinite period of detainment in the VOC slave lodge.