Per-Anders Pettersson for The New York Times

Black and mixed-race commuters go to a taxi and train station. Many nonwhites live in distant townships

In a Divided City, Many Blacks See Echoes of White Superiority

By LYDIA POLGREEN

CAPE TOWN — For countless foreign visitors, Cape Town is an indelible symbol of the beauty and promise of post-apartheid South Africa. Beyond its gorgeous scenery and great wines, its very logo — an outline of majestic Table Mountain superimposed over a rainbow — emphasizes its historic mix of races and cultures, and its most famous resident, Desmond Tutu, is revered as a symbol of tolerance, inclusiveness and forgiveness.

But for many black South Africans, this city represents something very different: the last bastion of white rule.

“No matter how famous/rich u r, ur still a 2nd class citizen if ur Black in Cape Town,” Lindiwe Suttle, a singer and performance artist, wrote in a Twitter challenge to Helen Zille, the white leader of the party that governs this city.

After the post drew a chorus of support from black celebrities and others in the echo chamber of Twitter, Ms. Zille shot back, “What complete nonsense.”

But that was hardly the last word. The Twitter battle, which broke out a few months ago and featured dueling hashtags (#capetownisracist and a countercampaign, #capetownisawesome), has given way to soul-searching in this city of 3.5 million people at the southern tip of Africa: Does this nation’s celebrated rainbow end where the mountain meets the sea?

This is the only major metropolis in South Africa where black people are not the majority, and it remains deeply divided. The particularly harsh legacy of apartheid as it was carried out here has left especially deep scars that still demarcate the geography: whites in the city center and its mountainside inner suburbs, nonwhites in the distant townships on the Cape Flats. Apartheid policies effectively barred blacks from living or even working in the city, giving so-called colored, or mixed-race, people, today the city’s largest ethnic group, priority over blacks for jobs and housing.

Beyond history, there is present-day politics. Western Cape is the only one of the country’s nine provinces not run by the governing African National Congress. It is run by Ms. Zille’s Democratic Alliance, which grew out of the white anti-apartheid movement but ultimately came to include remnants of the old National Party that created apartheid.

In a speech last year in a black township near Cape Town, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, said the city had an “extremely apartheid system,” according to local newspaper reports on his remarks. The African National Congress is trying to win the province, and the Democratic Alliance has dismissed the assertion that Cape Town is racist as a political ploy.

“It is labeled a racist city by the A.N.C. because it is the only metro in the country they don’t control,” said Patricia de Lille, the mayor of Cape Town.

The city government is trying hard to change what Ms. de Lille calls “the spatial development of apartheid.” It has renamed two major boulevards in honor of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, and Helen Suzman, an ardent white opponent of apartheid. The two streets converge in the center of the city, a merger meant to symbolize the hope of integration.

But a study completed by researchers at the University of Cape Town in December 2010 found that black residents saw few business opportunities for themselves in Cape Town, and that companies struggled to recruit and retain them. It concluded that in Western Cape, “African people are almost always less successful than white people in moving up career paths, creating an ‘ebony ceiling’ effect.”

The office is not the only place where blacks feel unwelcome. Many of the more exclusive Atlantic coast beaches, which used to prohibit blacks, still tend to attract almost entirely whites, reinforcing the divide.

“I hate going to Camps Bay because everyone there is white,” said Yoliswa Dwane, referring to an upscale seaside suburb on the Atlantic coast that was once reserved for whites. “You don’t get the perception that this is an integrated country.”

The discrimination black South Africans describe experiencing here is not the iron-fisted kind that marked the apartheid era. It is more subtle and sometimes hard to pin down.

Some report being told that there are no tables available at an empty restaurant, or no cars at a well-stocked rental car office. Others recount being warned by white neighbors not to slaughter animals for festive occasions, or being mistaken for a prostitute simply for having drinks in a bar full of white patrons.

And in a city where economic inequality yawns wide, class has in some ways become a proxy for race.

Osiame Molefe, a journalist, recently wrote about being turned away from a nightspot.

