where most of them lived. Escapees created organized groups on Cape
Hanglip and maintained relations with slaves who remained, and many
who accepted the fact of enslavement carved out a living space by resisting
their masters' exactions in subtle ways-feigning
illness, going slow, de-
stroying or stealing property, and expressing their cultural autonomy in
songs and dances.s-
In slave societies, several factors may blur the distinction between slave
and free, and between race and class: a shared religion, manumission, the
growth of a free community of former slaves, and miscegenation. In the
Cape colony, these conditions were rarely met.
"By the end of the seventeenth century, it was an accepted prerequisite of
manumission that a slaveshould be baptised, speak good Dutch, and have
a guarantor who would pay the Poor fund, which might provide relief ifthe
freed slave became destitute."23 The company ran an elementary school
for its slave children and baptized some of them, but it neither gavespecial
privileges to its baptized slavesnor manumitted more than a handful. The
burghers baptized few slaves and manumitted an even srnaller proportion
than the company. As a result, the manumission rate was low: during the