the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA
the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA
the richtersveld cultural and botanical landscape - SAHRA
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Richtersveld Cultural <strong>and</strong> Botanical L<strong>and</strong>scape World Heritage Site Nomination 61<br />
However, its policies, <strong>the</strong> economic conditions at <strong>the</strong> Cape <strong>and</strong> environmental<br />
considerations determined that this was not practical.<br />
This issue was particularly important in <strong>the</strong> determination of <strong>the</strong> fate of <strong>the</strong> KhoiKhoi<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r indigenous peoples of South Africa in that extensive farming<br />
techniques rapidly developed amongst <strong>the</strong> colonists, requiring vast areas of l<strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>and</strong> determining that within two hundred years European settlement in <strong>and</strong><br />
domination of KhoiKhoi l<strong>and</strong>s affected all but a small portion of <strong>the</strong>ir former<br />
territories. Once outside of <strong>the</strong> immediate environs of Cape Town climatic<br />
conditions are such that even once <strong>the</strong> VOC had resolved <strong>the</strong> issues that<br />
determined that its early experiments in intensive agriculture were a failure,<br />
extensive farming remained <strong>the</strong> only option for a widely dispersed settler<br />
community, many of whom were sufficiently far from <strong>the</strong> Cape <strong>and</strong> hence<br />
government authority, to be able to function outside of <strong>the</strong> reach of direct Company<br />
authority. This provided opportunity for European settlement to exp<strong>and</strong> regardless<br />
of efforts by <strong>the</strong> VOC <strong>and</strong> its successors to impose limits.<br />
The frontiers of <strong>the</strong> colony at <strong>the</strong> Cape hence spread rapidly in an easterly <strong>and</strong><br />
nor<strong>the</strong>rly direction with sporadic conflicts between colonists <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Company on<br />
<strong>the</strong> one h<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> various clans of KhoiKhoi <strong>and</strong> San on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r. As l<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong><br />
livestock were lost most of <strong>the</strong> KhoiKhoi were out of desperation forced into <strong>the</strong><br />
service of <strong>the</strong> Company (mainly in military service) or settler farmers. More often<br />
than not such employment was not an issue of choice, but of desperation <strong>and</strong> by<br />
<strong>the</strong> second half of <strong>the</strong> 18 th Century provided KhoiKhoi with a status not much better<br />
than slavery. Worse still was <strong>the</strong> scourge of diseases carried to Africa by <strong>the</strong><br />
Europeans, in particular <strong>the</strong> Smallpox which in 1713 decimated <strong>the</strong> indigenous<br />
population. Those, perhaps more fortunate, found refuge in mission stations <strong>the</strong> first<br />
of which was established in 1738 at Genadendal, not far from Cape Town.<br />
However, ultimately <strong>and</strong> regardless of <strong>the</strong> options which individual KhoiKhoi may<br />
have been able to exercise, or <strong>the</strong> fate which befell <strong>the</strong>m regardless, within a few<br />
generations <strong>and</strong> through processes of disease, dispersal, acculturation <strong>and</strong><br />
intermarriage with settlers, slaves <strong>and</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r indigenous South Africans independent<br />
KhoiKhoi identity, language <strong>and</strong> culture disappeared from <strong>the</strong> vast swa<strong>the</strong>s of l<strong>and</strong><br />
it had dominated for thous<strong>and</strong>s of years.