THEWHITEINVADERS
did not involve a criminal offence, and could be sold or bequeathed at
will."!?
To deter others, the company executed its major criminals in diabolical
.ways. Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish botanist, observed that
on the 31St of July [1773] a slave was executed, who had murdered his
master. The delinquent being laid on the cross and tied fast to it, first his arms
and legs were burned in eight different parts with jagged tongs, made red hot;
afterwards his arms and legs were broken on the wheel, and lastly, his head
was cut off and fixed on a pole. The judge that tries and condemns the
criminal is always present, and walks in procession to the place of execution,
in order to give solemnity to the ceremony....
There are two gallows out of
the town, one ...
on which Europeans are hanged, and the other ...
on
which slaves and Hottentots are executed.lf
The company controlled the slaves in its Cape Town lodge on military
lines. The lot of women owned by the company was especially humiliating.
To augment the company income, they were encouraged to prostitute
themselves to sailors and were made to work alongside men on the most
grueling tasks. Private slave owners were constrained by the fact that their