Speaker explains how ‘pit stop’ became colony

What the Dutch in 1652 established in Cape Town as we know it today, it was meant to be a place for resting and regrouping halfway along their trade route to the East.

But as we know, that project turned into something bigger than they ever imagined.

Historian Alan Weyer says his passion for history started by being interested in people — how they interacted with others — and in the area he grew up in. His talk, titled ‘Spirits of the past’, at Settlers Park recently, went down well.

He spoke about what led up to the colonisation of SA. On a quest to trade in the East, the Dutch found the twoyear trip would result in a lot of death and disease, resulting in the company losing more men than anticipated.

SA before colonisation was occupied by the San and the Khoi, Weyer said. These two groups of people were differentiated by their way of living.

The Khoi were pastoralists and kept domesticated animals, whereas the San were hunter gatherers, living off the land.

Neither believed in owning land, or that the land belonged to anyone.

They moved around as seasons changed and lived where their crops and livestock would thrive best.

These weren’t the only two groups of people at the time. Xhosa and Zulu people were also present, though perhaps not as close to where the Dutch set up their refreshment/ resting post.

The Zulu and Xhosa people were agriculturalists who kept animals and settled and cultivated the land.

“On arrival, the Dutch experienced something of a cultural shock when they came across the Khoi and San people,” Weyer said.

The Dutch had a very different view of land ownership, which caused tension, Weyer explained.

The Dutch wanted to claim land and establish farms, but the Khoi saw this as a threat to their way of life.

In fact, the Dutch eventually started taking land from the Khoi by force.

The land then became over-farmed and less productive, the Dutch were looking for more cattle and grazing land, which they found in the Eastern Cape, which had a good climate and soil for farming, which made it an attractive place to settle.

“Xhosa people were living in the Eastern Cape when the Dutch arrived, where we call The Fish River now.” Weyer said.

Unlike the Khoi, the Xhosa had a similar concept of land ownership to the Dutch, and they were open to trading with the colonists. However, as the Dutch settled more and more land in the area, they began to encroach on Xhosa territory.

This led to conflict, and the Xhosa fought back against the Dutch. In fact, they even allied with the Khoi at one point to fight against the Dutch.

The Xhosa were not a unified group. There were different clans and factions within Xhosa society, and they often fought against each other.

This made it difficult for them to put up a unified front against the Dutch.

This internal conflict within the Xhosa society was also exploited by the Dutch, who would often play one clan against another.