Speaking for the slave: Britain and the Cape, 1751-1838

Speaking for ttie slave: Britain and the Cape, 1751 -1838 Postcolonial studies has asked the question "Can the subaltern speak? ", but has focused less strongly on the strategies by which the subaltern is prevented from securing a hearing. The textual and social strategies used to prevent Cape slaves in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from voicing their plight have been neglected, though both proand anti-slavery lobbyists were eloquent. To present the slave as one whose inferiority rendered him incapable of pleading his cause was a device of the pro-slavery group; to pretend that consultation was impossible was another, though people who offered this defence were often surrounded by slaves. Others, accepting and profiting from the inequalities of a class-stratified society, were unable to perceive any but the extreme experiences of an unfree condition as constituting injustice. Anti-slavery campaigners were rarely in favour of the slave's being consulted: they preferred to condemn their political rivals, the slave-owners. Abolition found many of them searching for arguments to maintain the inequalities of society, and especially to prevent former serfs from securing a hearing. 1. The silenced subaltern Since postcolonial theory became important to all critics o f Third World literature, and to many critics of literature in general, subahem studies, particularly identified with the name of Gayatri Spivak, but a preoccupation of many other critics, has become a concern of such critics. A gap in the textual production of a community, a failure of a particular group or category of persons within that community to produce text, has become significant; critics feel LIterator 20(1]April 1999:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279 103 Speaking for 1he s/ov^; Britain and the Cafpe, 1751-1838 increasingly the obligation to study, not only text, but the absence of text. They are concerned not only with recorded discourse, but with the recovery of excluded discourse. As Spivak has claimed in her seminal essay, in order properly to understand a people, the question must be asked, “Can the subaltern speak?”. She draws attention to the fact that “in the context o f colonialist production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak ...” (Spivak, 1995:28). 2. The silenced slave Spivak’s interest in her essay is finally in the period of postcolonialism, and in the obligation to grant speech to individuals and groups previously ignored. Within this essay, my own purposes are different but related: they are to extend backwards into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century a specialised area of subaltern studies, that o f the process of “silencing”. Few words spoken by slaves, the group on which I shall focus, and those usually the heavily censored ones o f court records, survive from this period. I shall therefore look at the attitudes and practices of power-holders which have led to the exclusion of these voices and interests from the political and historical processes. The voices o f slaves, whose rights are legally as well as customarily fewer than those of even the lowest class o f free people, are usually the least heeded in their day, and the least likely to be recorded for posterity. In the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries, though slaves were “silenced” in this sense, slavery was a matter o f debate. Speech by slaves concerning their condition was replaced by speech by those who had an interest in interpreting that condition in terms of their own interests. Elsewhere in her work Spivak remarks in a discussion of the rights o f the oppressed to produce literary texts, “For me, the question ‘Who should speak?’ is less crucial than ‘Who will listen?’” (Spivak, 1990:59). Her remark draws attention to the metaphoric quality of the term “silencing”: o f course the subalterns o f whom she writes speak, as do the slaves o f the period which I shall consider. But what remains for consideration in our own day is the discourse of those who refused to listen to them. In this discourse, the strategies of exclusion are revealed: some of the writers at whom I shall look lived amongst slaves, but nevertheless claimed that they were necessarily ignorant o f the attitudes and desires o f those slaves. Others (James Boswell is the example here), though they profited from the slave trade, not only avoided direct contact with slaves, but spoke with an assumed authority about their condition. 3. Texts written in English in Britain and the Cape Partly because I wish to argue that the sfrategies of exclusion which I shall consider were part of a continuing British political practice, extended to the colonies, I shall confine myself in this article to texts written in English. Exception to this are a single quotation from the diaries o f the German 104 ISSN 0258-2279 LIterator 20(1) April 1999:103-117

increasingly the obligation to study, not only text, but the absence o f text.They are concerned not only with recorded discourse, but with the recovery of excluded discourse.As Spivak has claimed in her seminal essay, in order properly to understand a people, the question must be asked, "Can the subaltern speak?".She draws attention to the fact that "in the context o f colonialist production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak ..." (Spivak, 1995:28).

