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THE FARMER, THE PREACHER AND THE LAND SPECULATOR - Village Development Patterns in the Karoo Region of the Cape Colony, 1806 to 1920Franco Frescura ABSTRACTThe growth of settlement in colonial southern Africa was subject to a complex interplay of factors, which often involved a combination of indigenous land use, white religious practices, land speculation, road and railway construction, postal routes, and the interests of traders, farmers and government agents. Although the Dutch Church was a powerful driving force in such affairs, and often took a leading role in initiating settlement, it was by no means central to this process and frequently found itself manipulated by individual speculators and outside financial interests. This paper examines the processes that guided small and medium colonial settlement, and the historical circumstances which influenced their location and physical form. I argue that while the spiritual needs of white settlers were often the motivation which initiated settlement, other realities such as an availability of water, suitable cheap land and the existence of an infrastructure were the preconditions which made settlement possible. I use information drawn from Colonial archives, Civil Establishment Blue Books and Post Office Reports to Parliament to show how infrastructure normally preceded settlement, and that the agencies of colonial government created the preconditions within which other groups, such as the churches, land speculators and commercial interests could act. This was found to be particularly true in the case of the Cape Post Office, where the establishment of a postal agency, usually bearing the name of the farm upon which it was located, often preceded the official proclamation of a village by several years, thus indicating the presence of some form of settlement well before either church or government surveyor became involved in its setting out (Frescura 2002). As such, I deal specifically with the processes of settlement followed by white immigrants to the Karoo during the colonial era, between 1806 and 1920. I recognize that, in most cases, the setting out of these towns and villages was often racially-segregated in intent, but I have chosen not to discuss this, and have focused upon events surrounding the genesis of settlement, rather than upon the details of its subsequent implementation. This decision was made simpler by the fact that, in virtually all cases, in the early days of colonialism racial separation was achieved by physical distance, and that black residential areas were seldom subject to formal planning. Their impact upon the form of early colonial settlements was thus minimal, and their influence only began to be felt once the white town or village began to grow in both size and complexity. I also need to stress that, while the creation of a structuralist typology was a necessary introduction to this paper, much of the discussion which follows is based upon the post-structuralist assumptions that all texts are subject to sub-textual and contextual readings, and the post-modernist recognition that architectural form is subject to an inherent language which allows us to “read” and interpret its intent. THE PROCESSES OF SETTLEMENTIt would be wrong to suppose that colonial settlement in southern Africa always followed the same pattern. It is true that some stereotypes did exist, such as the one created about the kerkplaats, or church village, but generally these models presupposed the existence of a primary reason, either military, or religious, or economic, as the driving force behind the founding of a settlement. Strictly speaking this was not true, and history will show that, in most cases, humble farmers, graziers, and wagon-drivers were also influential in pioneering the site for many a village or hamlet. In such instances, their decisions were not only guided by practical considerations and group consensus but, more often than not, were also the result of historical precedent and pragmatic custom. Broadly speaking, the following patterns of town and village development have taken place in southern Africa during the colonial era: The Farm Homestead. This was probably one of the earliest generators of colonial settlement, and although there are only a few recorded cases where a farming community became the sole driving force behind the establishment of a village, the presence of a farmhouse in the colonial landscape created a prominent landmark to which travellers, itinerant traders, post riders and wagon drivers were drawn as a stop-over point. Once a place had become an accepted wagon stop, or uitspan plek, the next logical step was the establishment of a trading store dealing in staple goods, and a postal agency to forward mails. Rudimentary wainwright facilities could also be available. These were often done by the owner of the farm, whose family ran these facilities. Thereafter, the founding of a village could take any number of permutations. The farmer could act as a land developer and establish a village in his own right; or he could donate a portion of his farm to the Church, in the knowledge that a kerkplaats would raise the value