Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 13
At one stage, the Portuguese were a great seafaring nation. They explored many undiscovered parts of the world and were the first recorded European nation to land on the southern part of Africa. Diogo Cão put up a stone cross on the west coast in 1486. The cross still remains at the area, bordering on the Namib desert, known as Cape Cross. Bartolomeu Diaz put up another cross on the shoreline of the Eastern Cape in 1487. Later, Vasco de Gama also rounded the Cape on his way to Asia in 1497. He stopped off on the Mozambique coast to establish trading posts, which eventually formed the colony of Portuguese East Africa until its independence in 1975. On the west coast the Portuguese established another colony, Angola, in 1575.
“In the year 6685 since the creation of the world and the year 1485 of our Lord, the excellent and enlightened King Dom João II of Portugal ordered Diogo Cão, a knight of his court, to discover this land …”
Cape Cross inscription, modern copy at site. (Wikipedia)
It was left to the Dutch to create the first European settlement in South Africa. In 1652 Jan van Riebeeck built a fort in what is now Cape Town. He took advantage of the lush and fertile areas surrounding Table Mountain with a suitable place for a safe harbor in what became known as Table Bay. It was not initially intended to become a new colony but rather a way station for the steady stream of ships to and from the Dutch East Indies (Today’s Indonesia) where the Dutch East India Company had established an enormously wealthy trading entity in the East.
However, over the years the settlement at the Cape grew into a Dutch colony, with its first governor, Simon van der Stel, appointed in 1691. Ironically, considering the later Apartheid years, van der Stel was a man of mixed race, something that embarrassed the Afrikaners in the 20th century. The Khoisan and Hottentots, the earliest inhabitants of South Africa, were driven away from the region surrounding Cape Town. They moved west into the semi-desert and desert areas, developing the necessary skills for survival in barren lands. One of the major Bantu tribes originally from Central Africa, the Xhosas, had meanwhile occupied the Eastern Cape region a few hundred miles north of Cape Town, with the Zulus occupying land further north which was to become known as Natal.
Although there were skirmishes between the Dutch, Khoisan and Hottentots as well as later enmity between the Dutch and the Xhosas, there was no outright campaign to take over the regions occupied by the various ethnic groups. Few Xhosas ventured far south and the Dutch (who had developed a wonderfully prosperous Cape Colony primarily with farming and fishing) were then content to remain in the southernmost tip of Africa. In 1692 the population of the Cape Colony was enhanced by the arrival of a group of 200 French Huguenots who had fled from persecution in Europe as Protestants in a largely Catholic France. Over time, the French were assimilated into the Dutch community. Today many surnames of Dutch (later Afrikaans) families are still French, such as Du Toit, Du Plessis, Durand, Labuschagne but with an Afrikaans rather than French pronunciation, such as Du Toit, which in French is pronounced Du Twire but in Afrikaans Du Toy. I won’t even attempt to explain Labuschagne!
The Scot, David Livingstone (1813–1873), is reputed to have only converted one African to Christianity before becoming known as one of the great explorers of the 19th century. However, groups of German missionaries set up mission stations in numerous parts of South Africa, Today, little villages such as New Hanover, Stutterheim, Berlin and Frankfort, sprang up around these missions. The Germans, although they are largely regarded as part of the Afrikaans community, have mostly kept German as their first language with Afrikaans second and English third. They have also retained much of their own culture and traditions, with German schools in some areas.
Although the Portuguese colonized both Mozambique and Angola, a significant number also came to South Africa in the 19th century, mostly from the island of Madeira. Over the years they specialized in establishing fruit and vegetable farming as well as opening Fruit and Veg shops in most towns and cities in South Africa. After the Communist Frelimo movement took over Mozambique in 1977 and the MPLA, also Communist, controlled Angola from 1975, many Portuguese fled back to Portugal, leaving most of their possessions behind in Africa. There was also a huge flight of Portuguese to South Africa and today it is estimated that some 500,000 of the 5,000,000 whites remaining in South Africa are Portuguese. Some of the best restaurants I have ever visited anywhere in the world are owned by Portuguese. Over time, they have created their own specialized cuisine, not even found in Portugal. To be fair, many dishes are based on traditional Portuguese food, to which they have added by far the best prawn dish, cooked Mozambique-style in lashes of butter and hot chilies. Other dishes, such as a mix of mussels and pork or Steak Portuguese with a fried egg on top of the steak, somehow taste better in Africa.
The Greeks, mostly from the islands, came in search of their fortunes in South Africa. My wife Hero’s family spearheaded the influx of Cypriots. Her grandfather is reputed to have been the first Greek from Cyprus to settle in Johannesburg in the early 1900s. He made and lost a few fortunes, notably selling a gold mine to Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, founder of Anglo American (eventually the largest mining group on Earth). The mine was in fact one of the richest in the world, but miners had to dig two or three miles underground to reach the huge vein of the ore.
