THEWHITEINVADERS
Cape Colony took place in 1808, the year after the abolition of the slave
trade. Over three hundred slaves and Khoikhoi from the grain-producing
area north of Cape Town marched on the Cape peninsula but were easily
defeated by the militia on the outskirts of town. In. 1825 a slave named
Galant created another stir. Galant had repeatedly but unavailingly tried to
persuade the landdrost at Worcester, sixty miles northeast of Cape Town,
to stop his owner, Willem van der Merwe, from flogging him. Eventually,
"when the freedom of the slaves I had so frequently heard of came into my
head," Galant mobilized his fellow slaves and Khoi servants. They seized
some guns and ammunition, took over the farmstead, and killed van der
Merwe, as well as his wife, who had hidden, in vain, in the brick oven.
However" a commando quickly crushed the rebels.I"
In 1833, the reformed British Parliament abandoned the attempt to
ameliorate the institution of slavery and passed a law emancipating the
slavesin the British Empire and providing some compensation for the slave
owners' loss of property. After a transitional period during which the
former slaveswere apprenticed to their former owners, they became legally
free in 1838. By that time, the concept of freedom had been given a new