For Ingrid
How much past can the present bear?
Dana’s journey
PART I
Roots
It looks like rain. I turn in at the farm gate just before Franschhoek. The road to the farmstead has been tarred and runs through vineyards, past a little church and a small cemetery.
I drive slower and slower under the low-hanging clouds.
Up to now, this farm has been no more to me than a name in books and documents in the archives in Cape Town, but now that I’m here I feel a bit like the prodigal son returning home after many years.
On my left, an earth dam; on my right, stables.
This is an authentic, traditional Boland farmyard. I notice that immediately. The house has a bunch of grapes on the gable, a thatched roof and wooden shutters in front of the windows. The wine cellar is to the side, surrounded by oak trees. Near a small building that looks like a security guard’s office, a large blue-and-white signpost has been planted in the ground:
WELCOME TO SOLMS DELTA
Parking
Wine tasting
Museum
Restaurant
There’s a tour bus and a few cars in the parking area opposite the restaurant. I pull in next to the bus but don’t get out right away. The blue-and-white signpost draws my attention again. It looks out of place.
Once upon a time, more than three hundred years ago, this farm belonged to Christoffel Snyman, the original ancestor of all Snymans. Christoffel and his wife Margot lived here all their married life. Their nine children were born here and it was here that Christoffel died in 1709.
You could say this is where all of us Snymans come from: Oupa and Pa and me, and all those who came before us and all those who will come after us.
I feel like phoning Pa from my cellphone, but for the past two days it’s been difficult to have a coherent telephone conversation with him. He’s tired all the time and struggles to breathe. His heart is worn out. Yesterday evening, when I mentioned that I’d been to the archives and discovered that we’re all descendants of Christoffel Snyman, and that I was going to visit the farm today, he responded by telling me about his great-great-grandpa who lived in Pietermaritzburg – the man who took part in the Great Trek and fought in the Battle of Blood River, the one whose names he bears: Coenraad Frederik Wilhelmus Snyman. This oupa Coenraad is the only long-ago Snyman I’ve ever heard him mention.
I get out of the bakkie. I always feel awkward when I visit a farm like this where I can walk around and eat and drink and do whatever I like, without knowing the owners or anyone on it.
Next to the restaurant there’s a tall, narrow building with a wooden staircase on one side that leads to the loft. It looks as though it may once have been a cellar. A man emerges and comes over, a well-rehearsed greeting on his lips: “Good morning, sir. Welcome. Would you like to taste some of our excellent wine?”
He’s one of the guides on the farm. Leon Adams. When I mention I’m a Snyman, he smiles. “Everything’s inside. Come, let me show you.” He pushes open the door to the building.
It opens into a large room where a dark table stands in the middle of the floor. Wine is sold in a smaller room to the side. There are wall panels depicting the history of the farm in words, sketches and old photographs. The first panel contains a single paragraph:
Museum Van de Caab tells the story of Delta farm. Similar stories could be told of all the old farms in this valley. The things that happened here reflect the whole history of South Africa.
Leon puts his hands together, palm to palm, almost like a minister in a pulpit, and begins to tell me of the San and Khoi, the first people to have lived here in the Groot Drakenstein Valley between Franschhoek and Paarl. Then he comes to 1657 … “You see, sir, in 1657 a woman by the name of Groot Catrijn was sent from Batavia to the Cape.” He looks at me closely. “This Groot Catrijn was a convict, you know – a woman convict. She’d killed her boyfriend over there, so they sent her to Robben Island. For life.”
Is he sure? Was she really banished to Robben Island? I ask. This contradicts what I read in the archives: Groot Catrijn van der Caab, a woman of Indian descent, was indeed banished to the Cape in 1657 after murdering her lover, but she went to work at the Castle as one of Jan van Riebeeck’s washerwomen.
Leon wavers. He calls one of the guides from the sales room. “Tiaan!”
A man with a thin moustache comes over. Tiaan Jacobs.
“Did they send Groot Catrijn to Robben Island?” Leon asks.
“No, man. She became Jan van Riebeeck’s washerwoman.” Tiaan comes over and picks up the story. “You see, sir, it was there at the Castle that she met Hans Christoffel Schneider. He was like Van Riebeeck’s personal bodyguard. The two of them, this Hans Christoffel Schneider and Groot Catrijn … they … they sort of had a relationship and nine months later she gave birth to Schneider’s child.”
That’s more or less what I read in the archives in Cape Town: Groot Catrijn, the exile from Batavia, had a child out of wedlock and the father was Hans Christoffel Schneider, a German soldier at the Castle. Groot Catrijn called the boy Christoffel, and because the Cape was under Dutch rule, “Schneider” became “Snyman” in the public records. Christoffel Snyman.
“That’s why people say he was the first Snyman, this Christoffel. The very, very first Snyman.” Tiaan points to another panel. “That’s his signature.”
I approach. There it is, behind glass: a copy of Christoffel Snyman’s signature as it appeared on the deed of sale way back when. It’s the handwriting of someone who could write properly, complete with curlicues.
Tiaan and his thin moustache are still by my side. “You know about this Christoffel, sir?” he says. “You know he wasn’t white, don’t you, sir?”
I see the shadowy reflection of my face in the glass. It’s true. There’s no denying it. Christoffel Snyman wasn’t white; Groot Catrijn was a dark-skinned woman of Indian descent.
Our forefather, the very first Snyman, was coloured.
It’s raining now, a soft, light drizzle that clings to my face and shoulders.
I stroll across the yard, past the restaurant, and continue on to the cemetery I’d driven past on my way in. Christoffel’s grave should be there.
What did he look like? Burly, like many of the Snyman men? The farmhouse he and Margot lived in is no longer here, and just a section of the original cellar remains. It forms part of the restaurant now.
How Christoffel managed to buy the farm isn’t clear. Hans Christoffel Schneider, his father, apparently disappeared from Groot Catrijn’s life before the birth of his son. Later she married Antonij Janz from Bengal, a slave who had permission to own land – a so-called free black. Antonij and Groot Catrijn raised Christoffel. Both died around 1682 – it may have been in a smallpox epidemic – so perhaps it was Christoffel’s inheritance that enabled him to buy the farm.
Little is certain about Christoffel, apart from the fact that he married Margot around 1690. She was the daughter of Jacques de Savoye and Marie-Madeleine du Pont who arrived at the Cape with the Huguenots in 1688.
The cemetery lies on an open piece of land among the vineyards. It’s tidy, and I can see that it has been weeded. The artificial flowers on some of the graves are new and must have been put there fairly recently. Harold Louis Silberbauer, Anna Sybella Schelpe,