of adjoining land; or the farm as a whole could be bequeathed to the Church for the purpose of establishing a kerkplaats; or the Church could purchase an existing village. In any case, the farmer’s family usually retained ownership of key stands in the village, thus ensuring its economic well-being over the next few generations, and allowing it to make the transition from subsistence farming to a commercial economy. In some rare instances the family would also manage to retain control over key functions, such as water rights or road tolls, thus extending its interests over the settlement. Consequently, far from being an altruistic gesture motivated by genuine religious belief, the donation of farming land to the Church for the establishment of a kerkplaats was often guided by pragmatic self-interest rather than spiritual fervour. The competition for the right to “donate” land to the church could become quite heated, as it was in the case of Nieuwoudtville, where the conditions attached to the original donation proved to be too onerous and a new site had to be found, or Vredenburg, where the land became the subject of a protracted legal dispute (Frescura 2002). The Wagon Stop or Uitspanplek. These usually developed informally on unclaimed land at points where water and grazing were freely available for draft oxen, or a major ford or river crossing barred the way, or a convenient stop could be made before or after a mountain pass. It was not unusual for a trader or an inn-keeper to follow local trends and establish a businesses near the site, and include a postal agency as one of their services to the public. Two such places were Ann’s Villa and Boontjes River. The Kerkplaats. This is a pattern of settlement which recurs time and again in the history of Dutch colonialism in South Africa. The missionary John Mackenzie remarked upon it in 1859: "The colonial villages or towns - as some of them may now be properly termed - have usually grown up round the Dutch Church as a nucleus; and it has been remarked that these church or town sites had been chosen with great skill by the Dutch colonists. I have come into contact with those who had seen the growth of considerable villages from the solitary farm-house of the first owner. As soon as the church is built, there is no doubt as to a certain amount of business being done where it stands." (1971: 18) Sellick, who documented much of the early history of Uitenhage and its surrounds, commented in 1904 that "most South African towns evolved from a kerkplaats (church farm) to a dorp (village)", and that: "... knowing the character of the pioneer, the Government would invest in the outlay of building a drostdy and a church ... certain that in the end they would be amply recouped for the expenditure ... Hence, too, originated a custom which obtains in our time – the Nachtmaal Service" (1904) Nachtmaal, which in Dutch translates quite literally to a "night meal", is a reference to the last supper held by Christ and his disciples during Passover. During the seventeenth century the practice of holding of a quarterly nachtmaal was already an established custom of the Reformed Church in Holland and, in time, became widespread among Dutch communities living in southern Africa (SESA 1970). Every three months the residents of a farming district would travel to the nearest regional centre, ostensibly to worship at the church, but also to purchase staple goods, conduct business, exchange news, collect mail, receive Government edicts, court potential spouses, arrange marriages, hold baptisms, and debate current political events. Wagons would be drawn up on the nachtmaal plein, a square reserved for this purpose in front of the church, where most of the social functions associated with it would also be held. The practice often caused problems for residents of outlying rural areas, whose settlements were often widespread, and the establishment of many kerkplaats was motivated by a need to make nachtmaal more accessible to remote farming communities. The pattern of growth followed by a kerkplaats was approximately the same in most cases. A group of farmers, weary of travelling long distances every three months for nachtmaal, would petition the regional Church Council for permission to establish a separate congregation in their district. Under the guidance of the "mother" church a site would be chosen and the ground purchased. Sometimes a parishioner would donate a portion of his farm to the church for this purpose or, in some instances, land was received as a grant from the Colonial Government. Once transfer had taken place a surveyor would be employed to set out the village, with key positions being reserved for the church, a "nachtmaal plein" or church square before it, a "pastorie" or parsonage alongside it, and a "drosdty", the residence for the local magistrate. The remaining plots were sold off by public auction, and the profits used to build the church. Stands were usually purchased by local farmers, who used them to erect a modest dwelling which was then used by the family as a residence over nachtmaal. As a result most kerkplaate were left uninhabited for long periods of the year. Emil Holub visited Philippolis, in the Orange