The silenced slave
Spivak's interest in her essay is finally in the period o f postcolonialism, and in the obligation to grant speech to individuals and groups previously ignored.Within this essay, my own purposes are different but related: they are to extend backwards into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century a specialised area o f subaltern studies, that o f the process o f "silencing".Few words spoken by slaves, the group on which I shall focus, and those usually the heavily censored ones o f court records, survive from this period.I shall therefore look at the attitudes and practices o f power-holders which have led to the exclusion of these voices and interests from the political and historical processes.The voices o f slaves, whose rights are legally as well as customarily fewer than those of even the lowest class o f free people, are usually the least heeded in their day, and the least likely to be recorded for posterity.In the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries, though slaves were "silenced" in this sense, slavery was a matter o f debate.Speech by slaves concerning their condition was replaced by speech by those who had an interest in interpreting that condition in terms of their own interests.
Elsewhere in her work Spivak remarks in a discussion o f the rights o f the oppressed to produce literary texts, "For me, the question 'Who should speak?' is less crucial than 'Who will listen?'"(Spivak, 1990:59).Her remark draws attention to the metaphoric quality o f the term "silencing": o f course the subalterns o f whom she writes speak, as do the slaves o f the period which I shall consider.But what remains for consideration in our own day is the discourse of those who refused to listen to them.In this discourse, the strategies o f exclusion are revealed: some o f the writers at whom I shall look lived amongst slaves, but nevertheless claimed that they were necessarily ignorant o f the attitudes and desires o f those slaves.Others (James Boswell is the example here), though they profited from the slave trade, not only avoided direct contact with slaves, but spoke with an assumed authority about their condition.

Texts written in English in Britain an d the C a p e
Partly because I wish to argue that the sfrategies of exclusion which I shall consider were part o f a continuing British political practice, extended to the colonies, I shall confine m yself in this article to texts written in English.Exception to this are a single quotation from the diaries o f the German missionaries at Genadendal, whose words make it clear that they were aware of the ethos which I describe and Lichtenstein's Travels in Southern African in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806 (1828), which was first translated into English in 1812, close to its original publication in German, and which I include because its author is in conscious debate with John Barrow in his Travels into the Interior o f Southern Africa (1802 & 1806).The political practice o f exclusion of voices, as feminist as well as postcolonial history and criticism have made us aware, has been not been purely British, but almost general.It has been related to the will o f power-holders at once to serve their own interests and to maintain that they are not infringing the rights of other groups.Nevertheless the slavery debate in Britain and its colonies in the period 1770-1834 seems to me to deserve attention from critics interested in the "silencing" process.Where this debate is public, the slave is rigorously excluded from it, even by the writer/ speaker who strongly opposes slavery.

Silencing as a practice in "unequal" societies
This exclusion, even by a man like Barrow who is pleading for an alteration in the condition of the unfree, must lead us to question whether bondage and "silencing" can ever effectively be opposed in a society which denies political voice to the majority o f its members: women and the unpropertied classes in general in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were censured for analysing or even describing their condition.Moreover, the period o f which I have chosen to write, in the wake o f the French revolution o f 1789, is one when British men o f the ruling and professional classes are particularly defensive of class and gender privilege.Women o f these classes, legally dependent on men and conditioned to see their interests as identical with theirs, tended to a similar conservatism.The single woman within the writers whom I shall cite, free to an extent that a man holding public office is not, but to an extent a prisoner within social and political structures, will allow me to question whether opposition to silencing can be mounted within such a group.

