Last Friday at around noon, I ended a class on European settlement at the Cape and the demise of the Khoesan by lamenting the lack of public acknowledgement for some of the Cape’s most famous Khoe inhabitants. Autshumao was one of the first translators and interlopers between the trading Dutch and local Khoesan clans. Gonnema was a proud leader of the Cochoqua, who fought the Dutch in three Khoe-Dutch Wars. And then there was Krotoa, Autshumao’s niece, who was brought up by the Van Riebeecks. Here is her short Wikipedia bio:
On 3 May 1662 Krotoa was baptised by a visiting parson, minister Petrus Sibelius, in the church inside the Fort de Goede Hoop. The witnesses were Roelof de Man and Pieter van der Stael. On 26 April 1664 she married a Danish surgeon by the name of Peter Havgard, whom the Dutch called Pieter van Meerhof. She was thereafter known as Eva van Meerhof. She was the first Khoikoi to marry according to Christian customs. There was a little party in the house of Zacharias Wagenaer. In May 1665, they left the Cape and went to Robben Island, where van Meerhof was appointed superintendent. The family briefly returned to the mainland in 1666 after the birth of Krotoa’s third child, in order to baptize the baby. Van Meerhoff was murdered on Madagascar on 27 February 1668 on an expedition.
Krotoa returned to the mainland on 30 September 1668 with her children. Suffering from alcoholism, she left the Castle in the settlement to be with her family in the kraals. In February 1669 she was imprisoned at the Castle and then banished to Robben Island. She returned to the mainland on many occasions just to find herself once more banished to Robben Island. In May 1673 she was allowed to baptise a child on the mainland. Three of her children survived infancy. She died on 29 July 1674 in the Cape and was buried on 30 September 1674 in the church in the Fort,
Pieternella and Salamon, Krotoa’s two youngest children from her marriage to van Meerhof, were taken to Mauritius in 1677. Pieternella, who was known as Pieternella Meerhof or Pieternella van die Kaap, later married Daniel Zaaijman, a VOC vegetable farmer from Vlissingen. They had four sons and four daughters, one of whom was named Eva, and the family moved back to the Cape in 1706.
I ended my class by suggesting the students consider these local figures when they think about renaming campus buildings, as had happened last year during the #FeesMustFall movement. What I had not known, was that at that exact moment, Krotoa’s spirit was returned to the Castle of Good Hope where her remains had been removed from a century ago. Here’s the news report:
Gathered around a tree at the Groote Kerk, they [traditional and religious leaders] burned an incense plant and beckoned for her soul to rise from the unmarked grave where her bones had been held.
Her remains had been removed from the grounds of the Castle of Good Hope, nearly a century after she was buried there.
On Friday, some of her descendants returned with her spirit to the castle.
A few months ago, after uncovering an old computer file that contained my genealogy, I discovered that the wife of my paternal great-grandfather – Wynand Breytenbach Fourie – was one Johanna Beatrix Fourie. Her maiden name: Zaaiman.
Many other South Africans also descend from Krotoa. It is in the math – here’s Stephen Fry on the topic. Almost all white South Africans today must have some non-European heritage, given the women of Khoe or slave (especially) origin who married Dutch or German or French (or, in Krotoa’s case, Danish) men at an early stage in the country’s history.
Although several novels have appeared that feature her – most famously Dan Sleigh’s Eilande and Dalene Matthee’s Pieternella van die Kaap – Krotoa, and the tumultuous times she lived in, has been largely neglected from popular discourse. Fortunately, that is changing. In the ceremony on Friday, she was variously described as a child labourer, a feminist, and a language fighter who helped create Afrikaans, even a martyr. An Afrikaans/Nama movie that feature her life is now in post-production stage. Armand Aucamp plays Jan van Riebeeck and Crystal Donna Roberts an older Krotoa.
But more should certainly be done. Monuments and renamed buildings and public places can play a role, but because Krotoa’s story is claimed by so many (as Heritage Consulatant Tracy Randle explains in this interview), these memorials will remain contested. Some activitists protested outside the Castle on Friday, for example. Last year, a bench which had Krotoa’s face engraved in mosaic art, and which was located at Krotoa Place, the small square at the intersection of Castle Street and St George’s Mall, was destroyed.
Much like 350 years ago, Krotoa embodies the tragedy and disillusionment but also the hopes and aspirations of our fractured society. Unshackled to anyone or any group, hers is our story.
Or, as Lara Kirsten observes in her poem Vir Krotoa (For Krotoa):
in haar skyn die hoop
wat nog by ons mense spook
(in her shines the hope that still frightens our people)