Free State, in August 1872 and found that "the majority of the houses being unoccupied, scarcely a living being was to be seen, so that the barrenness of the spot was only equalled by its stillness" (1881: I: 39). To begin with, the administration of the settlement was in the hands of the Church Council, but as the village attracted more permanent residents, so then its control was allowed to pass over to an elected village management board. The Mission Station. Unlike the kerkplaats, which set out to create a sense of place from the outset, often as a green-field development, the mission was a functional and potentially flexible form of settlement which generally relied upon the presence of a permanent congregation to define its existence. For this reason mission stations were usually associated with indigenous settlement and, to all intents and purposes, were built alongside, or as a component of, an existing village or town. The location of a mission station was also pragmatic, and although few missionaries were as flexible as Michael Wimmer who, every winter, moved with the Khoikhoi residents of Kok Fontein to new grazing (Backhouse 1844: 578), many stations were moved as a result of drought, warfare or the forced relocation of their congregations. Where a mission station did become permanent, this was usually followed by the establishment of a trade school or a seminary, and normally took place once the community it served had gained a measure of land tenure. Because of their strategic value as trusted members of the local community, mission stations subsequently also became the locations for the local post office and, later, the Civil Commissioner’s Offices. Once that happened, it was common for the settlement to be rapidly advanced to the status of an administrative headquarters for a magisterial district. The Military Post. This was usually located at a key strategic location, either overlooking a valley, or controlling access over a pass, or a river crossing. Where such fortifications were relatively minor outposts, housing less than a score of men, these were usually abandoned at the end of hostilities. However, many of the larger establishments attracted a variety of traders, inn-keepers and other service providers, and although the withdrawal of the military from the frontier regions of the Cape in the 1870s was a serious setback to their fortunes, many military satellite settlements made the transition to a civilian economy. In some instances, the military also provided, in times of peace, a place where informal trading between white settlers, indigenous farmers and commercial hunters could take place. This was also true of some fortified homesteads on the Cape’s eastern frontier. Military posts were almost entirely male in their demographic make-up, and what few women lived there, were impermanent camp-followers. The Military Garrison Town and Village. Unlike the larger posts, whose civilian component initially developed as an informal adjunct to military activity, garrison towns and villages were set out by the military with civilian residential, commercial and military sectors in mind. Some sites, like those of Grahamstown, Queenstown and Graaff-Reinet, were chosen with a defensive function in mind, while others, like Berlin and Stutterheim were intended to house soldier-farmers. Although garrison settlements were initially patriarchal in nature, their planners also made provisions for the eventual normalization of their demographic make-up, and planned for the civic, educational and spiritual needs of a civilian population. The Railway Village. Three types of settlement typified the spread of a railway infrastructure into the southern African hinterland. The first was the labour camp, which was normally located at the head of a particular line, and was thus temporary in nature. A common location for these camps was the local uitspan plek which, quite often, was already the site of a trading store or an inn, such as was the case at Middleton. In most cases, at the end of the contract, the builder would dismantle the village, sell the prefabricated houses off to local farmers, and move on to the next site. In a few instances, however, the village was bought out by a local investor and allowed to stand. Two such examples were located at Blanco, and at Bennetsville, which was later renamed Klapmuts. The second was the railway station, which could either replace the labour camp at the head of a railway line, or could be located arbitrarily along the line to serve the needs of an existing farming community or, in a few notable examples such as De Aar and Stormberg Junction, was developed as a full settlement at the junction of two or more main lines. Satellite villages which developed alongside stations were normally dependant upon the railway and its attendant functions as a source of income, and normally included a trading store, a hotel, which was, more often than not owned by the Railways, and the homes of a handful of railway employees. A telegraph office was invariably located in the railway station, but the presence of a post office was optional. When one was established, this could be run either by the hotel, or the store keeper, or