Pieter the slave prospered after being freed The way we were

ALTHOUGH thousands of slaves and free blacks lived in the Cape during the slave era, only a few sketchy biographies are available. This is because the vast majority were illiterate and didn’t leave letters or reminiscences.

The most informative sources tend to be criminal documents, which provide a skewed picture of the complex multicultural society that was evolving.

Using resources at hand, I tried to discover something about the life of a well-respected free black named Pieter of Bengal, who was active from the 1720s to the 1760s, but the results are disappointing.

To begin with, he didn’t have an exclusive name. He had at least one free predecessor and lived concurrently with several slaves who bore the same appellation.

However, the person who attended auction sales and bid for various items from 1726 is likely to be our man.

What did he buy? Some chairs, three saucers, a rice block and stamper and a horse for 10 rixdollars, all at separate sales in the year following his first marriage.

He also practised what appears to have been an act of charity when he bought a sickly male slave named Miera of Malabar for the token price of just over one rixdollar, thereby committing himself to the future care and sustenance of an ailing or “worked-out” slave.

He paid the same sum for a water barrel with a dipper and a copper fish kettle at two estate sales the following year.

In 1728 he secured two barrels, one of salt and the other of fish, for five rixdollars and a year later he bought 5 “trek potten” (pickling vessels) for half a rixdollar.

Pieter appears to have prospered to the extent that he bought more kitchen equipment and a small glass cupboard in 1729, an iron pot and two more chairs in 1731 and a bed and a blanket in 1736.

In those days, most of the non-official inhabitants of Cape Town made a living by renting accommodation, selling food and alcohol or keeping informal shops.

Free blacks who were not fishermen generally fell into the last group.

By the 1730s Pieter was bidding for Indian textiles and in 1743 he purchased a large packing case containing 6 gross of pipes (a total of 864).

Thanks to the work of Dr HF Heese, we know that Pieter was married three times, first to the freed slave Delphina of the Coast, who died in 1746, and then to the free black Johanna Sara Sol, daughter of Adam Sol and Maria of Malabar.

(The bride’s paternal grandfather was the settler Nicolaas Cleef.)

Their children Maria Elizabeth and Pieter Pieterse were baptised in the Groote Kerk in 1748 and 1755, respectively.

His third wife was the freed slave Helena of the Coast (also known as Helena of Persia) whom he married in 1756.

More next week.