“The third (and final) time I was turned away from Asoka, a bar and lounge in Kloof Street, a representative of the establishment wrote, ‘I can inform you that Asoka does not have a racist door policy! We will be the first to admit that our policy is based on class and superficiality — unfortunately that is what our regulars expect and want. And realistically this is the unfortunate reality of the society we live in!’ ”

Left unsaid is how, exactly, one determines “class.”

It is hard to reconcile Cape Town’s deep racial divides today with its history as one of the biggest melting pots in the world. Beginning in the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company brought slaves and prisoners from Mozambique and Madagascar, as well as from India and Indonesia. These groups intermarried. White blood inevitably entered the gene pool, too.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, racial barriers existed but were not terribly rigid, historians say.

“Pigmentation wasn’t an absolute barrier to changing your station,” said Vivian Bickford-Smith, a historian at the University of Cape Town. “There was a saying: ‘Money whitens.’ ”

One of the Cape’s earliest governors, Simon van der Stel, was of mixed race.

But by the end of the 19th century, pseudoscientific attitudes about race had come into vogue, along with the popular notion of a hierarchy among races, with black Africans at the bottom.

When the National Party came to power in 1948 and declared its new policy of apartheid, the separation between the races was etched in stone. People who lived in mixed communities like District 6 near the center of the city were forced from their homes and moved to desolate, segregated towns and townships on the Cape Flats, far from the city.

Blacks were so unwelcome in Cape Town that it was often assumed that no blacks were actually from the city. Geoffrey Mamputa’s family has been in Cape Town since the middle of the 19th century, but people still ask him where his home is, even though blacks in the city outnumbered whites by almost two to one in a 2007 count.

“When I say I am from Cape Town, the response is always, ‘No black person is from Cape Town,’ ” Mr. Mamputa said. “African people add to the discrimination in the sense that they see themselves as outsiders. They are creating that sense that we don’t belong here.”

The racial tensions grew deeper as colored people received preferential treatment, part of a divide-and-rule strategy. During the 1970s and ’80s, when the fight against apartheid heated up, many colored people rejected the label, choosing to think of themselves as black. Students and professors at the University of the Western Cape, which the apartheid government had designated as a colored institution, used this self-identification to reject apartheid’s labeling.

“One of the responses to the imposition of race categories is to reject racial categories,” said Suren Pillay, a professor at the university.

But that moment was short-lived. In 1994, the colored vote in Western Cape largely went to the National Party, the architect of apartheid. And today, on the campus of the University of the Western Cape, a kind of voluntary segregation has re-emerged, with like sticking by like.

“There is not a lot of mixing,” said Nokwanda Khanyile, 21, a business student from Durban. “The coloreds stick to themselves. The whites, too.”

Like many young black people, Ms. Khanyile would not consider remaining in Cape Town to pursue a career in business.

“Cape Town is racist,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”


Cape Town’s racial divisions are reflected in places like restaurants.



Apartheid left deep scars that still demarcate Cape Town

more photos
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/03/23/world/africa/20120323CAPETOWN.html

Wow! Cape town is now a white city,even before our eyes,and people still doubt the fact that egypt was once a black man's country...

Wow! Cape town is now a white city,even before our eyes,and people still doubt the fact that egypt was once a black man's country,even when they see the same events that whitened egypt,happening in sudan...

Judging from south Africa's history, cape town is the base of most white south Africans, its a port city, duh?

There where all so not that many blacks when the whit man reached the cape(was the first city). And many of those died (Diseases, fights with farmers what not)

andrewza: There where all so not that many blacks when the whit man reached the cape(was the first city). And many of those died (Diseases, fights with farmers what not)

Exactly my point,they are foreigners and now they control the land...,fights with the farmers? What were they fighting for,if not for lands that don't belong to them?

pazienza:

Exactly my point,they are foreigners and now they control the land...

They no longer foreigners. They just white.

andrewza:

They no longer foreigners. They just white.

