Page 21 - Bulletin 20 2016

18

The first farmers

The initial intention of the Dutch East India Company was to engage in agriculture on its own
behalf at the Cape, employing wage labour to minimise investment until the viability of the
settlement had been established. This met with mixed success and as early as 1655 Van
Riebeeck began suggesting to the company directors that the answer to increasing production
might be found in promoting private enterprise. This he proposed to stimulate by offering
plots of land to promising individuals as their time of service to the Company came to an end
and thus, encourage them to become independent farmers. Accordingly, plots along the
Liesbeck River began to be awarded in 1657 to what became the first ‘free burghers’.

As the century wore on the Company came to rely increasingly on the produce of these de
facto colonists. It was also becoming increasingly evident that the resources of Table and the
adjacent Liesbeeck Valley were not sufficient to meet the demands of the settlement and
growing number of Company’s ships calling here for refreshments. Accordingly, a number of
outposts or Buiteposte – began to be established as, particularly, grazing sites for the
increasing number of Company cattle. Two of these were in the southern peninsula on either
side of the Steenberg Mountains that run from Constantia to Muizenberg and were, therefore,
named An and Agter (on, and over or behind) the Steenberg. Here two soldiers, Klaas Geritz
and Hennie Huysing, were stationed in 1676 and allowed to run their own private stock
beyond the Company’s grazing land. Thus, it appears that as much as others had been
encouraged to become farmers, Geritz and Huysing were being groomed to become
herders/future private meat suppliers / contractors to the Company. Huysing would become
particularly successful at this and in time, one of the wealthiest burghers at the Cape and a
future ringleader in the uprising against the rule of Governor, Adriaan van der Stel. For the
st
time being, on January 31 , 1678, Geritz and Huysing are on record requesting permission to
graze their stock beyond the, ‘Steenbergen ……zeewaart en na de Caap Fals (seaward to
Cape False). Now in these early years Cape False was a name often applied to both Cape
Point and Cape Hangklip and since settlement had not yet been sanctioned beyond the Cape
Peninsula it can be accepted that this request was for land beyond the Steenberg Mountains –

southwards to Cape Point (17) .

18