365 years of trouble flowed from Jan ‘just doing his job’

Jan [van Riebeeck] brought us baggage . . . So too has our president [Jacob Zuma] . . .

IMAGINE the scenario. You’re a depot manager in a big corporate, kicking your heels since being pulled off your last job because you had a little illegal side-business going.

Then the company makes you an offer you can’t refuse: “Start up a new depot for us. It’s a bit out of the way and conditions will be tough but the chance of redemption hangs in the air.”

Of course you take the job without a moment’s hesitation; you pack up your company cargo carriers and head out the door.

It’s not an easy assignment. Two of your five carriers get delayed en route; the locals are a little grumpy towards corporate types; no services; floods and disease, but with a bit of muscle, a no-nonsense attitude, and by building a huge fence around your property, you get the operation up and delivering.

Eight years later, HQ says “well done” and promotes you to a better job elsewhere. You never return. What started out as a small operation of 80 now numbers 250 people on your departure – surely a job well done?

A little while later, after a series of hostile takeovers, a bunch of executives looking to save their brand name you as brand ambassador and talk up your exploits a little. They even go as far as imprinting your picture on their coupons. You are now “the man”, the hero.

Except someone screwed up. In the eagerness to turn you into a hero, the public relations team used someone else’s picture on the coupons. But, given that your middle name is “Anthoniszoon” and you had been dead some 300 years, the chances are that your ego remained intact. Yep, that picture of a curly-haired guy on all the old rand notes isn’t who we were told it is.

These days you’re called Jan for short and, according to the president, you're the guy who started all the trouble.

Jan van Riebeeck, who arrived on our shores on April 6 1652 (now 365 years ago) to start up the Dutch East India Company’s (abbreviated as VOC) refreshment station was the apartheid state’s hero and is now the decolonisation villain. If he were still around to defend himself, what would he say? Would it be a sheepish, “but I was just doing my job”?

Jan’s a good place to start decolonising, but the man is given too much credit – by either side – in the role he played in establishing colonialism’s southern African foothold. Had it not been Jan, in all likelihood the VOC would have sent someone else to establish a vital supply point for the India trade route.

If it weren’t the VOC, some other corporate would have stepped up to the plate. Stripped of the hyperbole, it’s probably true that Jan (and his company) just saw himself as doing his job.

You may have issues with the term “decolonise” and, specifically, the need therefore. If so, allow me to stimulate/activate your imagination one more time.

Imagine a semi-friendly stranger arrives at your farm door looking for a place to camp. You agree that he can stay a while. Except that, after a “while” has passed, the stranger is still there, but by now he’s added more people, thrown a fence around his camp and refuses you entry for something as simple as collecting nuts.

You object. He shows you a piece of paper that says he now owns the land and you’re not allowed entry except on his terms. You lose prime grazing and try forcibly to remove the now unfriendly stranger.

But Jan has guns. He uses them. You lose; he wins. Game over! Except it’s not – Jan’s bunch just keep on fencing off more and more land and using guns to quell objections. If it was your farm, would you be gracious?

How do we undo this legacy? How do we remove the impact on our collective psyches? At its core, this is what the decolonisation call is about: undoing 365 years of uninvited guests “just doing their jobs”.

So if we start with Van Riebeeck, how do we decolonise the man? Remove his statue, when we don’t even know if it’s really him? Start a social media campaign tagged #JanMustWaai?

It’s tempting to view decolonisation as the tangible process of removing the “heroes”, the Jans, the Rhodes and the rest of “white monopoly capital” from South Africa, in the hope that we can restore the original.

But if Jan was only doing his job as depot manager, if the Dutch East India Company was only doing what was needed to be a successful company in its time, then the label of the guy who started all the trouble doesn’t stick, and removing him serves no real purpose.

Jan wasn’t anything special; he was just a guy doing his job. Doing his job took eight years, and then he left forever.

How did we come to allow one man and eight years to define the next 365 years?

We undo Jan by understanding what he brought with him and which changed things forever.

There are two items in particular – the first was the fencing off of land and claiming this as his “property” with sole right to usage and entry. Voila – enter the notion of private property and title deeds.

The second is that Jan enforced his “rights” using a technology that gave him a punching power way above his weight. In that instant, control of (western) technology became the decider when confronted with conflicting needs. Not principles, not values, and certainly not maintaining relationships.

Then there is the more dangerous notion. We have to consider that Jan was just being human. The danger being that if we extend that privilege to Jan, we must apply it to all.

It’s just a whole lot easier to vilify the man. For instance, there’s a man by the name of Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma who, on May 9 (yesterday), will have been our president for eight years. Will we still be seeking to decolonise him 365 years from now?

Jan brought us baggage (among it land ownership and power through technology), which we’re now trying to find a way to undo without sinking the ship.

So too has our president brought his own baggage. Like Jan, his time is up, but we have an opportunity here.

While we decolonise Jan’s impact, we should not wait to undo that of President Zuma. Possibly the first step is understanding who he is working for and what he (and they) consider to be “just doing his job”.