‘We do not know who painted our pictures’: child transfers and cultural genocide in the destruction of Cape San societies along the Cape Colony’s north-eastern frontier, c.1770–1830

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Cape San were not eliminated by outright killing only. The commercial stock-farming economy on the north-eastern frontier of the Cape Colony created a demand for labour. Those Cape San who survived the physical destruction of their communities were regularly compelled into forced labour to meet the needs of the frontier stock-farming economy in this region. The majority of those who became forced labourers were children. This article presents an analysis of the forced removal of Cape San children amid the broader exterminationist campaign of the late eighteenth century. The eliminationist agenda of the British colonial period during the early nineteenth century is also considered. Cape San child transfers to trekboer society continued apace following British occupation of the Cape. Legal measures were introduced to regulate the system of Cape San child transfers by officially establishing San child apprenticeship. The article presents the case for recognizing the important contributory role of child confiscation in the genocide inflicted on the Cape San.