Living Conditions of Slaves
What work did enslaved women do? Most of the heavy work around the house, such as washing and ironing, polishing floors, carrying water and fetching wood was their responsibility. They also served as cooks, wet nurses and nannies, while women from Bengal and Suratta did exquisite embroidery. According to Otto Friedrich Mentzel, who worked as a clerk and teacher at the Cape between 1733 and 1741, house slaves had to stay awake until their mistresses went to bed. Tryntje van Madagascar, slave of Elisabeth Lingelbach, had to sleep on the floor at her mistress’s bedside.33 Most house slaves slept inside the house, often in the kitchen – an arrangement that Rayda Jacobs graphically describes in her novel The Slave Book (1998). According to Yvonne Brink, archaeological research into slave quarters has shown that ‘it was considered quite in order for slaves to crowd together. […] indications are that they were probably made to huddle. They appear to have occupied the same types of spaces in which goods (furniture, implements, crops, and so on) were stored.’34
The women usually worked with their babies tied to their backs. The words abba and pepa refer to this practice, and often evoke nostalgia among children who were reared by a black nanny. A celebrated 2010 artwork by Claudette Schreuders, titled Abba, depicts this traditional practice;35 certain novels also contain references to it, for example, JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983), discussed in chapter 9.
Some slave owners gave their slaves permission to marry, but not much information is available about this. However, sexual relations with enslaved women is one aspect of slavery about which a fair amount is known. According to Schoeman, this is because sex holds a fascination for people, as suggested by the amount of detail recorded in criminal records and other contemporary documents.36 Intercourse between white men and enslaved women was not forbidden, and many such women were kept as mistresses. It was therefore not uncommon for children to be acknowledged by the father, especially in the case of long-term relationhips.37 White men often raped slave girls, with little public reaction. However, any alleged rape of a white woman by an enslaved man would cause a public outcry, and was severely punished.
An important aspect of slavery was the curfew, which, as a system of control, for centuries determined public life in South Africa. In 1686 the evening bell was rung at nine o’clock, in 1697 at ten, and in 1715 at nine o’clock again. Slaves who by then were still outdoors had to carry a lamp and a letter from their owners explaining why they were on the streets. Illiterate owners had to purchase metal disks for their slaves, which bore this message. Shepherds in the fields were also required to carry such disks. These regulations were clearly the forerunners of the passbook system that was so important in creating an illusion of safety and order in South Africa. In many small towns a curfew was still in force until fairly late in the twentieth century, and older South Africans remember the curfew sounding to warn black people to get off the streets. The curfew allowed white people to feel secure in their segregated neighbourhoods in an era when few houses had burglar bars and families often slept with open doors and windows.38
In 1738, the ratio of enslaved males to male free burghers was 4 to 1. This unequal ratio, with the ever-widening gap between the number of black and white people, goes some way to explaining the fear whites felt towards their slaves, and the fear they later felt towards black people in general. Continual uncertainty lay the foundation for the high levels of watchfulness, strict discipline and harsh corporal punishment enforced by VOC officials. Historians such as Schoeman have, consequently, drawn attention to the links between slavery and apartheid, and given examples of how the judiciary system almost always favoured whites over blacks.39 Since the time of slavery, paternalism and punishment have gone hand in hand, and to this day total loyalty is expected of black employees. Although a domestic worker is often the first to be suspected should anything be lost or mislaid, white South Africans are invariably shocked when a serious household crime is committed by the domestic worker or gardener.
As the number of slaves increased, white people became more and more dependent on their labour. At the same time, their sense of physical threat influenced attitudes to ‘others’ in general, leading to a malignant colour consciousness that would have far-reaching implications for all South Africans in years to come. Notwithstanding three – relatively small – revolts, slave owners managed to keep their slaves at bay for 170 years. From the abolition of slavery in 1834 until the formation of the first post-apartheid government in 1994, ever-harsher rules were laid down determining what black people could and could not do. Most of these measures originated during the seventeenth century to protect white people, and helped to feed the growing distrust between South Africans: the long and gloomy history of racial discrimination, segregation and apartheid has its roots in slavery.40
Paternalism
It is important to remember that slaves were unwilling immigrants, strangers who were brought to the Cape by force. The whole system of slavery was meant to demean and belittle people, to keep them vulnerable and dependent. Each farm was a microcosm comprising Europeans, enslaved people from different regions of Asia and Africa, as well as indigenous Khoi-labourers, all living apart yet together, often isolated from towns and neighbours. Although the labile arrangement of intimate togetherness and interdependence relied heavily on threats and punishment, it also lay the foundation for a colonial lifestyle with a specific kind of paternalism and of maternalism. During the eighteenth century, Mentzel remarked that slaves were ‘faithful and attached to their masters’ and that ‘they would lay down their lives for them if the need arose’.41 To this day, employers eagerly tell tales concerning the loyalty of domestic workers to support their thesis that the paternalistic feudal system is the best model for white employers and black workers, especially on farms. Also, many domestic workers still expect their ‘madams’ to ‘take care’ of them and often rely on their financial assistance to help pay school fees or funeral expenses.
Though Shell draws no connection in his writings between slavery and domestic workers in twentieth-century South Africa, many of his descriptions are applicable to most: an enslaved woman kept everything in order in the household and was often entrusted with things of value. Also, she was often more a companion than a slave, ‘but the mistress rarely and the slave never, forg[o]t their relative situations, and however familiar in private, in the presence of another, due form prevail[ed]’.42
In a paragraph headed ‘A Sort of Child of the Family’, Shell contends that the household of slave owners was the only ‘home’ slaves knew. Being part of the extended ‘family’ of the slaveholder was presented to the slave as a poor though tangible consolation after being torn away from their own families. Shell gives the example of Lady Anne Barnard being given the assurance in 1798 that a family she was visiting found it absolutely normal for her to give an enslaved woman servant a present, as she had done with other members of the family, since the woman had been ‘born in the same house’ and was ‘sort of family’. This paternalism, however, never entailed equality with other members of the family, and even children were allowed to punish household slaves. While white children would move on to adulthood, the slave was ‘scheduled for perpetual childhood and dependence, and the demeaning obscurity that went with that fate,’ as Shell goes on to explain. Moreover, ‘Cape slave owners went to considerable lengths to keep slaves, especially female slaves, as “part of the family”. Selling such slaves to outsiders would be to undermine paternalism. The slaves of deceased slave owners tended to go to relatives rather than strangers.’43