Hermann Giliomee: Historian. Hermann Giliomee

Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power (2012) I attempted to understand the five Afrikaners who, politically speaking, dominated our lives between 1958 and 1994: Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, PW Botha, Van Zyl Slabbert and FW de Klerk. I had conducted interviews with all of them except PW Botha. In the late 1980s he had reportedly warned members of the NP caucus against me and a co-author of mine, Lawrence Schlemmer, as snakes in the grass.

      There was something special about the extraordinary times I lived through and that I researched and wrote about. In South Africa, unlike many other countries, history is central to our contemporary politics. The struggle around apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s was in many ways a propaganda struggle in which opposing interpretations of South African history played a crucial role. The convergence of my professional interests as a historian, my personal experience of dramatic social change, and my evolving understanding of South Africa have inspired me to write this book.

      Hermann Giliomee

      Stellenbosch

      Winter 2016

      Chapter 1

      Origins

      It was religious persecution that forced the Guillaumé family to flee France. Between 1670 and 1700 around 300 000 Huguenots bade their motherland farewell after long-standing discrimination and deadly attacks. The refugees settled in the Netherlands, the German states, England, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, the American colonies and other predominantly Protestant countries. In 1688 some 200 Huguenots arrived at the Cape of the Good Hope from the Netherlands.

      The flight of the Huguenots was one of the largest waves of migration Europe had seen up to that time. For France, it resulted in a massive loss of human capital. “La grande catastrophe” was President Charles de Gaulle’s reaction when the South African ambassador in Paris told him about his own Huguenot forefather’s flight.

      The progenitor of the Guillaumé family in South Africa was François Guillaumé – in the primary sources the surname is also spelled Guilliaume and Guilliaumeth. He was born in 1680 in either Aimargues or the neighbouring village of Saint-Laurent-d’Aigouze, southwest of the city of Nîmes. The villages were part of Languedoc, a staunchly Protestant region between Nîmes and Montpellier, which was home to a flourishing silk industry.

      François Guillaumé, who had left Languedoc as a child, married Claudine Cloy. By 1700 the couple were living in Berlin, where François most probably made silk clothing for a living. The Huguenot community, with their own church and congregation, numbered about 50 000 and constituted a quarter of the city’s population. The Guillaumé couple’s son Mathieu (later called Matthias) was born in 1711. Three other children were also born in Berlin.

      In 1726 Guillaumé and his family travelled from Berlin to Amsterdam, and sailed from Texel to the Cape of Good Hope a few months later. François had two contracts in his pocket. One was a mandate that authorised him to negotiate on behalf of Jacob Labat, a Huguenot in London with a claim to the estate of a brother who had died at the Cape shortly before. It was likely, therefore, that Guillaumé was literate.2

      The second contract was one he had entered into with the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) to start a silk industry at the Cape. He undertook to establish silkworm breeding and silk spinning as a business. The venture formed part of the VOC’s efforts to set up an export industry that would make the Cape financially self-supporting. There had been unsuccessful attempts under two previous governors, Willem Adriaan van der Stel and Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes, to establish a silk industry.

      From silkworms to St Helena

      In October 1726 Guillaumé and his family arrived in Table Bay aboard the Berbices. He had brought along some silkworms, but it appears that he might have spoken too highly of his own abilities. OF Mentzel, author of one of the best descriptions of the Cape in the first half of the eighteenth century, later wrote with a hint of schadenfreude that the so-called “expert” was not as competent as he had claimed to be.

      Guillaumé soon discovered that he faced huge challenges. For one, his factory was situated at the top end of the Heerengracht in the small seaport town, while the mulberry trees were in Rondebosch. Slaves had to undertake daily trips to pick leaves for the silkworms. But there was a much graver problem: the worms Guillaumé had brought from Europe did not adapt well to the Cape climate.

      The Political Council, the body that governed the Cape, was undeterred by these hurdles. The Council erected a three-storey building at the top end of Heerengracht and gave it the grand name of De Oude Spinnerij (the old spinning factory). The building was later demolished, but the name Spin Street has lived on as a reminder of the enterprise.

      Though the outlook had been bleak from the outset, the Political Council was determined to persevere. In December 1727, just more than a year after his arrival, Guillaumé sent a gloomy report to the government. In the entire preceding year he had managed to harvest only six pounds of silk. Its value was far less than that of his salary of 20 florins per month plus living costs. Every year the enterprise’s loss increased.

      Towards the end of 1729, the members of the Political Council visited Guillaumé’s spinning factory and expressed their disappointment at the poor progress. What he told them worsened their mood. He predicted poor results for the coming years as well, as few of the silkworm eggs had hatched.

      In 1732 Guillaumé threw in the towel, overwhelmed by the problems with labour, worms and the mulberry trees. He saw no hope of a profit, and asked for permission to transfer the business to his son Matthias. In 1735 he informed the government of his intention to remain at the Cape as a free burgher. In that year, the name François Guillaumé appeared on the list of burghers of the district of Stellenbosch for the first time.

      Matthias, too, decided that the silk industry was a blind alley, and became a blacksmith. Ten years later he abandoned this occupation as well, and in 1743 he started farming on the farm Vlottenburg (also called Vredenburg). He stayed there until 1756, when he sold the farm. In the last year he supplied the following information about his property for the Opgaafrol (the inventory of farming activities): 5 slaves, 13 horses, 10 head of cattle and 200 sheep. He also grew grain on a small scale.

      A few years later Matthias moved to the farm Afdak which he had bought near present-day Onrus. His descendants would become pioneers of the Overberg, and specifically of the areas around Bredasdorp and Napier.3 In the last years of the VOC’s rule, the name Guillaumé was simplified to Giliomee in the Company’s Opgaafrol.

      My grandfather, Johannes Human Giliomee, born in 1867, was the son of an impoverished bywoner (tenant farmer) who worked on various farms in the Bredasdorp district. He married his cousin, Elizabeth Catharina Giliomee, and around 1890 the couple moved to the Republic of the Orange Free State. They settled in the town of Villiers on the southern bank of the Vaal River. Family tradition has it that they were as poor as church mice when they arrived in Villiers. There was a ray of light, though: my grandmother came from an affluent family in the Bredasdorp district.

      With financial help from his in-laws, my grandfather soon found his feet. Villiers was on the main road to the Johannesburg goldfields, and my grandfather obtained the contract for the pontoon over the Vaal River. Later he was also awarded the contract for the mail coach between Villiers and Johannesburg.

      When the war between Britain and the Boer Republics broke out in 1899, he joined the Free State forces and became a member of the Wilge River field cornetcy. British forces captured him and his brother Jurie at Groenplaats on 21 October 1900. They were sent as prisoners of war to the Deadwood Camp on the island of St Helena. Here he made a beautiful little wooden chest, which he brought back to Villiers.

      My grandmother was determined that British troops would not capture her and her two children, both younger than ten, and send them to a concentration camp. They wandered around in the veld and lay low whenever a Britsh patrol was in the vicinity. The fact that she had hidden a sum of £60 in her belt assisted her greatly in the battle for survival.4

      It has been estimated that by the end of the war, there were 2 000 Boer women and children