by the Railways themselves. The third was the railway halt or railway siding, which seldom involved any major settlement, and was usually only a hamlet of a few railway houses whose residents were employed in local line maintenance and the service of passing locomotive traffic. Indeed, the economic survival of most such settlements was so reliant upon the continued patronage of the Railway, that once South African Railways began converting their locomotives to diesel fuel during the 1960s, most of these hamlets and railway stops began to slowly fade off the geographical map of South Africa. The Company Village. This was commonly established by major commercial or manufacturing concerns to house their own employees. Good examples of such developments could be found at Indwe, and at the Somerset West Dynamite factory. Elsewhere there are also recorded cases where commercial concerns overtook the needs of an existing settlement. The Concordia mission grounds were largely taken over by the Concordia Copper Mining Company, while the Berlin missionaries at Pniel suffered the same fate at the hands of innumerable diamond diggers. In many instances local postal services continued to be heavily subsidized by the Company concerned as a service to its own employees. Convict Labour Camps. Although these were transitional settlements, much the same as railway work camps, there is evidence that, in some instances, they survived beyond their initial function. The nature of their locations tended to vary, and although the government often leased a portion of a neighbourhood farm for the duration of the work, they also used local wagon stops, which were public domain, and hence cost nothing. Their postal needs were met by either a local field-cornet, who transported their mail as part of their normal governmental duties, or by the camp’s Master of Stores, who then became its designated postmaster (Frescura 2002: 191-3). Government Administrative Centres. The establishment of administrative villages was commonly charged to local magistrates, following the declaration of their district as a division. The site was chosen for its central position and strategic potential, and was usually located on land purchased from local farm-owners for this purpose. Once laid out, stands were sold to the general public by auction, with a number of sites being reserved for religious, civic and educational purposes. In the case of the Transkei, this work was given over to the local Commissioner for Native Affairs. Land was normally granted for this purpose by the local Chief and, at the discretion of the Commissioner, could be located either alongside the Royal village, or Great Place, as it was commonly known, or some distance away. However it was not unusual for the mission station and the Government buildings to be built in close proximity to each other. REGIONAL PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENTIt is also true that, like architecture, certain types of settlement have predominated in specific regions, giving rise to patterns which have been subsequently recognized as determinant factors in the cultural and physical character of a region. The most distinct colonial settlement regions of the Cape have been as follows: The Western Cape, where most major towns were a mixture of Government administrative centres and kerkplaate. Secondary settlement was the result of Church, missionary, trader and land speculator activity, while tertiary settlement was predominantly the result of land speculation and railway expansion. The Southern Cape followed approximately the same patterns as those established in the Western Cape, except that Government administrative centers were in a slight numerical majority, and that fewer secondary centers of population were present. Secondary and tertiary settlements were largely the result of land speculation and commercial expansion. The railway only became a factor at a later date. The Eastern Cape and Border Region, where the number of primary Government and Church towns was more or less equal, but the number of secondary and tertiary settlements established showed a marked military and missionary presence. Commercial concerns also featured strongly in the survey numbers. The Transkeian territories, where almost all major towns were established either by the military, or missionaries, or by the Government, while virtually all secondary and tertiary settlement was the result of commercial and missionary activity. The railway played virtually no role in this region. The West Coast and Far Northern Cape, where virtually all major centers of population were established either through the Church or mining activity, while other centers were predominantly tertiary settlements founded by missionaries and traders. The Bechuanalands where, with the exception of Kimberley and Barkly West, few settlements qualified as either first or second rank centres of population. Most settlement in the region was the result of a missionary and trader presence, while the larger towns were established as mining centres. THE KAROO REGIONFor the purposes of this survey the Karoo has been deemed to cover some twenty-five colonial divisions, spanning from Worcester in