Any white man in south africa is a foreigner,africa has no indigenious caucausian.

You see why i don't think mandela is an african hero,it only seem like he is a hero today,because the blacks are still in power today,what happens tommorow when power change hand(as it is bound to do), whenever the black man accommodates any foreign race,he ends up losing,is it not enough that we are being pushed southwards by the arabs,now the whites are going to push us northwards.

Of course the blacks are as usual,oblivious of the threat of white south africa and the increasing number of mulatos in angola and coloreds in south africa, they only think of the present,give them 2000yrs or less,and we would have lost southern africa,with the blacks migrating north..., the fact that something like this happened in egypt and sudan is not enough warning for us,but the white man is patient and a strategic planner. Mugagbe is not a saint,but he knows better than mandela.

And oh! About the farmers, the white foreigners took lands belonging to african farmers in south africa,mandela allowed them to keep it, they did the same in zimbabwe,but mugagbe recovered it from them,now thats a true african hero.
Now we know why the west propaganda machine(CNN and BBC),painted mandela white and mugagbe black.

Answer this question.

If whites in South Africa are not South Africans what are they? Name one other nation I can call home?


Has for farms. SA dose do land reform. We just compensate the previous owner and make sure the new owners are trained and supplied for the job.

Parthetic stories like this reechoes the greatness of Mugabe. How fundamentally uplifting his actions are and even though the present asslicking generation of africans failed to see his victorious actions,the future generations of africans will.

Until white south africans give up the loots and spoils they took from the indigenous south africans,they will remain invaders that have to be put in their rightfuf places. The fight is on.

andrewza: Answer this question.

If whites in South Africa are not South Africans what are they? Name one other nation I can call home?


Has for farms. SA dose do land reform. We just compensate the previous owner and make sure the new owners are trained and supplied for the job.

All caucausians in south africa,knows which country in europe,their ancestors migrated from, likewise those in angola...

Compensation? Do you think that the black farmers that fought against white invaders wanted compensation? What they wanted was for you to leave their lands,you were unwanted invaders...

I can see none of you are from south africa. The blacks have inherited the best medical system in Africa, The infrastructure that is now second to none in Africa, many became high ranking businessmen in large international company's. They have access to any resource, technology, or infrastructure system they want. We have payed them back. And they where smart to under stand they can gain more by working with us.

And that fool Mugaby was put in to power by the so called evil white man. He then turned on them so no wonfer they dislike him.

andrewza: I can see none of you are from south africa. The blacks have inherited the best medical system in Africa, The infrastructure that is now second to none in Africa, many became high ranking businessmen in large international company's. They have access to any resource, technology, or infrastructure system they want. We have payed them back. And they where smart to under stand they can gain more by working with us.

And that fool Mugaby was put in to power by the so called evil white man. He then turned on them so no wonfer they dislike him.

you know one thing funny from your statement, how come you didn't share this well meaning "knowledge" in the first place with your black south African compatriates. It is now evident that these blacks were able to live side by side, inculcate the 'knowledge base" and you guys become one big happy SA family, but nah the mission was to secure a good 87% of the land mass of SA (including South west Africa/namibia) to yourselfs and everyting in it, not considering that you were less than 10% of the indigenous population.

The plan was to create a 'working-slave' class of people whom you needed to build a viable "capitalist" system hence the abilty for Black south africans to live amongsts you in Bantustans, carry passbooks that restricted their movements to white areas but still have the "priviledge' of working for you in your houses, farms and institutions.

Hmmm and you wonder why with all the "nice" things" they have inherited , they still refer to you as invading foreigners or Mugabe is pissed off at ya'll for manipulating the lancaster agreement.