David Hume writes of slavery, 1751
The European roots o f the racism which could provide an ideology tolerant of slavery were explored and theorised by the philosopher David Hume, in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles o f Morals, first published in 1751.He claims that the motivation which underlies morality is "usefiilness", that is to say, that men act "morally" in their dealings with one another because such behaviour serves their interests.In his section on justice he seems to consider appropriate behaviour in the free towards their slaves: Were there a species of creature intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest Llterator 20[1]April 1999:103-117  ISSN 0258-2279 provocation, make us feel the effects o f their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws o f hum anity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, rightly speaking, lie under any restraint o f justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive o f such arbitrary lords .... the restraints o f justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy (Hume, 1951:190-191).
Hume goes on to state that "this is plainly the situation o f men, with regard to animals", but his adjective "rational" makes it clear that he is not primarily concerned with pets or farm stock.Nevertheless, by remaining on the theoretical plane implied in the word "creatures" he has avoided the necessity o f citing exact knowledge o f enslaved peoples.His views, especially his belief that "usefulness" is the only shaping force in relations between people, are non-Christian, and Protestant Christianity was to remain the official religion o f the British Isles for long afler his death.Many members o f the ruling class in the period, nevertheless, though they would have made no public renunciation of religion, were influenced in their conduct by such ideas.Utility, however, in Britain, was not a very strong motivation for slave-ownership: in the Cape Colony, as we shall see, where slavery was already established, it became strong enough to motivate British men and women to tolerate and even at times to defend slavery."For most o f the 1700s," writes Linda Colley (1996:371), "Britons had seen no inconsistency whatever between trumpeting their freedom at home and buying men, women and children from trading posts in Africa to sell abroad".

Johnson an d Boswell debate slavery, 1777
James Boswell records in his Life o f Johnson (1961:876-7)  To abolish a status, w hich in all ages GOD has sanctioned, and man has continued, w ould not only be robbery to an innumerable class o f our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion o f which it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state o f life; especially now when their passage to the W est-lndies and their treatm ent there is hum anely regulated.To abolish that trade would be to -shut the gates o f m ercy on mankind (878).
Boswell's argument is full of flaws: in what sense can God be considered to have "sanctioned" slavery?Where is his evidence that "Aiiican Savages" would be murdered were they not enslaved?How, since he has never visited Africa or Jamaica, does he know that the life o f a plantation slave in the West Indies is happier that that of an African at home?And the claim that to abolish slavery would be to rob slave owners and fraders depends on our accepting the premise on which the institution rests (and which Johnson has already refuted), that one man may justifiably own another.Behind Boswell's case is the doctrine o f racial difference: "African savages" are lesser in their capacities and therefore in their rights, and may be brought to "a much happier state o f life" when in bondage to whites.He is not disinterested: he writes o f the folly and evil o f abolishing "so very important and necessary a branch o f commercial interest" (Boswell, 1961:878).
It is easy to understand why this discourse o f assertion, o f the repetition of generally-used defences, would be adopted by the British abroad, when they found themselves in territories where slavery (and later economic subjection of particular groups) was perceived as necessary to the economy.But Johnson's belief in shared humanity, and in the right to freedom o f all but those who are found guilty o f serious crime (and although he had personal knowledge of enslaved people, he does not cite it), also continues as an influence.