the south through to the Gariep in the north, and from Namaqualand in the west through to the Sourveld in the east. These included: Aberdeen, Albert, Beaufort West, Britstown, most of Calvinia, Carnarvon, Colesberg, Fraserburg, Graaff-Reinet, Hanover, Hopetown, Jansenville, most of Kenhardt, Laingburg, Middelburg, Molteno, Murraysburg, Philipstown, Prieska, Prince Albert, Richmond, Steynsburg, Sutherland, Victoria West and Willowmore. Other divisions, such as Cradock and the southern OFS, were considered to be marginal, while the settlement of Hay and Gordonia were beyond the time-frame of this paper. Settlements with a population of 1000 persons and over were listed as towns, or primary settlements; those with a population of 100 to 1000 persons were deemed to be villages, or secondary settlements; while anything with less that 100 persons was listed as a hamlet, or tertiary settlement. Using data drawn from the Colonial Cape Post Office from 1806 through to 1910, the Karoo was the location of some 429 settlements, of which 35 were towns (8%), 17 were villages (4%), and 377 were hamlets (88%). The majority of these, 281 or 65%, were associated with farming communities and probably consisted of little more than a farm trading store or a Field-cornet’s post restante service. Another 54, or 13%, were minor railway stations or sidings and, again, probably consisted of little more than a trading store, a group of houses for railway employees, and sometimes, a hotel. However, for the purposes of this analysis, we are only concerned with the larger towns and villages, which number no more than 52, or 12% of the total. Using this number as a guideline for the settlement culture of the Karoo, we can establish that 16 (31%) were first established as kerkplaate, 15 (29%) were founded by land speculators, 7 (14%) by the railways, 6 (11%) by missionaries, 5 (9%) by the Cape Government, and 3 (6%) arose as a result of mining and other commercial activities. Obviously the lines of definition were not always as clear-cut as this. The village of Loxton, for example, was founded in 1897, but only began to flourish after the DRC purchased it in 1899 and, whatever their origins, most Karoo settlements made provision, in their planning, for the establishment of a Dutch church and an adjoining “nachtmaal plein”. It can probably be concluded, therefore, that although the Dutch Reformed Church did play a strong role in the establishment of settlements in the Karoo, its contribution in terms of numbers is much more limited than the cultural stereotype for this region would lead us to believe. This finding is reinforced when the origins and nature of the Karoo built environment are also considered. THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF THE KAROOThe domestic building form most closely associated with the Karoo is the flat or mono-pitch roofed cottage. This dwelling originated in Cape Town in the mid-eighteenth century and rapidly spread into the southern African interior, in time becoming associated over the next two centuries with a wide range of rural, as well as urban, environments. In the process it has also gained for itself a variety of names, having been identified, from time to time, as the preferred residential form of Karoo, Griqua and Dutch farmers, as well Cape Town’s newly-emancipated Malay community. In more recent times its construction has also spread onto the highveld where it has been incorporated into the indigenous range of dwelling forms (Frescura 1989). Its origins, however, are linked to the “langhuis” tradition, which link it both to the Cape cottage and, less directly, to the high-design tradition of Cape Dutch architecture (Floyd 1983). It can be assumed that, towards the end of the 1700s, the flat-roofed dwelling was found to be ideal for the more arid conditions of the interior and within a short time began to be identified with the domestic architecture of Dutch farmers in the Karoo. The method of this diaspora has yet to be fully documented, but it can be assumed that a general shortage of suitable building timber in this region probably made its use almost mandatory. What is in question here, however, is not the architectural character of the Karoo itself, so much as who was responsible for developing it. Of the 52 major towns and villages in the greater Karoo region, only four were founded before 1840 and just over 60% of them were begun after 1861. By this time the dissident Dutch farmers had already trekked northward and founded Winburg (1836), Potchefstroom and Pietermaritzburg (1838), Bloemfontein (1846) and Pretoria (1855) and had settled as far north as Schoemansdal by 1849. Thus although Holub was led to comment in 1873 that: "In its general aspect, Fauresmith (founded in 1850) is very like the other towns in the Free State ... consisting of not more than eighty houses, ... clean white-washed residences, flat-roofed as elsewhere" (Holub 1881: I: 43). a pictorial survey of other early Voortrekker towns further north reveals that only a small number of their dwellings were flat roofed and that indeed, many such structures were of a temporary nature. Colesberg, for example, was on the northern reaches of the Karoo, and a closer