Good morning Everyone I thought some of you with Roots from Rondebosch might be interested in this story. March 1, 1657 is an important date because it marks the most important event in South African history, for on this day-it was a Thursday-South Africa was permanently established at Rondebosch. On this day the European for the first time in world history took permanent title to land on the African continent, an event whose significance surpasses even the romance and adventure of the enterprise. Slowly but inevitably, like the labouring ox-wagon, we forged northwards from the Liesbeek to the Limpopo, and to-day South Africa is a bastion and a basis whence the continent of Africa to the equator and beyond can be held against barbarism, and the tropical growths of awakening millions be pollinated with Western culture. To-day Southern Africa would seem to be the only European offshoot in Africa with every evidence of permanence as a white man's home, and so on 1st March we celebrate the tercentenary of an event of such import as not even van Riebeeck, gifted with rare vision, could have realized. Again and again he brushed aside material restraints imposed upon him by his realistic, bargain-hunting superiors, and exclaimed with prophetic insight that he foresaw a great country emerging from the timid excursion into commercial enterprise to which the settlement was limited by their policy. To them as to Lord Salisbury more than two centuries later, the Cape Peninsula was all they needed. Van Riebeeck looked beyond Table Mountain; indeed, he does not seem to have really seen the mountain. It was a most welcome, and to him who had visited the Cape before, a characteristic sight duly celebrated on board when at the close of the tedious voyage of their little flotilla a look-out shouted from the crow's nest that they had arrived. Never once did he rise to the panegyric of a Drake over our mountains and the contours of our coast line. He was a Dutchman bred in the Lowlands and very likely did not relish mountains. But to his eternal credit he saw South Africa from the inside and standing on the slopes of Devil's Peak with his back to the mountain he broke into panegyric over the flats and exclaimed that it surpassed in beauty even Formosa (the beautiful) which he knew so well. And who, taking the same stand to-day, would be so dead of soul as to view the exciting panorama of range upon range with rolling lowlands rising to their peaks without being stirred as he was ? Looking downwards he saw at his feet a scene dotted with lakes and streams and a landmark surrounded by teeming fruitfulness, a landmark which was to give a name to the locality of his first permanent settlement; it was a curious formation of trees in a round cluster which he named "Het Ronde Doornbosjen". This clump of thorn trees had probably grown from a Hottentot stockade around one of their cattle kraals and the situation of this celebrated grove at whose shrine we may well hold a tercentenary dedication can be determined with fair correctness. It was situated some five miles from the fort on the mountain side of the Liesbeek and along the old woodcutters' route which was to become the first Cape Highway now followed by the present main road. I would place it between the University School of Music and Groote Schuur on what became known as the Rustenburg estate, with which indeed it became synonymous, and if anyone located it at about the present Rondebosch fountain I do! ubt if he would be a hundred yards out. The size of this Rondebosjen, to this day known as Rondebossie to the older generation, may be gauged from van Riebeeck's instruction dated 7th February 1657 that the inside must be cleared to leave a hedge some ten feet wide all round on the outside to form a suitable shelter or kraal for cattle, or otherwise serve "tot meerder deffentie rontom de redout aldaer geprojecteert" (as a further line of defence about the redoubt he planned to erect there). But van Riebeeck had had his eye on Rondebosch for some years then. In first mentioning the place he remarked on the extraordinarily sheltered position of Rondebosch in the most picturesque terms. Whereas Table Mountain and its slopes were the scene of the roaring South- Easter, the bane of van Riebeeck's life, there reigned at Rondebosch and environs an elysian calm where only mild zephyrs blew, when in Table valley veritable tornadoes tore his plants out by the roots and flattened his shelters to the ground. To the end Rondebosch and thereabouts remained to him the place where "fell not hail or any snow, nor ever wind blew loudly". Rondebosch had completely won his affection and it followed almost automatically that a little further along he selected a site for his own farm, Boschheuvel, at Bishops Court. The settlement pinpointed by the Ronde Doornbosjen soon included the area now comprising the greater part of Wynberg, Kenilworth, Claremont to Rosebank and Mowbray onward! s. But it was not only the sheltered position of this area which roused him to enthusiasm. He literally licked his lips over the fat loamy soil which he found here. "Seer fraaie gronden bequaem ter culture" (lovely soils fitted for cultivation) he exclaimed again and again, and to convince his cautious, hardheaded principals he suited the action to the word and started cultivation there early on. So on 17 May 1656 he noted in his diary: "By 't rondebosjen suydwaarts achter de Taeffelbergh ongeveer mergen lands met de ploegh claer gemaeckt ende besayt met taruw, rys ende haver tot een proefien om te sien off het daer minder schade van de harde winden sal hebben te lyden ende ingevolge te pyne waert wesen om het in 't aanstaende met meerder vigeur te vervolgen," which being translated reads: "At the Rondebosch southwards behind the Table Mountain prepared about a quarter of a morgen of land with the plough and sowed it with rye, rice and oats as an experiment to see whether they stood to suffer less damage there from the driving winds and if it would consequently be worth the trouble to follow up with greater vigour in the future." He went further; he put a small sentry box there with two men on duty day and night. Van Riebeeck did not do things by halves. The time was soon to come when he was to carry out his project "met meerdere vigeur". Again in October 1656 he notes: the prepared lands at the "ronde doornbosjen" sowed with broad beans, "oock eenige pattatissen aihier uyt Brasil becomen". So now we know the origin of our sweet potato. Turkish beans, tobacco and vines were also put in. Van Riebeeck had a nice sense of drama. We watch him working up to the climax in his play with the Council of Seventeen, whetting