The slavery debate at ttie Cape: the governor's view
The terms on which the Cape was ceded to the British in 1795 established only an interim government, since their right to rule there was officially based on the temporary presence of the Prince o f Orange in Britain as a refugee.Any change in the laws relating to slavery, or to the near-serfdom o f the Khoikhoi on Dutch farms, was forbidden by the articles of cession.The British, coming from a country where the condition o f slavery had been outlawed for more than twenty years, found themselves surrounded by slaves, and more or less obliged, if they wanted servants, to become slave owners.
In 1797 a civil governor.Lord Macartney, and his staff arrived in Cape Town to take over the administration.David Hume.In a colony where the supply of free artisans and labourers was small, and where the population had recently been increased by "between four and five thousand Men, a navy o f eighteen or twenty ships o f war, an increasing number o f trading vessels and merchants" (Macartney: Private Letter, July 24 1797), he felt him self forced to sanction the import o f slaves.In defence o f his act, he wrote to Henry Dundas, the British Minister for War, offering a view of slavery which resembles Boswell's: The question was, w hether in a state o f actual necessity, w e were to listen m ost to the dictates o f good sense, and public duty, or to the whims and ravings o f ignorance and fanaticism.-It appeared to me an indispensable obligation, rather to provide for the subsistence o f the People comm itted to my care, and o f His M ajesty's fleet and arm y in esse, than to argue with m yself w hat m ight be the possible felicity o f freedom to the unknown Blackam oors.I paid, however, such respect to the prejudices o f the day, as to confine my licence to a single Ship, and shall be cautious in extending it, till the proper authority shall have decided this point, w hich seems to have been at issue for some years past betw een rashness and experience, thoughtfulness and reflection, ancient w isdom and m odem philosophy.In the mean time, as the slaves for this colony are brought from the short distance o f M ozam bique and M adagascar, they have to encounter neither the hobgoblins o f the middle passage, n or the scramble o f a w est India market.The negros in general w hom I have seen here, appear to me to be rem arkably w ell treated.Their food is little inferior to that o f their masters, and their labor much less than an English peasant's.As to sentiment, I im agine them to have sufficient to teach them their condition, and to convince them, that i f it was made better, that o f others m ust be made w orse; for as long as Providence shall think fit that some men should be w iser and stronger than others, so long m ust the duller and the weaker subm it to its decrees, and be content with inferiority and dependence (M acartney: Private Letter, July 24 1797), I have presented Macartney's case at length because it is an excellent example o f an official British colonial pro-slavery discourse, strongly motivated by the Humean concept o f "usefulness", and by a token sense o f the humane.The fact that it is in a private letter, as opposed to an official dispatch, shows Macartney's awareness that slavery in British colonies is a matter o f debate in Britain itself He labels the anti-slavery lobby "ignorance and fanaticism", as opposed to the "good sense and public duty" which characterise his own position.A further antithesis, between "the People committed to my care" and "His M ajesty's fleet and army" as opposed to "unknown Blackamoors" marks the beginning o f an "othering" process similar to that implied by Boswell's phrase "African Savages".And my earlier contention that a society which customarily denies rights to large groups within it will be particularly ready to silence slaves is upheld here: the comparison with the "'English peasant" is a reminder that in England similar or worse conditions are tolerated.Macartney's physical position vis á vis African slaves is, however, different from Boswell's when he generalises about savages.At the Cape Macartney is in daily contact with such people: why does he not ask them how they feel about their lives o f servitude?And if he cannot know them, how can he assert that they belong to "the duller and the weaker" o f mankind?The answer must be that he is motivated to preserve intact assumptions about Cape slaves which resemble those o f Hume about the "species o f creature" which need not be treated "justly".

What Lady Anne Barnard saw -and did not see
Macartney claims that slaves brought to the Cape are fortimate in that they avoid the Middle Passage.This in a literal sense must be true, but Lady Anne Barnard, living at the Cape at the same time, records that she has witnessed a landing of slaves, and spoken to the white clerk who was supervising it about the slaves' conditions on the voyage from Mozambique: "How comes that that six hundred and odd slaves coud' come in one ship?-another shrug, they must have been certainly much crowded, but no great number died on the voyage -how many?-only 50" (Barnard: March 10 1800).What seems to be vital here is that the writer is willing to record an actual experience; witness to a slave landing, she writes as she sees.She cannot, of course, understand the speech of these Mozambiquans, but it is remarkable that she never, despite the generous compassion which is one o f her leading qualities, asks one of the slaves who works in her own house what he thinks o f his condition.When she records the words o f slaves, they are speaking in Dutch to her about her domestic concerns.
Though Lady Anne was a friend o f Macartney, and would never have conceived o f herself as in opposition to him, she is the author o f a text which, however imintentionally, by offering a factual record o f observations o f slaves, opposes and discredits the Macartney/Boswell kind o f pro-slavery rhetoric.1 have shown elsewhere that she offers in her diaries a detailed account o f individual slaves, and is willing to discuss the areas of their lives which most writers, for their own political purposes, ignore (Lenta, 1992:55-68).Slave sexuality is a major one: she explicitly opposes the general belief that slaves are promiscuous and undiscriminating in their sexuality, explaining that " [amongst the Slaves] there is no marrying or giving in marriage, tho' there is often constancy from choice" (Barnard, 1995:189).Equally she discredits the idea that slaves are more licentious than whites by recording that they are often the subjected partners of British men, the head o f the garrison and later governor, Francis Dundas, her own brother John and her husband's secretary, Hercules Ross, amongst them.But since she is loyal to a society which tolerates men o f the upper class who Speaking for fhe sIoi/ q : Britain and the Cape.1751-1838 take concubines from lower classes, she does not censure the white men, nor particularly pity the slave women.
She does, however, observe that the slaves possess a strict moral code, which is different from and indeed oppositional to that o f their masters: ... a slave will much rather suffer death than give up his accom plice .... every thing depends on the first principles o f right & w rong that is instilld in the mind, the principle o f good faith & secrecy in thieving is inculcated in the black infant with its mothers milk for it hears how much its Faeder has bom to screen Scipio or Brutus -it caiuiot hear thieving condemned because it is not esteem d a sin amongst the slaves, they love the pleasures the pilferd goods purchases & woud gladly take the pleasure at the expence o f the flogging, they know they will not be Hanged, or floggd more than they bear as they are the property o f the master & he will not hang them for his own sake -(Barnard June 22 1799).
Puzzled by the fact that her slaves, who could confidently ask her for tobacco, wine or small sums o f money, prefer to steal them, she nevertheless refiises to interpret their actions beyond condemning them as sinfiil.The idea that sub jected people may desire, not favoiu-s iVom their masters, but a degree of autonomy, and that their thieving represents rebellion against their condition is one which her class position prevents her from entertaining.As a lifelong employer o f servants whose class position prevents them from aspiring to change their rank she can only pity what is particular to slavery, that is to say, the kidnapping from their families and country, exposure at the slave auction, or brutal punishment.
She is aware that the prohibition o f knowledge for those who might bear witness is one o f the ways in which slavery is rendered defensible, and outlines her own contrary ethos when she is told that slaves have no feelings and enjoy being probed before being auctioned: ... as one is told many things which on closer inspection, and judging with an impartial & investigating eye into countinances one does not fmd to be true, I w ishd to consider the countinances o f each poor slave, look at his eyes, & try to discover if there were any m inds am ongst them (M ar 14 1799).
The auction is peculiar to slaves, and she wishes to investigate it; she does not avail herself o f the many opportunities for probing the attitudes o f those who work in her house.It is notable that it is only domestic (not plantation) slavery that he condemns, and that it is the corruption o f the master's children which preoccupies him.And in his "walk" through the city, when he comes across a slave auction, his preoccupation is the depiction o f a pathetic scene when mother and infant are separated, rather than any indignation at the general condition o f slavery.He has an evident commercial purpose in his accounts o f the different enslaved peoples o f the Cape.He divides them into groups -Mozambiquers, Malays, Malabars and Hottentots -and generalises, in a manner which one can only call ethnotouristic, about the appearance and behaviour of each group.