I never said it was how goal from the start. Yes we invaded there lands. We purposely kept them dumb and has low class workers. Nothing can change what my fore fathers did. Even ending Apartheid was done for the sake of the white people. We where on the brink of a civil war. A war that would have resulted in the deaths of every white South African (unlike Rhodsia/Zimbabwe there was no where to run to) yes we where the better solder man for man but we where out numbered so badly we could get a 10 to 1 kill ratio and still loose. We gave up power to stay alive. Has for hatred to whites. It is not has wide spread has you think if it was Jullises would have more than only 20% support and I would be dead. Most blacks don't care about the whites. It is more about class now the rich vs poor and the richest of them all are no longer whites.

^^^^

Most black people accept life and can move on from hatred because they have not inherited the culture of "conquerism" ( if there is such a word in english)

have you ever wondered why there are over 1500 languages on the continent, if we went around conquering weaker tribes the inevitable result would be forced amalgamations and we would have fewer languages on the continent unlike other parts of the world. We mostly traded with each other and kinda minded our own businessess.

this is not to say there weren't wars on the continent I might add.

I was busy with exam things,but as i can see,morpheus did a nice job in my absence...

pazienza: I was busy with exam things,but as i can see,morpheus did a nice job in my absence...

How so. He never refuted my claims. Many of his statements either support what I say or bring up new points. The fact remains. Until you can tell me what a whit person is other than a south african we are africans. Dose not matter if there are a few who call us invaders we are African.

Andre,lets not forget that we are having this discussion because of the complaints made by black south africans,about subtle discrimination they experience in a white controlled cape town...

Let me digress a bit,you said you guys surrendered power to the blacks because you were afraid of your safety,not really because its the right thing to do,in other words,you guys don't feel remorse for perpetrating apartheid,my fear with this situation is that the white man do not just concede power,there must be plans to regain this power back in the future,that is my fear,and the more reason i don't view mandela as an African hero,the white man is a patient snake,mandela only defered this problem for future blacks,whose majority status would have be decimated by multiracial populations,this might sound weird now,but it happened in egypt...

You can't generalize in SA to much. Yes the are blacks who find cape town racist. Mainly because there is a colored(mix race) in charge and not a black. So it is very political. Most don't care. Has for remorse. Depends on generation and location. the older white afrikannars are incredibly racist the city type less so but they like to blame every thing on the blacks. The younger whites don't really care they have accepted the fact that they where defeated.

I can not see a white regime gaining power again. Politically they are the seconded strongest but would need to form a collation to gain control from the ANC. And military force is impossible the defense force would step in but most likely they would get arrested before that is needed. Any case we happy just has we are(well off economically and safe). If the ANC started to get to hostile to the whits they will face a civil war. And the defense force would not be 100% behind the ANC. It would destroy the country and even though the blacks would win the cost would be to high.

I really wish we had a full blown war in South Africa.Whites South Africans are the most racist animals I've ever seen.
We should have drove them to the sea,Mandela sold us out.And sad part is they're more racist than during apaartheid.

FW De Klerk went on CNN and said apaartheid was good for blacks and he is still defending that racist statement and there are lots of whites South Africans who are supporting this idiot.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/16/world/africa/south-africa-de-klerk/

The whites President Helen Zille also openly on twitter said black learners who are in Cape Town are 'refugees'.How can you be a refuugee in your own country? Or because Cape Town is white black are not allowed there? And what I hate more is this black cowards who support this racist party and its people for personal gains.
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/outrage-at-zille-s-refugee-comment-1.1261770

Now there's painting of Jacob Zuma with his trouser unzipped and his manhood out,painting was done by white racist guy,the whites now are celebrating showing solidarity to the painter when black think it is a racist painting.They won't paint Elizabeth their Queen in this manner.

http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/4e7764004b4923b3a0c0f1fb0e5cb135/Zuma-painting-disrespectful:-ANC-

Where is our Mugabe,we need him now..

RSA: I really wish we had a full blown war in South Africa.Whites South Africans are the most racist animals I've ever seen.
We should have drove them to the sea,Mandela sold us out.And sad part is they're more racist than during apaartheid.

