Growing concern as tobacco sparks new crime The way we were

IN THE 17th century, pipe smokers were said to “drink”, “sip” or “swallow” tobacco, while the word “smoking” referred to the combustion of dried Nicotiana leaves in the bowl of a clay pipe. Tobacco (imported from the New World) was expensive, so pipe bowls were small and stems were long and narrow. A good deal of suction was needed to swallow the addictive smoke.

The Cape Khoikhoi sipped Nicotiana long before the VOC established a post at the Cape in 1652. Writing to his employers in the Netherlands in 1661, Commander Jan van Riebeeck prophesied that their insatiable craving would “last for ever and grow more and more”, and added: “without tobacco, hardly anything can be carried on here.”

Annual imports at the time amounted to 2 000 pounds of Martinique or Virginian tobacco in canisters, 200 pounds of strong Brazilian tobacco and 50 gross (7 200) tobacco pipes “with bowls double the usual size”.

Van Riebeeck planted a trial tobacco crop at Rondebosch in 1656, hoping that a good yield would boost the Company’s coffers. It was one of five experimental plots on what later became known as Rustenburg. The others contained rice, oats, beans and clover.

A year later, the VOC released nine former employees on condition that they start farms along the Liesbeek River, in an attempt to boost food production. They were allowed to grow tobacco, but in March 1657 the local Chorachouquas stole about 100 pounds of green leaves from “Steven’s Colony” and were immediately labelled (tobacco thieves).

The robbers, who were apparently aggrieved at the Dutch occupation of their traditional grazing grounds, escaped, but their derogatory name stuck and was used in official VOC documents for many years. The Chorachouquas participated in various skirmishes during the First Khoikhoi-Dutch War of 1659 and the commander was greatly relieved when his “worst enemies, the tobacco thieves” sued for peace and resumed trade the following year.

By then it was clear that the Cape tobacco crop was almost worthless, but some of the 51 free farmers continued to cultivate it because it was easier to grow than wheat and could be secretly exchanged for Khoi livestock.

In March 1660 Van Riebeeck asked the VOC to withdraw permission for burghers to grow tobacco, alleging that the Khoi could not refrain from stealing it. Unpopular as this decision was, it didn’t blight the future of the industry in South Africa. Several inland locations have since proved ideal for tobacco cultivation.

In 2015/2016 there were 187 tobacco farms covering 5 000 hectares in South Africa, employing 8 000 to 10 000 workers and their dependants. Annual production averaged 15 million kilograms, 90% of which was used to manufacture local products.