9, Robert Semple's ethno-tourism
Observe the one who comes next.Even at a distance his upright form, his nervous make, his free step announces the Malay, or native o f the Island o f Java, the king o f slaves.As he approaches, mark his long, coal black hair w hich hangs h a lf down his back, his yellow complexion, his glancing and jealous eye, w hich looks askance upon slavery.He knows well that from his class are formed the house-painters, the musicians, the ingenious workmen o f the Cape.He is proud o f this distinction, and glories in the name o f M alay (Semple. 1968:47-48).
Cape Malay slaves, already distinguished for their skills, made arguments like those o f Hume, Boswell and Macartney concerning "savages" or "the duller and weaker" of mankind impossible.Semple (1968:48) writes that the Malay, beaten or insulted, may finally "rush upon his unguarded master with his kris or crooked dagger and stab him ..." It must have been hard not to see this as a spirit reacting to intolerable and undeserved oppression, but Semple's little book "sells" Cape slavery as a piece of armchair tourism: this is one o f the horrifying but exciting phenomena o f a far-off land.He is willing in this sense to "market" the slaves, picturesque in their dress and exotic in their behaviour.(Lichtenstein, 1812), was one of the party sent to re-establish Dutch rule at the Cape in 1803.These two writers belong to a debate ostensibly about slavery but really about rival colonial regimes.Both are concerned with slaves and bound Khoikhoi workers, whose position relative to their employers is such that they can be included in the same discussion as slaves.