FW De Klerk went on CNN and said apaartheid was good for blacks and he is still defending that racist statement and there are lots of whites South Africans who are supporting this idiot.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/16/world/africa/south-africa-de-klerk/

The whites President Helen Zille also openly on twitter said black learners who are in Cape Town are 'refugees'.How can you be a refuugee in your own country? Or because Cape Town is white black are not allowed there? And what I hate more is this black cowards who support this racist party and its people for personal gains.
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/outrage-at-zille-s-refugee-comment-1.1261770

Now there's painting of Jacob Zuma with his trouser unzipped and his manhood out,painting was done by white racist guy,the whites now are celebrating showing solidarity to the painter when black think it is a racist painting.They won't paint Elizabeth their Queen in this manner.

http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/4e7764004b4923b3a0c0f1fb0e5cb135/Zuma-painting-disrespectful:-ANC-

Where is our Mugabe,we need him now..

And how is this different from julis "shoot the boer" or any other racist remark from the ANC.

Any case war would be bad for all sides. A Lot of the SANDF would remain neutral and the more elliat units would go be on the white peoples side.

RSA: I really wish we had a full blown war in South Africa.Whites South Africans are the most racist animals I've ever seen.
We should have drove them to the sea,Mandela sold us out.And sad part is they're more racist than during apaartheid.

FW De Klerk went on CNN and said apaartheid was good for blacks and he is still defending that racist statement and there are lots of whites South Africans who are supporting this idiot.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/16/world/africa/south-africa-de-klerk/

The whites President Helen Zille also openly on twitter said black learners who are in Cape Town are 'refugees'.How can you be a refuugee in your own country? Or because Cape Town is white black are not allowed there? And what I hate more is this black cowards who support this racist party and its people for personal gains.
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/outrage-at-zille-s-refugee-comment-1.1261770

Now there's painting of Jacob Zuma with his trouser unzipped and his manhood out,painting was done by white racist guy,the whites now are celebrating showing solidarity to the painter when black think it is a racist painting.They won't paint Elizabeth their Queen in this manner.

http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/4e7764004b4923b3a0c0f1fb0e5cb135/Zuma-painting-disrespectful:-ANC-

Where is our Mugabe,we need him now..

Thank you,you just confirmed my fears,the white man's is all for invasion,overunning/massacre of the indigenous population and becoming rulers,from north america to south america,australia and new zealand,the story is the same,it is in their genes,the leopard cannot start changing its spots now.

They must have plans to regain south africa back,it might be a long term plan,mandela just defered this problem,he might be seen as a hero now,but i don't think future generations of blacks would view him as such...

andrewza:

And how is this different from julis "shoot the boer" or any other racist remark from the ANC.

First let me say black man can never be racist,if he hate it is because he has a reason not because you're white.whites hate blacks for being blacks.

I sang that song and still singing it.Let me first teach you something the racist reporters in our country didn't tell you,just like when most of you say .
Dubula i'bhunu,in this instance means shoot or take arms against the oppressor,it means the racist regime and its agents not white people.

We call whites umlungu and racist rigime and its agents ama'bhunu.That is why even Mandela use to sing it,there's youtube video of him.

I hope you learning.I will give you the benefit of a doubt and say you didn't know this.

Our racist media decided to misinterpret this for propoganda purpose,and this is their strategy to deny blacks their past struggle.To them apaartheid never exist it's just a pigment of our imaginations,they want to brainwash us so that we forget the past.

andrewza:
A Lot of the SANDF would remain neutral and the more elliat units would go be on the white peoples side.

For an African child war and struggle is part of who we are,yes there's going to be casualties but we where never going to surrender.Dying for ones land is the most honorable thing one can do.Millions of our people were killed,apaarheid regime was more brutal than what the Nazi's did to the jews.

Just like Jews our story must be heard millions times by those care to listen.And I wish we had a law that sentance every racist/i'bhunu to death by stoning

So what was his beef with botswana. Any case he was expelled for now.


I enjoy the liberation songs. We sing them has marching and moral boosting songs. Only the boer enjoy the afrikanse songs and my english songs have to many words. We did change the songs by adding english versus though.


