History486

The primary documents and the novel “A Chain of Voices” by Andre Brink demonstrate that the racial segregation in South Africa between 1652 until 1857 shaped the society in the following centuries. The novel deepens the understanding of slavery as well as the relations between Europeans and the people originally from the Cape region. The author provides detailed insights to perspectives of many characters that all represent typical figures of society at that time. The documents are individual experiences, laws by the colonists, and historical facts provided as an introduction to the sources. It is very noticeable in all of the assigned readings that racial segregation played an important role in South Africa’s society and that already at this time the indigenous people had to suffer from restrictions of the whites.

The introductory part makes clear that these two centuries had a remarkable influence on the following centuries. For example, the “mixed-race Cape Coloured” (p.2) people and the Khoikhoi-Dutch relations were a deciding factor in South Africa’s early history according to the author. Also the distinction between the Khoikhoi and the imported slaves by themselves became important in the 18th century which shows again that there was already a high sense of racial segregation in early South African history. The Eastern Cape frontier which is described as the line between “black and white” (p.4) indicates the separation due to races. The wars between the Xhosa and the Europeans contributed to racial friction which the author calls “a key locus in which the South African racial system found definition” (p. 5).

The primary documents are about expansion of the European’s power over the native South Africans, how they viewed them, and make clear why they were interested in the Cape region as a colony. In the first source, Jan van Riebeeck describes the work of his interpreter Eva in 1658. She helped the Dutch to bring them closer to the indigenous people so...