Barrow and Lichtenstein debate for and against serfdom
Barrow, a member o f M acartney's staff, undertook and reported on the travels on which he later based his books on the orders of Macartney, who was already contemplating the large scale account o f the Cape entitled "Sketches o f the Political and Commercial History o f the Cape", in which the potential o f the colony for British settlement is assessed.Mary Louise Pratt, in her discussion of Barrow's Travels, though she is not unaware that they share a common origin with the Macartney Sketches, does not understand that this is the reason why the indigenous peoples are "traces on the landscape" (Pratt, 1992:59).Nor does she seem to realise that the Cape Dutch are reviled as competitor-colonists. Barrow, partly at least because on this occasion his mission is to discredit the Dutch, has a different set o f assumptions about slavery from those revealed in the governor's private letter quoted above.In his preface, preparing his readers for his account o f the Khoikhoi, he writes that "there are still to be met with hordes o f natives, who, though suffering unmerited ill usage, have yet escaped the horrors o f slavery" (Barrow, 1806:v).The implication seems to be that slavery and the condition o f indigenes in the Cape Colony in the period are different, and the sufferings o f the Khoikhoi less than those o f the slaves, but his text in fact advances the opposite argument.The strongest possibility seems to be that he regarded the position o f Cape slaves, whose ancestors, or who themselves had been brought by sea into the colony, as worse because more difficult to alter, since it could only be changed by a shift in government policies.The Khoikhoi's bondage to their employers was in his view an abuse.Government might more easily intervene to regulate contracts and to make them aware that they were being duped.
Part o f the value o f Barrow's book is that it distinguishes between the types of slavery and serfdom present in the Colony, and at times obscured by differences of discourse which were not fortuitous.He describes the peoples imported from Mozambique and sold on arrival, the San prisoners o f war who have been

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Ltterator 2(^1) April 1999:103-117 rendered slaves by government decree, and the "Hottentots" (Khoikhoi) who serve the Dutch on contracts which deprive them and their children o f freedom o f movement, and oblige them to accept small reward for their services and brutal punishment for transgression.He contradicts the suggestion o f his preface that the Khoikhoi are fortunate in avoiding slavery; they are, he says, o f less value to the farmers than slaves, and therefore worse treated.A farmer may beat them, cut them, fire small shot into their legs, and care little for their deaths, "for though they are to all extents and purposes his slaves, yet they are not transferable property" (Barrow, 1806:94).He explains the condition o f the San within the Colony: [the Dutch govem inent o f the Cape] decreed that such o f the Bosjemans as should be taken alive in the expeditions made against them, were to be distributed by lot among the comm andant and his party, with whom they were to remain in a state o f servitude during their lives (Barrow, 1806:189-190).
The main means o f Khoikhoi subjection is the establishment o f settler farms which make nomadic pastoralism impossible, but the consensus amongst their Dutch employers that they be employed only on contracts which grant them small wages is also crucial, as is the law which stipulates that any child bom to them whilst in employment shall be the property o f the farmer for twenty-five years.Barrow (1806:93) writes with compassion: These weak people, the most helpless, and in their present condition the m ost wretched, o f the human race, duped out o f their possessions, their country, and their liberty, have entailed upon their miserable offspring a state o f existence to which that o f slavery might bear the comparison o f happiness.
Even Khoikhoi who work by the year on Dutch farms, rather than on a longer contracts, may find their children claimed by the Dutch farmer, who will simply prevent their parents from taking them when they leave his farm (1806:9óý "Othering", in the sense o f viewing a whole people as undifferentiated, innately inferior and properly subjected, is an essential part o f the Dutch attitude to the Khoikhoi: Barrow (1806:395-6) writes o f a Khoikhoi woman and her baby who were beaten almost to death by a farmer as a revenge on her people for the rebellion o f 1799.
Because to be a Christian is to be a member o f a group whose members, at least ideally, are united by mutual love and duty, Christianity has become in the relations between master and bondsman the marker between Dutch self and Khoikhoi other: a farmer who had kept a Khoikhoi child in fetters was punished by the British by being him self fettered, and spent the night screaming, "My God!Is this a way to treat Christians?" (Barrows, 1806:396-398).In the period, a slave or indigene had to receive official permission to receive baptism, which Llterator 20(1} April 1999:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279 seems to have conferred something like assimilado status.Lady Anne Barnard, for example, records in June 1800 the gratitude o f a black woman to whom her husband had given permission to be baptised, and who now trades in Cape Town.At least, the status of Christian was an obstacle to the "othering" process, and therefore the conversion of slaves and Hottentots to Christianity was often opposed by the Cape Dutch.The Hermhut missionaries at Genadendal, in their report on the reception o f Hottentots into the church in August 1793, summarise the belief in the equal brotherhood o f Christians, and inadvertently explain the antagonism between missionaries and farmers which was aheady developing: "On the 31st we told the baptized that they should no longer call us masters, but brothers" (Bredekamp et ai., 1992:130), Lichtenstein's Travels in Southern Africa in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806 explicitly opposes Barrow, who, the author claims, "dips his pen in the bitterest gall" when describing the Dutch (Lichtenstein, 1812:50-51).He describes a slave a hundred and twenty years old, fiill o f gratitude to his master who maintains him though he can no longer work, and is insistent that that Barrow's "odious representations ... o f the behaviour o f masters ... have rather been taken from particular cases which ought to have been cited as exceptions" (Lichtenstein, 1812:61).We meet a distinguished colonist, Jacob van Reenen, who maintains an orchestra o f slaves, as do many other Cape families.Lichtenstein comments that "there are many freed-men at the Cape who gain their living by instructing the slaves in music: but neither master nor scholars knows a single note: they all play entirely by ear" (Lichtenstein, 1812:34).
Lichtenstein believes him self to be revealing the limits o f slave ingenuity, but the prohibition on slaves' learning to read is almost universal.