look at Bell's painting of the town done in 1844, reveals that the more substantial buildings are all pitch roofed whilst it is mainly the humbler homes and the more recent arrivals, on the outskirts of the town, which carry flat roofs. Therefore, whatever else it may have been, the flat roof dwelling was not part of the political and ideological impedimenta carried by dissident Dutch farmers to their new homes, and its spread into the southern African hinterland was not dependent upon the urbanization of the region. Our knowledge of individual flat roofed farm houses is even more scattered. Early examples built by missionaries were recorded by Backhouse in 1839 at the Bethany (1844:357-359) and Beersheba mission stations in the OFS (1844:421), and at Afrikaner's Kraal in Namaqualand in 1840 (1844:561). Baines recorded flat-roofed dwellings at Colesberg in 1848 and at Bloemfontein in 1850 (1964:35). It was also during this era that the flat roofed house became identified, for a brief period of time, with the Griquas of the northern Cape and western OFS. In 1859 Mackenzie remarked how they “have all chosen the Dutch colonists as their model in social life and manners, although most of their missionaries have been Englishmen" (Mackenzie, 1961:61). Remarkably, once this group migrated to Griqualand East in 1862, a region endowed with a better rainfall and richer in thatching grasses, they abandoned the flat roofed dwelling and built for themselves ridged and gabled cottages (Dower 1902). The Griquas represent an important case study which demonstrates how their cottages, whose roofs in the western Cape had historically been built in a pitched or ridged and gabled form, reverted back to this once similar climatic and environmental conditions were re-established. It is not known whether their plan conformed with the Cape two-cell longhouse derivative, but photographs taken in about 1878 indicate that its outward form was similar to that of the Cape cottage (Dower 1902). Evident, also, are the social and economic factors which generated the flat roofed house during the early years of the eighteenth century. Barrow's account of "apartments, nearly destitute of furniture", Sparrman's tale of houses of "but two rooms, somewhat more than two yards in breadth" and Baines' picture of Colesberg are all indicative of one fact: at best the rural flat roofed home was a humble structure. Some might even say that it was “a poor man's residence”, or at the very least, the temporary abode of graziers, occupied but a few months of the year. Even the buildings erected in new settlements such as Philippolis, laid out as a town in 1862, were not exempt from this definition. Holub, who visited it ten years later described its aspect as being "most melancholy ... Equally dreary were the flat roofed houses, about sixty in number, and nearly all quite unenclosed, that constituted the town; ... the majority of the houses being unoccupied, scarcely a living being was to be seen” (Holub, 1881:I:39). Quite clearly Philippolis, which was begun as a station of the London Missionary Society in 1821, owed its existence by 1872 to the Dutch practice of "nachtmaal”. It was quite common for farmers to build themselves town residences called "tuishuise" to serve their housing needs during nachtmaal and these were normally covered with a flat roof. This would certainly explain why Philippolis was mostly unoccupied during Holub's visit. It seems probable that other towns in the Karoo also presented visitors with the same aspect. By the 1880s Middelburg was said to have several well-built houses and stores, but the majority of its dwellings were of more modest construction "being only used by the Boers when they come in to Nachtmaal once a quarter". Quite clearly then, the rural flat roofed house of southern Africa has always been associated with the temporary and newly urbanised elements of rural society. This image has been compounded in more recent times by its increasing identification with informal urban settlements as well as the landless and dispossessed black farmers of the highveld region. This then gives rise to a dichotomy for, on the one hand, the urban flat roof aesthetic was generally associated with statements of urban style, fashion and "high design" whilst in rural areas the same form belonged to a more humble tradition of folk architecture. It must also be borne in mind that although the tuishuise clustered about the village nachtmaal plein may have been of a temporary nature, they were not necessarily the product of indigent farmers. Quite the contrary, in fact, they were probably the town residences of farming families of substance, who were wealthy enough to afford the maintenance of two homes. Thus it might appear that, by the late nineteenth century, the relationship existing between the flat roofed town house and the rural cottage may outwardly appear to have become somewhat remote. This, however, is not correct. Indeed it was the humble rural dwelling which was to provide the more sophisticated urban structure with a sense of cultural and architectural continuity which permitted it to develop and achieve urban respectability. Rapoport discussed this viewpoint in 1969 when