Krotoa - Our Mythic Go-Between

There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call the terminal moraine of shattered mythic systems that once structured society. They can be detected all around us. You can select any of these fragments that activate your imagination for your own use. Let it help shape your own relationship to the unconscious system out of which these symbols have come.

Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That, p.86-87

Recently, the South African Post Office, issued a postage stamp portraying a young Khoikhoi woman named Krotoa, also known as Eva to the Dutch. Krotoa became an important figure in South African history. The recognition of Krotoa on one of our postage stamps was of considerable import to me personally as it must have been for many others.

Krotoa was a 9th great grandmother of mine and as such I have a special affinity with her. Indeed she is "mother" of countless South Africans of many races. Through her we are all connected. She embodies and reflects in many ways the "shattered mythic" essence of the South African psyche. Her story is our story.

The stamp, "designed by Lien Botha, features a drawing from the Western Cape Archives portraying Krotoa and a VOC (the Dutch East India Company) ship from a painting by Aernhout Smit (1683). These images are superimposed onto a contemporary photograph taken at Milnerton beach with Table Mountain in the background. The Commemorative folder cover also features the face of Krotoa, this time encircled by a wreath of tulips which alludes to the Company's Garden" (1,2)

Krotoa is probably the most written about woman in South African history. The Post Office Souvenir Folder (3) gives us a tantalising glimpse into the life of this remarkable but enigmatic young woman...

Krotoa was born in about 1642 on Robben Island, a decade before the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck. She was the first Khoikhoi woman to appear in the European records of the early settlement at the Cape as an individual personality who interacted socially and culturally with the Dutch settlers. 

Krotoa's brother-in-law is said to have been Oudasoa, a chief of the Cochoquas. When she was young, she worked in the household of Jan van Riebeeck, the first governor of the Cape Colony. 

As a teenager, Krotoa learned Dutch and Portuguese and like her uncle, Autshumao (known as Harry or Herrie by the Dutch) - a Coringhaicona Khoikhoi leader and trader, she worked as an interpreter for the Dutch who wanted to trade goods for cattle. Krotoa's role as interpreter extended beyond trading, as she was also instrumental in negotiating with the 'Peninsulars', whose foreman was Doman, regarding conflicts around land that erupted into formal war in 1659.

Since Krotoa travelled frequently between the Dutch colony and the Cochoquas, she came to embody the notion of an in-between figure, but found little happiness in either community. On 3 May 1662, she was baptised into the Christian religion by a visiting parson, Petrus Sibelius, in the church inside the Fort de Goede Hoop. 

On 26 April 1664, she married Pieter van Meerhoff, a Danish surgeon. She was the first Khoikhoi to marry according to Christian customs, and this marriage is the first between a European and a Khoi at the Cape. In May 1665, the couple left the Cape for Robben Island where Van Meerhoff became superintendent. He died on 27 February 1668 on an expedition to Madagascar. 

On 30 September 1668 she returned to the mainland with her children. According to VOC reports, she was suffering from alcoholism and left the Castle in the settlement to be with her family. In February 1669, she was imprisoned at the Castle and then banished to Robben Island for disorderly conduct. She returned to the mainland on many occasions just to find herself once more banished to Robben Island. Three of her children survived infancy. She died on 29 July 1674 at the Cape and was buried on 30 September 1674 in the church at the Fort.
Krotoa's eldest daughter, Pieternella, married Daniel Zaaijman, a friend of Van Riebeeck's. 

They lived in Madagascar for a while, but returned to the Cape upon the departure of the VOC from the island. Because of Pieternella's documented descendants, Krotoa is regarded a significant ancestor for many South Africans across various races.

Krotoa is described as an "in-between figure" reminding me of Brighid of the Celts (4).