The C a p e Dutch as gentry or peasantry
Lichtenstein (1812:74) travels through the colony, describing the Dutch in terms appropriate to a benevolent rural gentry."A strict regard to the bodily heahh o f his slaves we observed indeed to be conspicuous throughout every part o f the worthy farmer's establishment" .When it comes to the Khoikhoi, Lichtenstein (1812:84-85) quotes the account o f a farmer named Rossouw, who complains o f them in language which J.M. Coetzee in his "Idleness in South Africa" (1988: 12-35) has made familiar to us, "When they are reduced to great want, they come to him and other inhabitants o f the neighbourhood to offer their services.... They cannot at the same time be accused o f any actual wickedness -their characteristic vice is extreme indolence" .The implication is not that, as Barrow has claimed (and Macartney in his account o f the Cape strongly supports this view), the terms on which they are obliged to work are unattractive, but that they fail in their obligation to take permanent service under the Dutch.
We must take seriously Lichtenstein's point that it is on the selection of evidence that Barrow labour depends -but this is equally true about his own conclusions.In both men's texts there are clues to the reasons behind the differences between them.Barrow believes that the model which should form the behaviour o f the rural Dutch is that o f a diligent, labouring peasantry; his unvoiced implication is that authority over others is appropriate only to the British.And like Semple, though much more cogently, he bases his objections to serfdom on the fact that it degrades the master: The boor notwithstanding has his enjoyments: he is absolute master of a domain of several miles in extent, and he lords it over a few miserable slaves or Hottentots without control ... Unwilling to work, and unable to think, with a mind disengaged from every sort of care and reflexion, indulging to excess in the gratification of every sensual appetite, the African peasant grows to an unweildy size, and is carried off the stage by the first inflammatory disease that attacks him (Lichtenstein, 1806:28-29).
Lichtenstein, as I have pointed out, sees the Dutch as rural gentry, and the proper masters o f Khoikhoi and other subject peoples.Present day historians have agreed that this was the sense which the Cape Dutch had o f themselves: Dooling (1994:32) comments that [t]he eighteenth century saw the emergence of a "Cape gentry", and Morton has shown that the trekboers felt entitled to supply themselves with slaves from the indigenous peoples whom they encountered (Eldredge & Morton, 1994:1-5).

