The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

They drifted into Africa, and became known as trekboere. 25 They were
independent and completely isolated from the intellectual developments
that occurred in Europe in the eighteenth century.
As the colony expanded, a collision with the Khoisan people was unavoidable.
With their superior weapons, the Europeans soon decimated the
Khoisan. The survivors were left with no option but to work for Europeans
who used them for labour and sex. In and around Cape Town, they
were also inter-mixed with the slaves from Indonesia and Eastern Africa.
The offspring of these unions formed the basis of today’s coloured population.
(Elphick and Shell 1989: 194-214.)
In 1795, the British invaded the Cape Colony. They found a colony
of approximately 25.000 slaves, 20.000 white colonists, 15.000 Khoisan
and 350 ‘free blacks’ (freed slaves) (Elphick and Shell 1989: 208-220).
Power was restricted to a white elite in Cape Town, and differentiation
on the basis of colour was deeply entrenched. The British influence grew,
and more British immigrants arrived, many of them soon becoming urban
dwellers. They began to dominate politics, trade, finance, mining and
manufacturing, while the Afrikaners, or the Boers, remained in the countryside.
The whites were now split into two competing language groups,
and into two different cultures. (De Klerk 1975: 22-32.)
Although the property accumulated in the hands of whites, race and
class were not identical in Cape Town in the eighteenth century. There
were black property owners, and white poverty was present from the very
beginning. The East Indian Trade Company authorities and particularly
the church diaconate helped the impoverished white burghers who could
no longer return to Europe. The allocation of the resources was racially
divided from the start: the white burghers were allocated 5 rix-dollars
a month, while blacks were only allocated 2 rix-dollars. (Worden, van
Heyningen & Bickford-Smith 1998: 67-69.)
In the nineteenth century Cape Town, a white working-class was already
established: white women were mainly in domestic service, while
men had a wider range of occupations with these varying from dock
labourers to skilled artisans. White labourers and artisans commanded
higher salaries than coloured workers in equivalent occupations. (Worden
et al. 1998: 178-179.)
25 Lit. a travelling farmer. Independent, self-sufficient and isolated settlers became an
archetype Afrikaner. They were semi-nomadic pastoralists, and apparently not so far removed
from the Khoisan. Reputedly courageous and fiercely independent, they relied on
their rifle and the Bible.
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