I know many racist black people (black on black). Yes they have reasons but strange reasons.

You don't under stand how much damage it would cause this country. Somalia would be become a better place. It would to phiric Victory.


It was bad but not Nazi vs Jews bad. More Nazi va Russians bad. There was no plan to wipe you out. Not even the worst Boer racist(like Eugene) had that planed. They probably dreamed it though.


Just a point I would like to make. There where White supports of the liberation struggle. My mother was forced to leave the country she was part of the student movements.

You can never have a black on black racism,maybe tribalism or pure jealousy or hatred but not racism. Botswana is ruled by an english dictator(khama's mother is english and he was born and educated in england),who does not belief in african agendas and freedom of press in botswana.Basarwa are mistreated in their own country.Malema in his own way wanted to expose this goverment that doesn't respect human rights but loved by the west.

RSA: You can never have a black on black racism,maybe tribalism or pure jealousy or hatred but not racism. Botswana is ruled by an english dictator(khama's mother is english and he was born and educated in england),who does not belief in african agendas and freedom of press in botswana.Basarwa are mistreated in their own country.Malema in his own way wanted to expose this goverment that doesn't respect human rights but loved by the west.

tribalism racism all comes down to hatred with out understanding. It like the Afrikanners dislike of the English white people. They Boer still go on about the Boer war I mean yes the english killed your women and children and invaded for the gold. We gave the country back to and looking at how that turned out we should have kept it (sorry for the rant).

Yes botswana is not has great has the world makes it out to be. But there are far worse places.

^^^^^Andrewza are you sure you're white?

RSA: ^^^^^Andrewza are you sure you're white?

I am white but I have more black friends than white friends. Dislike the DA (all they ever do is say how bad the ANC is not what they would do different)
Am a english speaker
Grew up poor
Turned down the chance to leave to join my mother in the nerthlands (she moved for love step dad is dutch and can't get a job down here). That right I would rather be away from my mother than leave south africa.

SA CITIES

http://www.scribd.com/doc/138251578/The-changing-face-of-our-neighbourhoods

Black people are complaining because they "unluckily" found themselves at the bottom of the ladder. They need someone to blame for their backward state. The point is that the white man never made a black man dumb. What were blacks doing when the whites were leaving the caves and advancing? Blacks should discover the root cause of their problem and stop blaming the white man.
If we turn the table upside down and put blacks in the shoes of whites and whites in the shoes of blacks, the result will be same!! The blacks will also mistreat the whites and be racists towards whites. Racism is in the human nature. It has nothing to do with skin colours. Both races are racists. Blacks are racists in disguise. Blacks are pretending not to be racists because they are at the bottom of the ladder. If they were at the top and whites at the bottom you would have seen the true wicked colour of blacks.
I would'nt blame the white man that much for all things gone wrong. He only behaved how a normal human being will act when he has so much power.

@Morpheus24

I have been reading your threads and think u have some interest in Xhosashuh
Im Ghanaian(Larteh woman, today shes a teacher in the Eastern Cape) and South African descent/Xhosa(doctor) father who went to exile in UK. Most people don't know that APARTHEID IS ABOUT PROPAGANDA. For example coloured people in Cape Town were made to believe that Xhosas were new to Cape Town. That is highly untrue.

[b]SA History

Source: cape-slavery-heritage.iblog.co.za
The earliest Xhosa connections to the Western Cape

Dominant discourse amongst white South Africans and to some extent amongst Coloured people too, tends to portray that the Xhosa are alien recent arrivals in Cape Town. The facts are very different, showing deep kinship ties between Coloured and Xhosa people. There was no Chinese wall between Khoi and amaXhosa as colonial ignorance of local culture and white nationalist propaganda suggested.

