Please note that this database has been transcribed from records which may contain errors.The Dutch VOC, with Jan Van Riebeeck the implementor, started the slave trade at the Cape of Good Hope. The Cape was intended as a half way station to restock fresh water and food supplies for the VOC ships sailing between the Netherlands and their holdings in the Indian Ocean. It is highly unlikely that the Lords Seventeen, businessmen of note, were relying on a veggie patch in the Cape Castle grounds to provide the numerous sailors of their extensive fleet with provisions to last for the long duration of their journeys. The VOC knew they would have to set up plantations to provide enough supplies for the crews. Providing fresh supplies to combat deficiency diseases would reduce the time spent in port with ships inactive. Unlike in the East where they exploited the existing caste systems to obtain slaves, they found that the indigenous migratory San and Khoi peoples were not as easily subdued into slavery and that they were vehemently opposed to parting with their livestock and land. The VOC were forced to look elsewhere for a stable supply of labour.

People of all creeds were abducted and kidnapped by slave traders and trafficked, or exiled and sold into slavery by community leaders. Many of the slaves entered the market as young children, toddlers and babies. Prized as a valuable commodity, slaves were ordered by special request, gifted, bequeathed to relatives, bought as an investment policy for children, or bartered for goods or animals. As soon as these humans were enslaved they were allocated new first names,  (surnames were provided/substituted by the place of origin, name of a ship, or a distinguishing feature or caricature. Culturally slaves did not have surnames in their countries of origin), reflecting the educational level of the name giver, and which their colonial slave masters could pronounce. In addition, slave names changed from owner to owner during the transactional life span of a slave. At the Cape of Good Hope common names used were at first Dutch in origin with a biblical or Roman twist, or months of the year, and after the British took over at the Cape the names were Anglicized with a biblical or Roman twist.​ From the 1800's onward new slave first names began to match those of their owners. 

The slave ships' officers and sailors all laid claim to slaves whom they sold at the Cape for monetary gain, although the VOC had a monopoly on slave transactions and the former practice appeared to be unsanctioned sales. Employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) stationed in the East were not permitted to take their personal servants and slaves back to the Netherlands as the slave owners would have been forced to set them free in Europe. Rather than setting them free, they were sold for financial gain at the Cape on return journeys. The VOC tried to control this practice by mandating the company officials to pay for the departure and return fares of the slaves. 

The British condoned slavery at the Cape for years after they abolished the slave trade.  

Slave records - South African National Archives

Delia Robertson - The First Fifty Years Project www.e-family.co.za

Mansell G Upham (At Earth's Extremist End) - the First Fifty Years Project www.e-family.co.za

AM van Rensburg et al - Slaves and Free Blacks at the Cape 1658 - 1700 based on AJ Boeseken - www.stamouers.com

www.eGGSA.org

WikiTree

SA History Online www.sahistory.org.za