Like Brighid, Krotoa is the 'Lady of the Shores'. She greets the European settlers as they come ashore. The shore is one of those magical in-between places that so fascinated the Celts and certainly the Strandlopers of the Cape. These in-between places, sometimes called "thin places", such as shorelines, fountains, wells, mountain passes, doorways and so on, are go-betweens, corridors. The shore is neither dry land, nor is it the ocean, yet it is the meeting place of both. In Krotoa, Africa and Europe meets. If we consider that the land represents our solid, material world, while the sea represents the Great Cosmic womb of all life, the intuitive side of our nature, we can see that the shore is a meeting place between one world and another and a young Khoikoi girl the bridge between Black and White South Africans.

oOo

Relationship Chart

Krotoa (Eva vd Kaap) - Colin Garvie

Acknowledgements:
1. Botha's interpretation of Krotoa was derived from; Sketches representing the Native Tribes, Animals and Scenery of Southern Africa, from drawings made by the late Mr Samuel Daniell, engraved by William Daniell, London, 1820, Courtesy of Western Cape Archives and Records Service - M1052 (photograph) and J 741 DAN (publication).
2. William Fehr Collection, Iziko Museums, Cape Town - ship from Aernout Smit painting of Cape Town, 1683. Carine Zaayman, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.
3. Setempe, South African Stamp News, Vol.17, No.3, September - December 2012.
4. Wendy M. Reynolds, The Goddess Brighid, http://www.millersv.edu/~english/homepage/duncan/medfem/bride.html

Sources:
Karel Schoeman, 2009. Seven Khoi Lives. Cape Biographies of the Seventeenth Century. Pretoria: Protea.
Dan Sleigh, 1938, Eilande, recently translated from Afrikaans by Andre Brink (in Dutch: 'Stemmen uit zee'/in English: 'Islands').
SA Philatelic Services, Customer Services: http://www.postoffice.co.za, http://www.virtualpostoffice.co.za

Internet Resources:
http://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/bios/krotoa.htm
http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/p/69.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krotoa
http://ancestry24.com/eva-krotoa-van-die-kaap/
http://www.geni.com/people/Krotoa-Eva-van-die-Kaap/
http://www.southafrica.to/history/history.html



©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

The Soul of Safrica

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

-Krishnamurti

Let there be a place for everyone under the sun - and everyone to take their lawful place - even the bushman to tame nature and to dance for the rain.

-Henry Jansen alias Xam

The National Coat of Arms of South Africa captures the very essence of our land and people. As such it is our National Icon!

Every South African should reflect long and and deep on its profound symbolism. It is well worth reading about it at the "National Coat of Arms" site.   I find it profoundly spiritual. For personal reasons the Khoisan element is especially interesting which is more fully explained on the Linton Panel page   The human figures in the Coat of Arms derive from the Linton Stone, now preserved in the SA National Museum in Cape Town:

Credit: Dr Ben Smith, Wits Rock Art Institute.

The panel shows people capturing a power the /Xam called !Gi. The San sought and used this power for the benefit of their community. It allowed for the healing of the sick and for the healing of divisions within society. San rock art was believed to be rich in this special power.

Credit: Dr Ben Smith, Wits Rock Art Institute.

This delicately painted figure has power that we can all share in. It was intended to have special power as it was painted straddling a line of !Gi. Within the new Coat of Arms the figure will continue, as its painter intended, to channel its power for the benefit of all.


This caught my attention. What is this !Gi?

!Gi refers to what has been variously described as "supernatural potency", "magical power",  "spiritual energy", or simply "spirit" or "soul" and even “sorcery" depending on the context. Some Christians may have difficulty with some of these concepts but without going into the anthropological explanations or theological implications, I think of !Gi as the "wind" that Jesus speaks of, "the wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth" (John 3.8). Or we can think of it as the Shekhinah of God permeating all of Creation. Hinduism speaks of the Atman -  the Universal Life Principle, and Taoism of Qi.

"The people who possess !gi  are called !gi ten, meaning 'those who are full of supernatural power", writes Cherrie Rhodes. However we may wish to think of !Gi, the intention of our National Coat of Arms is that Holy Spirit Power is for "the benefit of the community, the healing of the broken and divided". This is the essence of ubuntu ...