In the 1650s at the time of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, the Western Cape Quena (Khoi) honoured the Chobona (or Coboqua, or Khoebaha) King as their paramount chief. AmaXhosa visitors and traders frequented Quena camps and intermarriage was widespread

The Chobona were one of two wealthy mixed Xhosa-Quena polities based in the Eastern Cape and stretching in influence to the Western Cape which they considered to be their lands and was accepted by Quena chieftainships in the Cape Peninsula. (the other was the Gonaqua) This was acknowledged by Jan van Riebeeck in his writings but something that was never acknowledged by modern white historians until the 1980s when some academics finally broke the mould. Van Riebeeck refers to the Khoebaha as ‘supreme ruler of the whole Hottentot (Khoi) race` and ‘overlord of all the kings and chiefs of the country`. The erroneous notion of the Xhosa being alien to African culture in the Western Cape was an ideological construct which emerged much later to justify white claims to land unpopulated by black people who were then magically separated as a ‘race` from Khoi people

The hierarchy of Quena tribes and clans in the South Western Cape saw the Gorachoqua and other small splinter groups of Peninsulars being subject to the chieftainship of the Goringhaiqua. Of equal status to the Goringhaiqua were the Guriqua also known as the Chariguriqua, and both were subjects of the Chainoqua regional chieftainship. The Chainoqua were extensively intermarried with the amaXhosa. The amaXhosa regularly frequented Chainoqua camps, traded and shared know-how. The Chainoqua, like the Hessequa, Chamqua, Omaqua Attaqua, Caqua and Houtunqua all were subject to the Hamcumqua (or Inqua) King. The Hamcumqua in the Central Cape also had strong Xhosa relationships. From the time of Xhosa monarch Togu (1590-1620) the From the time of Xhosa monarch Togu (1590-1620) the Hamcumqua in turn honoured the paramount status of the Chobona in the east. Note: This outline does not cover in detail the Namaquas of the North Western Cape except in showing that the Attaqua and other groups also regarded the Hamcumqua and Chobona as paramount authority. But the Namaqua also had strong relationships with the Tswana-Bricqua.

While official histories of the past project that slave labour was used ‘instead of` Khoi labour, it is reported as widespread that in the new territories of Paarl, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch and on frontier farms, farmers supplemented scarce slave labour with Khoi labour. Adam Tas reported in 1705 the use of teams of Khoi men moving from farm to farm to participate in harvesting. Others report on Khoi having children with slaves on their farms. The neat boxes of separation projected by ideologically doctored history unfortunately still resides in many minds and can be found to be widely projected in tourism materials today. In the period 1652-1700 much of Dutch settler contact with the amaXhosa, other than shipwreck survivors, was through Quena interlocutors. Their initial contacts and agreements were with fairly petty chiefs quite low down in the ranking order. Only in 1867 the King of the Hamcumqua initiated direct contact by sending an emissary to the Cape government. His brother Gaukou of the Hessequa also opened up communication directly with Governor Simon van der Stel. European direct contact with the amaXhosa thereafter replaces the Khoi-Xhosa relationship as the main means by which amaXhosa arrive in the Peninsula. A series of aggressive incursions of Europeans into Xhosa territory began in 1702 with a group of mercenaries and continued over the next two centuries. AmaXhosa would end up as prisoners and pressed labour in Cape Town until the Apartheid regime introduced pass laws and Coloured-White labour preference policies in the Cape after 1948. Far from the oft repeated refrain that Xhosa people only started coming to the Western Cape from the former Bantustans in recent years and should be regarded as aliens, all the evidence shows that the Xhosa have a historical relationship as old as everybody else in the Western Cape. The incident of 1702 is when fourty-five white mercenaries, (mainly unmarried men from the lower echelons of white society financed by a wealthy farmer) each accompanied by a Khoi servant left Stellenbosch for deep into the eastern interior. They launched an unofficial raid into Xhosa territory killing many Xhosa and Hamcumqua in their path and seized many cattle. It is likely that some prisoners would have been taken as this was common practice for various practical reasons. While officially frowned upon by the VOC authorities many wealthy farmers benefitted from these raids as it improved their breeding stock. The record of this first act of aggression is recorded in the raiders account of the raid entitled[/b]