their appetites for gainful extension and whipping up their interest in profitable expansion. The curtain had gone up and the first scenes been presented. It was therefore a triumphant scene which was enacted in the fort and one which was to draw resounding plaudits from generations down the centuries when on 21 February 1657 there were seated at the council table in the commander's hall Jan van Riebeeck, Roelof de Man, bookkeeper; Casper van Weede, secretary; with sergeant Jan van Harwarden in attendance and on the other side of the table nine who had applied to become the first citizens of our land, the first Free Burghers. They were meeting to discuss the terms and conditions of settlement and to sign on the dotted line. The Council of Seventeen had at last, albeit dubiously and provisionally, approved! The men were Herman Remagen, Jan de Wacht, Jan van Passel, Werner Cornelissen, Roeloff Janssen, to whom were assigned as much land each as they could cultivate in three years, the settlement to be called the Groeneveld (Greenfields) beyond the Liesbeek to the Kromboom. They were to apply themselves more particularly to the growing of wheat besides raising cattle, pigs, etc. The remaining four, Stephen Botma, Hendrick Elbrechts, Otto Janssen and Jacob Cornelissen would settle on this side of the Liesbeek in the Hollandsche Thuyn (Dutch Garden) and apply themselves to growing tobacco, wheat, rice and other crops. It was this group who were at the Ronde Doornbosjen and their lands would stretch from the small bridge leading to the forest on the mountain slopes above Bishops Court to the furthest redoubt to be built in the Rosebank-Mowbray area. The terms and conditions were many and often varied subsequently, but they stated that Free Burghers had to be men of character and ability, and that in respect of the grants "de gemelte leyden zullen zijn ende blijven in vollen eygendom eeuwich ende erffelijck om daermede te doen na eygen welgevallen" (the persons mentioned would have and remain in full hereditary title of such land forever to do therewith according to their pleasure). The contracts would date as from 1 March 1657 and on that historic Thursday the watering station became a settlement, the halfway house a home and the trading port a country; South Africa was permanently founded. As Admiral van Goens, who later came to approve Van Riebeeck's plans, said: "We cannot become good citizens until we have been good farmers." In the second five years' term of Van Riebeeck's tenure much is recorded of the vicissitudes of our settlement. On Sunday, 4 March 1657, after the usual inspection on the parade followed by divine service, Van Riebeeck, as anyone could have guessed, set out for Rondebosch to see how his new settlers were doing, and thence onwards the activities of the Free Burghers and the growth of the settlement supply much enthusiastic though sometimes anxious material for the diary. The company's gardens in Table Valley were now running a bad second in Van Riebeeck's interest and attention. The building of a granary and the erection of mills were further steps and so it happened that Groote Schuur was built and Wouter Mostert was appointed the first free miller, the beginning of private enterprise. So also a wynberg or winery was indicated, a word which by a process of popular etymology was later associated with the slopes of the suburb later named Wynberg. On 20 July 1657 we read that Van Riebeeck went to Rondebosch to pick his site for the "corenschuyr" (wheat store) and decided that night to build it 108 Dutch feet long and 40 feet wide. Orders were given for trees to be felled for the necessary timber; but there were delays, and not till 25 January 1658 did Van Riebeeck go to look for thatch for the roof of his groote schuur. On 4 December of the same year he records proudly that his vineyard at the Boschheuvel was "fraey aen't wassen", or growing (waxing) beautifully. There were difficulties and dangers, however. The lions had become so bold that neither man nor beast could venture out. Wouter Mostert came face to face with a lion and only just saved himself by shinning up a tree ("op een boom gesalveert"). But a more serious threat came from the Hottentots who had noted with growing misgiving that the white man was digging himself in. There came days when the Free Burghers were called to arms and orders were issued to abandon farms. There were anxious sieges, ghastly fires and ruinous raids by brutal and crafty savages, but steadily the settlements prospered and the settlers began looking further afield. As early as June 1657, some of our Free Burghers went on an expedition southwards and returned with tales of a land of beauty and plenty which surpassed even Rondebosch. They encountered a superior tribe of Hottentots who entertained them most hospitably and who on listening to their accounts of the beauty and riches of Holland replied t! hat this fertile country was their Holland and could be styled the Hottentots Holland. And so Somerset West was "discovered". But our settlement on the Liesbeek (lies - water reeds; beek - a beck or stream) gave us a very important development of another kind. The Free Burghers were henceforth to be represented on Van Riebeeck's Council and so began democratic local and civic government. Van Riebeeck had indeed done a fine job of foundation work. Religion and its sacred observances, education, the beginnings of democratic government, Roman-Dutch law, social order and justice were firmly established. He saw to it that this would be no land of buccaneers and pirates, but a country solidly founded in the best traditions of European civilization. There were times when it seemed that this far-seeing man with his inflexible tenacity of purpose alone stood between our infant country and relegation, exposure or abandonment. To him and those whom he inspired, his noble wife not the least, belong the chief credit; but in the whole exciting drama of our birth throes and teething pains Rondebosch and the suburbs into which it developed played a major part and have indeed a proud tradition. The development and growth of each of these suburbs jointly and severally would form the subject of a worthy history. Great families, historic farms, noble buildings and events which are the roots of South African history remain to be recorded in more than episodic form. May our celebration foster such historical writing. Wasn't that interesting ??? Would you like more ? kind regards Heather Visit South Africa's Premier Genealogy Web Sites www.ancestry.mweb.co.za and www.familytree.co.za Join the Cape Town Family History Society www.ancestors.co.za/society/socweb.htm