A mining engineer had been paid to tell Hero’s grandfather that the mine only contained alluvial gold, which would not last long enough to make big money. I’ve written his story previously but, briefly, after making money in San Francisco, USA, his property and possessions were destroyed in the great fire and earthquake of 1906. He left the US and travelled to Ethiopia before coming south to South Africa, where apart from his setback with gold he created a chain of Phillip’s cafés which were the forerunners of the many Greek cafés that sprang up all over the country. The cafés were actually grocery stores, goodness knows why they were called cafés. Bapou (Greek for Grandpa) also owned the first cinema in South Africa which he sold to the Schlesinger family who built a chain of cinemas as well as the first sizable film studio in the country, Killarney Film Studios in Johannesburg (where I worked for about five years). In fact, the son of the owner of the studio, John Stodel, was told by his father to work for a couple in months in every department in the studio to learn the movie business. During the time that he was in my scriptwriting department, we became friendly. I complained that I was sick of the girlfriends I had recently dated. John then set me up with his parents’ next-door neighbor, Hero Falas, a young girl of Greek Cypriot heritage. The three of us had lunch in a Greek restaurant in town. John and I had pre-arranged a signal to indicate if I wanted to be left alone with the girl. 58 years later we’re still delighted that I gave the right signal!
In the late 19th century, the persecution of the Jews became unbearable for many families and the great exodus from Europe (particularly Eastern Europe and Russia) began. The majority went to the United States, but a surprising number found the allure of Africa irresistible. At the time of the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal in 1886, diamonds had already been mined in Kimberley in the Northern Cape since 1870. Jews, mostly from Lithuania, Russia and the Ukraine as well as a number from Britain, were the forerunners of families that at one point created in Johannesburg the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel and New York. My great grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew from Kiev who arrived in the late 1800s and was part of a group that included the well-known gold and diamond entrepreneurs, Barney Barnato and Solly Joel. His son, my grandfather, Arthur Atkins (originally Etkind) converted to Christianity and married my grandmother Hilda of Irish descent. After farming and breeding award-winning cattle in the Bloemfontein district where my mother was born, Arthur, who also played Provincial Rugby for the Orange Free State, ended up owning about five hotels in Cape Town before drinking himself to death, age 49.
In the 20th and 21st centuries the Jews and the Greeks became the wealthiest communities in Johannesburg if not South Africa.
But what about the British, you say! I’ve left them till last because they have been largely responsible for all the upheavals that have plagued South Africa since they occupied the previously Dutch-held Cape in 1795. After the Treaty of Amiens in Europe, the British returned the Cape to the Dutch – but when the Napoleonic wars occurred, the British re-occupied it in 1806. With an increasing foothold in South Africa, Britain sent a large group of Britons to the Eastern Cape in1820. They were known as the 1820 settlers and founded many of the English-speaking families in South Africa, including my grandmother whose Irish ancestor arrived in 1820.
The rest of the 1800s was a period of turbulence as Dutch, British and Africans jostled and often fought for their respective places in the African sun. The iniquitous Pass Laws, requiring Africans to carry passes at all times, were a central issue during the Apartheid years of 1948 to 1994. In fact, it was the British Cape authorities who introduced these laws as early as 1828.
In 1834 a large number of Dutch, fed up with the overbearing British rule of the Cape, set off north in search of new land. This movement was known as the Great Trek, introducing the word trek or journey into the English language. For the first time, the Dutch, commonly known as the Boers (farmers), encountered serious resistance from both the Xhosa and Zulu tribes as they travelled north from the Cape. Nevertheless, they did settle mostly in two regions and proclaimed them as Republics. The Transvaal Republic was formed in 1852 and the Orange Free State in 1853. Little did anyone know at the time that the world’s greatest source of gold would be discovered in the Transvaal in 1886.
The British decided to settle in large numbers in the northeastern region, which became known as Natal. This sparked off ferocious opposition from the Zulus who fought some famous battles with the British in 1879, known as the Anglo-Zulu War. The movie “Zulu” starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker tells the story of the battle for Rorke’s Drift.
As the massive wealth from the diamond and gold fields made many men, mostly Britons, enormously wealthy, the Dutch became increasingly infuriated, feeling that they should have a major stake in this wealth, having arrived in South Africa some 300 years before the British set foot on the Cape. This triggered two Anglo-Boer wars (1880–1801, then again 1899–1902).
None of this took into account any claim the African nations may have had, having been in the south of Africa for hundreds of years, long before the Boers. The closest the Africans got to the two precious commodities was by working in their thousands as mine workers literally miles underground in the physically demanding and often dangerous quest for gold or by digging and panning for alluvial diamonds – for poor wages.
And so the variety of nations of Europe and the Bantu tribes originally from central Africa arrived in the beautiful, fertile and mineral-rich land of South Africa. Is it any wonder that these disparate communities clashed while the original inhabitants, the Khoisan and Hottentots, looked on sadly from their desert refuges?
Perhaps, just perhaps, we can improve communication between these variegated peoples by creating a system that actually tells the truth and restores trust in each other by virtue of revealing that truth. That system is, of course, ExoBrain!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.