he postulated that vernacular or folk tradition is the common matrix, the clay, which makes high design architecture possible, and that the two combine to form a total spatial and hierarchic system (Rapoport 1969). Viewed in these terms therefore, the adapted longhouse or Cape cottage may also be seen to form the basis for both the townhouse architecture in the western Cape as well as the more modest cottage dwellings of the Cape interior, regardless of their respective aesthetic and cultural status. The spread of the flat roofed dwelling out of the western Cape probably began in the 1770s, and its spread into the larger Karoo appears to have been somewhat limited. It is probable that the major thrust of this movement lay eastward along the rain shadow provided by the Langeberg and Outeniqua mountains, a semi-arid area which has since become more popularly known as the "Klein Karoo". This is supported by the fact that by the mid 1830s, the major settlements in this region were located at Calitzdorp (founded in 1821), Knysna (1817), Port Elizabeth (1820), Uitenhage (1806), Somerset East (1825), Graaff-Reinet (1786), Cradock (1816) and Colesberg (1830), all of them being located on the fringes of the Karoo, whilst only one, Beaufort West (1820), was located in the Karoo itself. Even then its spread there was slow and even minimal. The imported cottage architecture of the newly arrived English adapted easily to local conditions in the eastern Cape and proved singularly unwilling to convert to a local flat roofed technology. From the onset the early residents of new settlements such as Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Fort Beaufort all showed a distinct preference for pitch roofed houses. Similarly, the Dutch themselves did not built flat-roofed farmhouses in this region to any great extent, even as far north as the Sneeuwberge, immediately beyond Graaff-Reinet, where some flat roofed structures are recorded to have been built, but only after the 1850s (Whitlock 1989). Before this time much of this development appears to have been focused upon Graaff-Reinet where Thompson, who visited the town in 1823, described it as consisting of approximately three hundred neat and commodious brick buildings, some of which had flat roofs with simple moulded cornices (Minnaar 1987: 11). On the other hand it is recorded that some English immigrants who took over farms from the newly departed Dutch found flat roofed homesteads already standing there and, in many cases, restored and adopted them to their own use (Lewcock 1963). Most development appears to have taken place after the early 1860s, and probably owed much to the introduction of corrugated iron into southern Africa. It is true that various forms of flat metal sheeting, such as lead, zinc and copper had been available in the Cape for some time, but such roofs were generally considered to be too light and labour intensive, and never gained widespread usage. Corrugated iron sheeting, on the other hand, was durable and easily portable and the first iron buildings appeared in Cape Town as early as 1847 (Lewcock 1963). The technical and economic performance of corrugated iron rapidly proved to be vastly superior to that of other waterproofing methods tried previously at the Cape, and it soon began to replace the flat roof technology of earlier times. Although at first its availability was limited to the larger urban centres, by the 1870s and 1880s, it had rapidly spread into other areas where it found widespread usage in both the domestic and industrial sectors. Inevitably it was only a matter of time before it became synonymous with flat roofed architecture. It was during this time that most of the major towns and villages of the Karoo were established. Following the founding of Graaff-Reinet in1786, Beaufort West in 1820, Calitzdorp in 1821, and Colesberg in 1830, expansion into this region quickened and over the next twenty years, up to 1860, some seventeen more villages were begun. Significantly most of this development occurred in the southern part of the Karoo where a wool farming industry was beginning to flourish. The decade between 1861 and 1870 was a period of economic depression marked by droughts and the failure of a number of local banking institutions. This had a marked effect upon the development of the Karoo with only six settlements being founded there during this time. The discovery of diamonds in the northern Cape in 1867 marked the start of an era of strong economic development for the southern African interior. This and the spread of a railway infrastructure throughout the Cape during the 1880s and 1890s effectively opened up the northern Karoo for settlement and over the next thirty years, up to 1900, 36 villages were founded. This was further assisted by two separate feather farming booms, one in the Albany district in the 1880s and the other, more importantly for the Karoo, in Oudtshoorn during the 1900s. Thereafter the South African war of 1899-1902 brought the settlement of the Karoo to a virtual halt, and between 1900 and 1920 the establishment of only five new villages was recorded. The one centre which benefited most from this economic growth was Port Elizabeth which, during the 1870s, became the centre of wool, feather and, for a time, diamond marketing (Wilson and Thompson1975). Thus the predominant architectural character of the Karoo was not established whilst this area was under the administration of either a Dutch or even an early English colonial government; nor was it established to any great extent before the introduction of corrugated iron in the region during the 1860s and 1870s; it was established between 1870 and 1900, at a time when this region was under the political and economic influence of the eastern Cape, a region where the English predominated. Signs of a growing English presence in the Karoo were becoming evident as early as the 1850s. On 25 August 1852 the Graaff-Reinet Herald published the following editorial:
