Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

tini’s testimony 161
year, almost all were ‘coloureds’, (except for one white lady
landowner who had paid a labourer too little) accusing one another of
complicity in all sorts of quarrels; one woman was accused of adultery
by an alleged spouse. 29 The intimate lives of white women did not
reach the courts; in white male eyes, raunchy behaviour was
apparently more convincing among ‘coloured’ women. 30
The fact that Beuster protested (perhaps a little) too much in favour
of Tini’s whiteness, proves that race was fluid and contestable in late
nineteenth century Transvaal. However, it also alludes to a possibility
that the gossiping from Boer farm to Boer farm and into the heart of
Pietersburg may have presented Tini as ‘coloured’, ‘bastard’, or
‘oorlams’, 31 rather than white. Tini was indeed living on the margins
of several cultures. Which one would be apportioned to her, which
one would she appropriate? Would it be the same under all
circumstances? When Superintendent Krause conducted Tini’s final
‘hearing’ in Pietersburg on 27 July 1892, he explained that although
Tini was conversant in Dutch, German, as well as ‘Sesutho’ (sePedi),
he asked her to speak in Dutch, which he later calls the ‘oorlamse’
language, since he believed that this was the language in which she
could express herself the most convincingly. 32 The way in which Stech
treated Tini (according to her own testimony) as an indentured
servant rather than as the precious godchild of a friend, provides an
indication of how the majority of Boer observers must have perceived
her position. ‘Non-white’ orphaned girls indentured as domestic
servants until at least the age of twenty one, were not an uncommon
sight in Boer households at the time. Taking into consideration that
Stech, after twenty years in the ‘wilderness’ as he himself had called
it, had warmed significantly to Boer ways and had even made a good
friend in the local Boer Commissioner, Vorster, it is not unlikely that
he had claimed ownership over Tini and her services in the way Boer
29 NASA TAB: ZZG 65: Landdros, Notule van siviele en kriminele sake, 1891.
30
The convergence of race and class in this stereotyping would, of course, make
interesting further investigation.
31 A person, or child of a person, of colour who had adapted to the ways of the Boers
through long years in their employment. These people had lost contact with their
communities of origin, including their language and customs. They copied the
dress code and the language of the white people they worked for, predominantly
Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking farmers/ ‘Boers’.
32 EA BMG Gegen Stech: BMW 1/4225 56-58: Beilage A, 27 Juli 1892.