XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.culture.south-africa, alt.genealogy   
   XPost: soc.history   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   UK database helps connect dots of slavery in the Cape   
   by Marvin Meintjies, 27 July 2015, 06:34   
      
   When slaves were ‘freed’ in 1834, it was their former owners who   
   received financial compensation, and the slaves still had to work   
   unpaid for four years. Picture: GETTY IMAGES   
      
   A BRITISH project has cast new light on one of the most neglected   
   areas of South African history – slavery. Researchers at University   
   College London (UCL) spent six years compiling a database that allows   
   anyone to check whether their ancestors were slaveowners.   
      
   The Legacies of British Slave-ownership database sparked a media tizz   
   in the UK recently, with newspapers reporting that the likes of   
   writers Graham Greene and George Orwell, and Prime Minister David   
   Cameron, have ancestors who benefited from slavery.   
      
   The UCL researchers have digitised the records of the Slave   
   Compensation Commission. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 freed   
   800,000 African slaves who were the legal property of British owners   
   and provided for the financial compensation of the owners.   
      
   The commission was established to evaluate the claims of slaveowners   
   and administer the distribution of the £20m the British government had   
   set aside for them — almost £17bn today — which was 40% of the British   
   government’s expenditure for 1834.   
      
   The records of the payments to the 46,000 owners, including those in   
   the Cape of Good Hope, represent an almost complete census of British   
   slavery as it was on August 1 1834.   
      
   THE slaves did not receive a cent in compensation and were compelled   
   by the Slavery Abolition Act to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each   
   week for their former masters, for four years after they were freed.   
   In effect, the slaves paid part of the cost of their liberation.   
      
   There were about 36,000 slaves in the Cape of Good Hope, a British   
   colony, when slavery was abolished, and about 8,000 slaveowners   
   received compensation for the loss of their "property".   
      
   UCL research associate Keith McClelland says that in today’s terms,   
   the amount paid to slaveowners in the Cape was the equivalent of   
   £105,900,000 — measured by the criteria of "historic standard of   
   living".   
      
   The UCL project focuses mainly on the Caribbean, the hub of slavery in   
   the empire. "Although we’ve got bare details of claimants throughout   
   the Cape, (the database) gives names and the amount of money (only)   
   because we could not extend the research beyond the Caribbean to SA,"   
   McClelland says.   
      
   "In terms of the Cape, frankly it’s crying out for somebody to do some   
   serious work on it."   
      
   Hans Heese, a research fellow and former archivist at Stellenbosch   
   University, helped to correct about a third of the names on the UCL   
   database relating to the Cape.   
      
   "Because the researchers could not read the Dutch records, a lot of   
   things were lost in translation. For example, De Villiers would be   
   written as Villiers," he says.   
      
   The British government allotted £1.2m to compensate slaveowners in the   
   Cape of Good Hope. This meant owners received less than the "taxed   
   value" of the slaves.   
      
   Jan Daniel de Villiers of Babylonstoren, case number 4061 in the UCL   
   database, received only £35 for Jephta of Mozambique.   
      
   Heese is working on a project for the Stellenbosch Museum, connecting   
   the dots between owners and slaves.   
      
   The UCL project is largely silent on the enslaved, reducing them to   
   numbers, quantities and values as it focuses on the historical   
   "burden" of the owners’ descendants.   
      
   In keeping with the norms of the time, official records tended to   
   focus on slaveowners, who were officers and officials of the Dutch   
   East India Company, free burghers, bureaucrats and farmers.   
      
   University of the Western Cape history professor Nigel Worden, writing   
   in the journal Kronos, notes the "archive of the Dutch East India   
   Company (VOC) controlled, constructed and delimited the presence of   
   slaves in the paper world of the VOC empire".   
      
   In a paper, Emancipation of Slaves at the Cape of Good Hope in 1834:   
   From Gloom to Economic Boom, Heese notes that the farmers of the Cape   
   had initially feared that the emancipation of slaves signalled their   
   doom. That the British government only paid them a third of the value   
   of their slaves added to their gloom, but the injection of more than   
   £1m into the Cape’s economy eventually proved a boon.   
      
   WHILE many freed slaves made their way from the farms to Cape Town   
   after they served their additional four years of forced labour for   
   their owners, a great number remained on the farms, where their lot   
   improved only slightly, Heese writes. They did not receive a cent in   
   compensation for their years of slavery.   
      
   Having paid compensation to the wrong people, the British government   
   "did not concern itself further with the fate of the emancipated   
   slaves", says Heese.   
      
   He says that in the long run, the emancipated slaves and their   
   descendants "were the losers".   
      
   Most of them had little or no schooling and "would remain mainly   
   unskilled labourers for the rest of the 19th century and for many   
   years after. It was also in the post-emancipation period that a new   
   population group would be established: the so-called Cape coloured   
   people".   
      
   Heese writes that while the slaveowners could rise above the   
   "temporary financial setbacks" that resulted from the emancipation of   
   their human property, the same cannot be said for the descendants of   
   slaves.   
      
   "These farm labourers were unable to escape from the master-servant   
   relationship which had existed for so many years. The British   
   government and subsequent governments — including the present   
   government — are partly responsible for this unfortunate situation,"   
   Heese says.   
      
   He is aghast at the erasure of the history of slavery in SA. In   
   political discourse, apartheid and colonialism occupy the top spots,   
   with scant bandwidth afforded to slavery. "The slave part of history   
   has been totally neglected or ignored. I started my research in 2009,   
   when the Stellenbosch Museum asked me to start a project.   
      
   "There’s a small community between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek called   
   Pniel — a mission station founded in 1843. These people had been   
   interested in their history and wanted to know who their ancestors   
   were — were they slaves or not?   
      
   "We found that 90% of them were (descendants of) freed slaves. The   
   people of Pniel also wanted to know where their ancestors came from —   
   Mozambique, Madagascar, the East Indies? That’s a very important part   
   of my research."   
      
   He says perhaps one of the reasons slavery is swept under the carpet   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)