Runaway Slaves, Rock Art and Resistance in the Cape Colony, South Africa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The protracted colonisation of southern Africa's Cape created conditions of extreme prejudice and violence.

Like the Caribbean equivalent, however, the Cape conditions presented opportunities for the colonised to escape.

Slaves, the unwilling migrants to the Cape comprised of all sorts from the Dutch and British colonies: people with Malay, Malagasy, West African and local African heritage combined to form the labour force for the colonial project. Escaped, or 'runaway' slaves joined forces with groups of 'skelmbasters' (mixed outlaws) who themselves were descended from San-, Khoe-, and Bantu-speaking Africans (hunter-gatherers, herders and farmers). Together they mounted a stiff resistance that held up the colonial advance for many decades. Engaging in guerilla-style warfare they raided colonial farms for cattle, and especially horses and guns. The ethnogenesis of such raiding bands is increasingly coming to the attention of archaeologists discovering the art they made of themselves in the hidden rock shelters of the Cape Fold Mountain Belt, and in the Maloti mountains of today's Kingdom of Lesotho. The 'reverse gaze' provided by this painted record gives us the perfect opportunity to view something of the slave and indigenous resistance from outside the texts of the colonial written record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Approaches to Slavery and Unfree Labour in Africa   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24625