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
-Desmond Tutu, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy )


To read:
Lewis-Williams, D.J. & Challis, S, Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art
Lewis-Williams, D.J. and Pearce, D.G., 2004. San Spirituality: Roots, Expressions and Social Consequences. Double Storey, Cape Town.
Solomon, A, The myth of ritual origins? Ethnography, mythology and interpretation of San rock art. South African Archaeological Bulletin, http://www.antiquityofman.com/Solomon_myth_ritual.html
Rhodes, C, Shamanism Across Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the !Kung and Ainu,


©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Mother's Day - Proudly South African

I am, proudly Scottish. My Garvie paternal ancestry goes back to Scotland and the Hebrides. However, in reality there are more German Kochs and Heuers in my genes.

Genealogy has been a very sensitive issue here in South Africa. We seem to be obsessed with race.  When Dr Hans Heese published  Groep Sonder Grense in 1985 it was received with much consternation and had a profound effect on South African society. The secret truth was that many if not most so-called white, settler South Africans of European descent were not as "lily white" as first believed. They also sported African and Asian blood in their veins. Heese's work was later published in English as Cape Melting Pot. It is a must read for the South African genealogist and historian.

I am of African descent too! I am related to Eva Krotöa as many Afrikaans speaking South Africans are. She was my tenth great-grandmother. Eva was of Khoikhoi descent born on Robben Island…

Colin G Garvie (1946)
+--Cornelia Elizabeth Koch (1919)
+----Bartholomeus Stephanus Koch (1886)
+------Bartholomeus Stephanus Koch (1843)
+--------Alida Christina Diederiks (1813)
+----------Hendrina Catharina Bruynswaard (1788)
+------------Bartholomeus Bruynswaard (1763)
+--------------Johanna Regina Zaayman (1745)
+----------------Bartholomeus Zaayman (1717)
+------------------Pieter Zaayman  (c1688)
+--------------------Pieternella Meerhoff (c1655)
+----------------------EVA KROTÖA(c1642)

Pieternella's story has been beautifully recorded in Dalene Matthee's novel, Pieternella, Daughter of Eva. Eva Krotöa is equally fascinating. Her story is related in Trudie Bloem's book (to mention one), Krotöa - Eva, The Woman from Robben Island.

I share Andre van Rensburg's view, "The nearest I have come to royalty or chiefdom is through Eva who was an indigenous Khoikhoi (Hottentot)."

Andre writes...

"Eva also known as Krotoa was born c 1642 at the Cape. She was a member of the Goringhaikona. Strandloper (beachcomber), Hottentot, (this particular tribe consisted about fifty individuals according to Malherbe). Her uncle Herry also known as Autohoemao was the captain of this tribe. She rode on the back of an ox - denoting a high station amongst Khoikhoi. Like the biblical Eva she can be considered to be the stammoeder of the Afrikaner (at least mine), since her union in marriage with Pieter van Meerhoff was the commencement of the Afrikaner, having their roots in Europe but they are also the seed of Africa."

More about Eva's life and influence can be read at Andre van Rensburg's pages:
http://www.oocities.com/athens/rhodes/1266/genetic-eva.htm
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=erasmussa&id=I1358
Also see: Wikipedia

Eva, my tenth great-grandmother from Robben Island, connects me to Africa in as much as I am connected to Scotland and Germany through others. I am a South African.  If I have any land claim at all, it would be through Eva's ancestors, to all the beaches of the Cape of Good Hope!

I am proudly Scottish but proudly South African too!

God bless Africa! God bless our Mothers!



Picture: Painting from PW Laidler, Growth and Government of Cape Town, 1939
©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Holy Week Reading: Alex Boraine, A Life in Transition

Shortly after the terror attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City, I was startled to read in our local press:

The Star, Johannesburg, Sept 14, 2001 (AFP) - South Africans living and working  in downtown New York gave accounts Friday of narrow escapes after the attacks on the United States, but officials said no South African death toll could yet be given....   Witnesses to the tragedy included Alex Boraine, former  co-chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up in 1996 to deal with apartheid atrocities. Boraine, who now heads the International Centre for Transitional  Justice based on the 33rd floor of a building opposite the WTC, told the The Star he left the building and was about 500 metres (yards) away when the first tower of the WTC collapsed.  "We were running for our lives with this huge cloud pouring down  between the buildings like lava, black and white smoke, cement, dust, smothering everything," he said.

