At the Cape of Bad Cheese
This extract from a brave new history of SA recounts the untold tale of Van Doosch
BY the early 1600s, the Dutch East India Company was the biggest corporation in the world. It had a few rivals, such as Microsoft (a pharmaceutical firm specialising in pills for men with very small, very flaccid bits), Apple (a company that sold apples) and Shell Oil (which was trying, unsuccessfully, to extract oil from seashells), but none of them could match its reach and power.
From Amsterdam to Java, the logo of the VOC reigned supreme.
Most of its business interests lay in the east, but diseases were ravaging its ships on the long journey. Scurvy, kwashiorkor, mange, tooth decay and crotch-rot took a terrible toll — and those were just on the rats that lived in the sailors’ underwear; the humans suffered far worse.
And so the VOC decided that it needed a permanent refreshment station at the Cape — and speculators rushed to cash in.
In 1649 Koos van Doosch, the notorious cheese-pimp of Delft, chartered a ship. His plan was to set up the first cheese shop at the Cape and corner the African cheese market, but, upon arriving in Table Bay in 1650, he realised he had forgotten to bring any animals with him.
Determined to make cheese, Van Doosch tried to barter for some of the Khoikhois’ cattle, offering the herders ten minutes in a kissing booth with his cook, Bertha the Bearded Baggage of Bethesda. However, the Khoikhoi refused, fearing that Van Doosch planned to molest their precious animals. And so he went in search of local animals he could milk for cheese.
Tortoises were the easiest to catch, but milking them was time-consuming and produced only a thimbleful of milk. Whales had much more milk, but getting a bucket under them was difficult in rough seas and whale cheese tasted like anchovies.
Van Doosch was under intense pressure to perfect his recipe. The months were ticking by. Soon the VOC would arrive at the Cape and his cheese monopoly would be over. Day after day he milked seals, penguins, snakes, hippos and his crewmen. Night after night he sampled the latest creation, whether it was Gecko Gorgonzola or Baboon Brie. Tragedy was inevitable.
As he became more tired and stressed, safety precautions became lax. Finally, in the small hours of 5 September 1651, he absentmindedly lit a match in the unventilated cheese laboratory. The ensuing explosion obliterated the tiny settlement. All that was left of the first European colony at the Cape was a shoe and a wineskin full of half-curdled lemur milk.
But the Dutch were undaunted. At exactly the same time as Van Doosch was being vaporised by a shock-wave of thermonuclear stink, the VOC was summoning a thirtytwo-year-old middle manager to Head Office. Johan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck was called Jan by his friends, but, as he did not have any friends, nobody called him Jan, preferring to call him Hey You, Whatsisface and SpanielEars.
Van Riebeeck had years of colonial service under his belt. He had served in Batavia as an assistant surgeon, but since he had very little medical training, he might have been Assistant Person Who Holds Down Screaming People While the Real Surgeon Saws Off Their Bits.
As industrial espionage was a major problem for the VOC, Van Riebeeck’s orders were engraved on a large piece of Cheddar. According to recently declassified files in The Hague, the message read: ‘Good morning, Agent Van Riebeeck. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to set up a refreshment station at the Cape. If you are killed or captured, your government will disavow all knowledge of you and your team. As usual, this message will self-destruct in five seconds.’ A trained mouse then rushed out of a hiding place and ate the cheese, whereupon a VOC cat ate the mouse, a covert dog ate the cat, and Klaas ter Vrot, the Amsterdam Hobo, ate the dog. Klaas was then eaten by a flesheating disease, leaving no trace of the original message.
We all know that on 6 April 1652, Van Riebeeck arrived in Table Bay. He was on board the Drommedaris, named after a camel because it was infested with fleas. Alongside were the Reijger, named after the Dutch word for spitting out a loogie, and the Goede Hoop, named after an exciting new invention in Holland, the Hula hoop.
However, we have found new evidence that this small squadron of three ships was much, much larger when it left Rotterdam. According to witnesses, the original fleet comprised twenty-three ships. Unfortunately, it was under the command of Twitchy Niels den Vroetelaar, the first European to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. As they sailed
Day after day, Van Doosch milked seals, penguins, snakes, hippos and his
crewmen
out of the harbour in Rotterdam, Den Vroetelaar was heard to say, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Oh, look, a seagull! Are we there yet? Hey, look, a seagull!’ His navigator tried to explain that the voyage would take months, but after three hours, Den Vroetelaar had had enough, and ordered the fleet to drop anchor, rowed ashore and walked home.
But Van Riebeeck was determined to kick-start his flagging career by continuing to the Cape, and the rest is history.
After arriving on 6 April, he read his first order (again, a secret message engraved on cheese): to build a sturdy fort in a safe location. Van Riebeeck’s carpenters went to work at once and by dusk on 7 April, he had his fort, a two-metre by two-metre platform in a tree, with a sign reading ‘Jan’s Secret Fort, No Girls Allowed’.
When his second-in-command explained to him that the VOC wanted an actual fort, Van Riebeeck reluctantly climbed down out of his tree house and realised that life at the Cape was going to be much less fun than he had hoped.