This is supported by other evidence. Although no hard demographic data appears to exist regarding the language makeup of the Cape during this time, an analysis of the colony's civil lists reveals that, by 1860, 57% of all Colonial Government employees came from English backgrounds. By 1870 this figure had risen to 71% and by 1879 to 73% (CGH Blue Books). A division-by-division breakdown of these figures plotted out on a map also makes for interesting reading. In 1870 the suburban area of the western Cape showed a strong English bias. This was separated from the rest of the country by a belt of strong Dutch presence stretching in an arc from Calvinia in the north to Stellenbosch and Caledon in the south to Oudtshoorn in the east. Beyond that, however, the southern and eastern Cape were almost overwhelmingly English, the southern Karoo showed a good mixture of English and Dutch, with the English being in slight predominance, and the areas north of that showing a strong English presence. A similar map for 1879 shows essentially the same patterns with areas of English and Dutch mixes spreading into both Namaqualand, Paarl, Caledon and Bredasdorp and a growing English presence in the northern and central Karoo. Although it is probable that these figures reflect a bias in civil service employment, they do nonetheless reveal that the Cape middle class, which would have provided many of these bureaucrats, and who, presumably, would also have built a large proportion of the new urban homes of that time, was English to a considerable extent. It becomes clear therefore that if the flat roofed house should, in any way be considered to be typical of the domestic architecture of the Karoo, then its construction in urban areas was as much the result of English home building as it was of the Dutch. Indeed once the humble "brakdak" was superseded by corrugated iron after the 1860s, there is every reason to believe that the flat roofed home was simply added to the range of domestic structures available to local speculative builders (Radford 1988: 19-21). Many of these, then, would not have been built as a reflection of local cultural preferences but merely because, by that stage, they represented a style of construction linked to the fashionable town house of the Cape, a structure which, it was seen, enjoyed a large degree of urban respectability. CONCLUSIONSHistorical revisionism can be intellectually satisfying, but it can also be highly misleading. To prove that the architectural and cultural make-up of a region is the product of complex interactions between a number of different groups is one thing, but to persuade a people that their cognitive memories are the result of myths and historical constructs is quite another matter. For this reason I prefer the analogy of an empty house. For better or for worse, the builder of a dwelling will, at the outset, establish patterns of living which, subsequent residents will find difficult to alter without resorting to radical change, and even demolition. The first patterns of permanent settlement in the Karoo were established by Dutch farmers, and although other parties were willing participants in this process, they adhered to many of the values inherent in Dutch settlement. The material and economic development of Karoo towns and villages then passed over to an increasingly English body of residents, whose patterns of life did not differ radically from their Dutch predecessors, and who were sensitive enough to respect the values they found. After the colonial era, the increasing urbanization of Dutch, now called Afrikaner, farmers, brought about a reversal in the demographic make-up of the Karoo, which was probably accelerated after the 1960s, reinforcing a growing body of opinion which held the Karoo to be a “heartland” of Afrikaner culture. Who is going to own the “construct” of the Karoo’s cultural identity in future generations is wide open to conjecture. POSTSCRIPTThis paper was originally presented to a symposium on Understanding and Using Urban Heritage in the Karoo, Victoria West, 3-5 March 2002, under the title of The Preacher, the Farmer and the Land Speculator - Village development patterns in the Cape Colony. I expect to be submitting it for formal publication in the immediate future. BIBLIOGRAPHYBACKHOUSE, James. 1844. A Narrative of a Visit to the Mauritius and South Africa. London: Hamilton, Adams.
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