I had met Dr Boraine before. It gave that tragic event an immediacy as if I were there myself.

Alex Boraine relates that harrowing experience again in his A Life in Transition. So I consciously decided this year, for Holy Week, to read Dr Boraine's autobiography. Not only did the title seem theologically appropriate for Good Friday and Easter but the title was also so personally relevant. I was in transition too.

I wasn't disappointed. Dr Boraine covers familiar territory that resonated with me. Others will too, especially those who like Dr Boraine, responded to a call of God. His early boyhood and "humble beginnings" struck more than just a chord within me. As someone interested in family stories and histories his childhood experiences and influences more than fascinated me. Of course those who have experienced a call to the Methodist ministry in particular will identify with his sometimes humorous account of candidating, of probation, serving congregations with familiar names and attitudes, and the unforgettable formative years of academic training and social life at Rhodes University. It will appeal to many a minister. Many will relate to his progressive realisation that things were not right in South Africa. How naïve we were in our evangelical zeal. Some will know what it meant to be under Security Police (BOSS) surveillance and to be loved and sometimes vilified by the very people and leaders one was called to serve and shepherd. Many older South Africans will recognise familiar names and places. Once I supplied at Klerksdorp Methodist where the Rev Boraine was previously a probationer minister and still remembered. Today I worship at Durban North Methodist from where the Rev Boraine left to study at Oxford. He left his mark on many a congregation and through his work in the Youth Department impacted the lives of countless young people.

Dr Boraine recounts his election in 1971 to the highest office in the Methodist Church to become President of the Methodist Conference. For me that was also providential. Thereafter, seconded to industry, he became increasingly involved in opposition politics and was elected to Parliament. After a visit by a delegation from the Church to clarify his position as a minister, he writes: "I received a letter informing me that I was no longer 'a minister in good standing'. Frankly, it didn't worry me, because I didn't feel I needed to be an ordained minister, or use the title of 'reverend' in order to do the work that I felt was important and urgent." However, one senses his deep disappointment. One ponders what if it had been different?

The rest is history...the name Alex Boraine will remain forever imprinted in the dramatic story of transition in South Africa. His contribution nationally toward a peaceful transformation to democracy in South Africa as politician, negotiator, and facilitator especially as Deputy Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission together with the Chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was historic. And internationally too, as the Founding President of the esteemed International Centre for Transitional Justice. This honest testimony of a young man once called by God to be an "agent of change" will challenge all people in transition not least of all the Church he once headed.

I have no close personal connections with Alex Boraine other than that it was on the 1st November 1971 that Dr Alex Boraine, the then President of the Methodist Conference, wrote me confirming that he had designated me in 1972 to go to South West Africa (now Namibia) as a "Presidentially Appointed Candidate". "I do hope that this will be a very exciting and creative year for you," he wrote. My very first appointment and acceptance into the Methodist Church of Southern Africa came from the Rev Dr Alex Boraine. The following year, 1973, the Methodist Conference accepted me as a Probationer Minister and moved us back from Walvis Bay to Bedfordview. It was the 50th Anniversary of the Bedfordview Methodist Church. The Bedfordview Leaders invited Dr Boraine to be our guest "50th Anniversary Preacher". That was the first and only time we met.

Reading Dr Boraine's  autobiography, I am challenged by two somewhat disturbing thoughts:

First, in the context of the Good Friday events, I ask myself, where was justice and fundamental human rights exercised in the trial of Jesus, two thousand years ago? Was there transitional justice? One could say Easter Sunday speaks to that!

Second, acutely aware that the broader South African Church is grappling within itself with its own basic rights issues... equity issues; parity of stipends and pensions issues; gender issues; sexual orientation issues; just deployment issues;  inter-faith relationship issues; refugee issues; etc....  I wonder, is there not a crying, desperate need for transitional justice and transformation within the Church too if there is ever ultimately going to be healing for our Land?

Past President of the Methodist Conference, Dr Alex Boraine, continues to challenge the conscience of  both Church and Nation. It did me this Holy Week!

I heartily commend A Life in Transition!

For more on "Transitional Justice" see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_justice



©Colin G Garvie
HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za