‹ Back

Graaff-Reinet is the oldest town in the Eastern Cape (founded 1786)

and is the sixth oldest town in South Africa. It is snuggly tucked into a

loop in the Sundays River and is presided over by the majestic Spandau

Kop. Adjoining Spandau is the world-renowned Valley of Desolation.

Graaff-Reinet is undoubtedly a town with an enigmatic and troubled

history. Dubbed also "the Gem of the Karoo", it was founded in 1786 by

the governor Cornelius Jacob van de Graaff, whose wife's name was

Walk With Me / 8

Cornelia Reinet. Her namesake - Reinet House - was originally built as a

parsonage and is now a museum with one of the largest living grape vines

in the world in its garden.

Graaff-Reinet, early 1900s

In its early days, Graaff-Reinet was regarded as a far-flung frontier

settlement at the very limits of the old Cape Colony. The first European

inhabitants of the area were the Trekboere, or nomadic farmers, who moved

away from the restrictive rule of the Dutch East India Company at Cape

Town in search of suitable grazing for their cattle and fat-tailed sheep.

Unfortunately, the sweeping plains and buttes were already inhabited

and it would not be long before the pastoral farmers would come to blows

with the hunter-gatherer San, who had hunted the territory for centuries.

Deprived of their hunting grounds, the San turned to killing the livestock

of the trekboers, unleashing a state of perpetual conflict that lasted for 30

years until the San moved to new hunting grounds to the north, or were

assimilated into the Khoikhoi who had accompanied the new settlers.

These early years were marked by another source of conflict: between

the new settlers and the prevailing colonial authorities. First, it was their

Dutch masters and then the British. The Boers had moved to Graaff-

Reinet to escape the rule of the Dutch East India Company and resented

having to submit to the Cape-based administrators. The Dutch, they felt

Walk With Me / 9

did nothing to alleviate their plight, and when the British seized the Cape

administration, they rose in rebellion, only leaving many of their leaders

incarcerated and/or banished in 1799, overturning their newly established

republic.

Under British rule, the town of Graaff-Reinet prospered and became the

agricultural centre of the frontier, boasting a thriving fruit industry.

However, when slavery was abolished in 1834, this proved too much for

the recalcitrant Boers, who band together, sold or abandoned their farms,

and commenced a mass migration to the northern territories in the Great

Trek. (These Boers later became known as the Voortrekkers). The spaces

they left were occupied by English settlers, including those who fled the

eastern frontier to escape the endless wars with the Xhosa tribes. This

began the thriving wool industry, driving up land prices and prosperity.

After a few decades of relative peace, the town again became the centre

of conflict when the Second Anglo-Boer War started in 1899. Although

not many Afrikaners from Graaff-Reinet joined the fray, they remained

sympathetic to the Afrikaner cause and were known to harbour their

vigilante cousins as they sort refuse and caused mayhem in the district.

This served only to drive a wedge between the English and Afrikaners of

the village, the undertones of which still prevail in certain quarters of

Graaff-Reinet.

After the conclusion of the war, the town continued to flourish and saw

the establishment of two schools, Union High (English) and Volkskool

(Afrikaans) in 1920 and 1922, respectively. It was also at this time that the

large Van Ryneveld’s Pass Dam to the north of the town was built, making

the town less prone to the terrible droughts that prevailed on a regular

basis.

This discourse on the brief history of Graaff-Reinet is necessary, as it

sets the context in which Chippie and his family lived. Perhaps the most

noteworthy of the observations is the divide between the English and

Afrikaans-speaking citizens, fed largely by many years of distrust of both

Dutch and British administration and the resultant Afrikaner exodus,

followed by an influx of British settlers. The resultant wars between Britain

and the Boer republics (Transvaal and Orange Free State) that marked the

Walk With Me / 10

end of the 19th century, served only to heighten the levels of tension

between these two groups.

The result of these permanently underlying tensions between English

and Afrikaans-speaking citizens as evidenced by the unnecessary

duplication of resources in the town: separate schools to serve each

language group; two different agricultural societies; the creation of two

separate farmers’ cooperatives; etc. The list goes on. This duplication

served no sustainable economic purpose and assisted only the political

agenda to further divide the town’s citizens, something that is still a feature

of Graaff-Reinet’s character.

Despite the underlying tensions, the town prospered in the 1850’s and

was regarded by many as the fastest developing frontier town in the

Colony. At the forefront of development was the wool trade, which

brought with it a great variety of people from a wide range of nationalities

and professions. These included German and Jewish traders, educators

from Scotland, missionaries from the Dutch Reformed Church, and

Dutch and English farmers. Labourers were drawn mainly from the local

San and Khoi populations and remnants of the slaves that accompanied

the Dutch farmers from the Cape.

It was at this second apex of the town’s development that Chippie was

born, and as a young man was able to witness the prosperity. Sadly, it

marked also the start of the stagnation of development of the place and

by the time Chippie turned 30 years of age, the decline was markedly

noticeable. Mossievale, the farm he stood to inherit, was one of the first

victims of the recessive years.

Graaff-Reinet has been the home of the Joseph family since Richard

Frank Joseph started farming in the district in the early 1870s. However,

other members of the family, such as the Crawford clan, had settled there

as early as 1821 when James Crawford (1820 Settler) decided to make this

his home.

Source: Walk With Me by Theron Crawford