The abolition of slavery and Its aftermath: Pringle and Baines
Slavery was to be abolished legally in 1834, and to disappear more gradually as a reality from South Africa.The debate concerning the rights o f the racial Other continued into the nineteenth century in a manner closely related to the slavery/serfdom debate: Thomas Pringle, an 1820 settler, in his Narrative o f a Residence in South Africa (1834), records an occasion on which he met a Xhosa woman condemned to servitude "for crossing the line o f prescribed demarcation [on the frontier between the colony and Xhosaland] without permission".He describes the woman, hearing her sentence, as begging for mercy: The language, to which she appeared to give ftill and forcible intonation, was highly musical and sonorous; her gestures were natural, graceful and impressive, and her large dark eyes, and handsome bronze countenance, were fiill of eloquent expression.Sometimes she pointed back towards her own country, and then to her children.Sometimes she raised her tones aloud, and shook her clenched hand, as if she denounced our injustice and threatened us with the vengeance of her tribe.Then again she would melt into tears, as if imploring clemency, and mourning for her helpless little ones.Some of the villagers who had gathered round, being half or whole Gaffers, understood her speech, and interpreted its substance in Dutch to the missionary, but he could do nothing to aher her destination, and could only return kind w ords to console her (Pringle, 1986(Pringle, (1834): 13)): 13).
What is most interesting in this passage is Pringle's attempt to give speech to the Xhosa woman; unable to translate, he interprets -we might say fictionalisesher utterances.The assertion o f govenmient which informs her sentence is that, not withstanding the small class o f free blacks (manumitted slaves and their descendants), indigenes within the colony ought to be in servitude.Pringle, who left the colony in 1826, well before slavery was abolished, is attempting in terms o f his own anti-slavery principles to give the woman the means to counter-assert her equal humanity.Few settlers would have agreed with him: Andrew Geddes Baines's poem "Kaatje Kekkelbek or Life among the Hottentots", which was performed in Grahamstown in 1838 (Chapman, 1981:51), is very different in tone.Though the poem puts words into the mouth o f a black woman, there is not even an attempt to claim that Baines's purpose is mimetic.Kaatje is required for purposes o f political and comic effect to convict herself o f dnmkness, promiscuity and theft.The poem, which remained popular long after Baines's death, makes the opposite claim from Pringle's book, that the missionaries indulge savages and allow them to be idle.The discipline o f servitude, it is implied, is necessary to these people.

Conclusion
Since slavery was eventually abolished in South Africa, does it matter that the slavery debate was carried on over the heads o f " silent" slaves?Baines's "Kaatje Kekkelbek", significantly written in 1838, when the four-year apprenticeship of ex-slaves came to an end, seems to me to demonstrate that it does.Baines's interest is in the transformation o f slavery into some other kind o f servitude, in arguing that the Khoikhoi are incapable o f any kind o f equality with the settlers.He has chosen the most effective means o f silencing them in speaking for them.It is a means derived from the slavery debate at the Cape and is to be used, though often much contested, for the next hundred and fifty years.Significantly, Kaatje is made shameless, dehumanised, in order that she may say what Baines and his fellow-settlers wish to believe.
Pringle's account o f the Xhosa woman captive equally puts words into her mouth, as it must, since he and his audience do not understand Xhosa.He attributes to her, however, the love o f family and home normal in his own group, and goes as far as he can to help her to speak her humanity.By giving her, and by implication her group, equal humanity with his own, he is accepting that she must speak for herself In his narrative, the subaltern speaks; the failure is that of the reader who cannot hear without an interpreter.
Macartney was an experienced and enlightened man, a member in his youth o f Dr. Johnson's Literary Club and a friend of

1
Original spelling used by Lady Anne Barnard retained in quotations 's conclusions about the Dutch as employers o f bound

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group o f which, Johnson assumes, slaves are potentially equal members.Boswell then states his own position, the basis o f which seems to be very different:

Walks and Sketches at the Cape o f Good Hope in
1803, shows the ambivalence which belongs to the British in Cape at this period, when society was still bound by the laws established by the previous, Dutch, regime.Obliged by his sense o f his British readership, he at once deplores slavery, and explains that at the Cape "in the very bosom o f slavery"(Semple, 1968:37)it is almost natural.He writes of his observations in Cape Town: There can, o f course, be no truly impartial account o f slavery; everyone who writes o f it has his or her reasons for doing so.Robert Semple, who lived at the 110 ISSN 0258-2279 LIterator 2Cf1) April 1999:103-117

in Southern Africa m the Years 1803, 1804, 1805 and 1806
Two extensive accounts o f Cape slaves and serfs, which are in conscious opposition to each other, exist, by John Barrow and Heinrich Lichtenstein respectively.Barrow travelled in the Cape hinterland in 1799 and Lichtenstein in 1803-1806.Barrow published the first volume of his Travels into the Interior o f Southern Africa in 1802, shortly after the Peace of Amiens, which accepted that the Cape must be returned to the Dutch, and before this return was effected.Lichtenstein, who wrote in German a work translated as Travels