Happy Women`s Month!

Solms-Delta celebrates all the strong women, past and present, who have had a role in shaping the history of the farm. From indigenous Khoe and San, to slave, settler, farm worker, and community leader, the women on this farm have also shared these roles with being mother, sister, daughter, carer, and friend.

Today we especially honour the slave woman Francina van de Kaap. Read her heart wrenching story here based on a court case found in the Cape archives. For more fascinating stories be sure to visit our Museum van de Caab.

Francina van de Kaap

In 1824 Francina van de Kaap, and her partner Klaas, absconded while delivering a consignment of wine to Cape Town for their owner Isaac Cornelis de Villiers. They managed to eke out an existence along the Steenbrazens River, surviving only on the fish they caught, from the time of their desertion in 1824 until the beginning of January 1825. They travelled to Saldanha Bay where they lived on a diet of fish and pilfered garden fruit. On their return to the Steenbrazen river, they encountered a runaway named Africa van de Kaap and followed him to the refuge where Philander van de Kaap and La Fleur van Mosambique had been in hiding for a number of months. These three deserters had apparently committed numerous burglaries and robberies in the vicinity of Stellenbosch, rendering the district very unsafe causing great disquiet among the inhabitants.

Shortly after the couple arrived at the hideout, the men set out to procure food for the night. Klaas accompanied Africa to the Palmiet River, where they stole two sheep from an unguarded flock. The decision to join this notorious gang had serious repercussions for Klaas and Francina, who were apprehended by a commando the next day, just as Africa was skinning one of the stolen sheep.

The runaways were all convicted of desertion and of the more serious charges of the time: vagrancy in a gang, as well as of crimes of burglary and reported robbery. Punishment was always more severe for gangs of runaways than it was for those who absconded individually.