Abraham Josias Sluysken was the last head of the Cape government under the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He governed with the title of Commissioner from September 1793 until he surrendered the Cape to the British in September 1795 [IC]. His two years in office fell in the first years of the reopened mission at Baviaanskloof, now Genadendal. The missionaries’ diaries show him deciding whether the mission could stay, whether it could build, and whether its Khoekhoe residents could keep their cattle there. He matters to the valley because those decisions set the terms on which the mission and its people lived until British rule began.
What the letters in square brackets mean
Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.
- [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
- [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from Moravian mission records, above all the diaries of the missionaries at Baviaanskloof. They record what Sluysken said as the missionaries heard and reported it, and they have not been checked against the company’s own records.
- [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.
The diary passages
Most of what this page says about Sluysken and the valley comes from new English translations in the Genadendal Diaries repository. They are machine translations that no person has checked yet. Each passage is cited by its Utrecht file number and line numbers, so a reader of the old German or Dutch can check it. See The Genadendal Diaries.
At a glance
| Born | 3 December 1736, at Deventer in the Netherlands [TBV]. One source gives 1737. |
| Died | 18 January 1799, at The Hague [TBV]. The year 1799 is given by two sources [IC]. |
| Known for | Governing the Cape as Commissioner from 1793 to 1795, and surrendering it to the British [IC] |
| Link to the valley | Head of the government when the missionaries of 1792 were building up the mission at Baviaanskloof. He decided what they and the Khoekhoe living with them could do there [MS]. |
His life before the Cape
Sluysken was born at Deventer in the Netherlands [TBV]. He made his career in the service of the VOC in Asia, and from 1765 he headed the company’s trading post at Surat, on the north-west coast of India [TBV]. One account says he was on his way home from India when he was persuaded to take charge at the Cape [TBV].
Head of the Cape
The VOC was deep in debt by the 1790s [IC]. In 1791 its directors sent two Commissioners-General, Sebastiaan Cornelis Nederburgh and Simon Hendrik Frijkenius, to put its affairs in order [IC]. They were at the Cape from June 1792 to September 1793, and they cut costs and raised taxes [TBV]. The missionaries recorded in May 1793 that hundreds of farmers had gone to the Cape to protest against the new taxes [MS] (Diaries: A363595, lines 3125 to 3158).
When the two Commissioners-General sailed on to Batavia, Sluysken took over the government, on 2 September 1793, with the title of Commissioner [IC]. The Diaries call him “the Commissioner” or “the Edle Heer” (the honourable gentleman) [MS]. Johan Isaac Rhenius, who had governed before him and who helped the missionaries, served under him as second in the government [MS].
His years in office were hard ones for the company. One account lists its bankruptcy, a paralysed economy, discontent among the burghers, and poor relations with the Khoekhoe and the Xhosa [TBV]. In 1795 the burghers of Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam rose against the company [IC]. On 17 and 18 June 1795 the burghers of Swellendam drove out their Landdrost, Anthonie Faure, and began to call themselves “national burghers”, after the style of the French Revolution [IC]. The Diaries call them the Nationals [MS].
Sluysken and the mission
”So it shall remain” (January 1794)
In January 1794 the missionaries heard that their place at Baviaanskloof was to be taken from them. Hendrik Marsveld rode to Stellenbosch, where the Landdrost told him that the company in the Netherlands thought the missionaries should go to the San, “to make peace there”, and sent him on to the Commissioner [MS]. Sluysken heard him out and read his papers. Three days later he told Marsveld he could “go home comforted”. The earlier Commissioners had allowed the missionaries to live there, “and so it shall remain” [MS]. Marsveld asked for this in writing and offered to buy the land. Sluysken said neither was needed, and that the mission would not be taxed [MS]. The missionaries were not fully reassured, because they had nothing in writing in case the government changed [MS].
Diaries: A363595, lines 7645 to 7728
No building (September 1794 to January 1795)
On 30 September 1794 Daniel Schwinn met Sluysken in Cape Town. Sluysken told him the mission could keep its place in peace until the Commissioners-General came back from Batavia. He said the company’s directors had allowed the missionaries to settle only where there was no Christian congregation, which would mean going as far as the Xhosa country, but that he would let them stay where they were [MS]. Schwinn asked to build a meeting house, because more than half the people had to stand outside during meetings. Sluysken refused: “If you build a bigger house, at once they say you are building a church, and then I have trouble again” [MS]. The Diaries sum up his answer: “Everything shall stay as I found it until the 2 Commissioners come” [MS]. In January 1795 Marsveld told Commandant Gordon in Cape Town that the Commissioner had forbidden them to build “anything at all, even a goat shed” [MS].
Diaries: A363595, lines 10826 to 10920 and 11473 to 11533; A363595, lines 13732 to 13806
The cattle order (December 1794 to April 1795)
In December 1794 Baas Teunis, who kept the company’s post at Soetemelksvlei near the mission, gathered the Khoekhoe who had come to Baviaanskloof from other places. He told them, in the Commissioner’s name, that they must take their cattle back where they had come from, with as many people as were needed to herd them, and keep only a few animals for slaughter at the mission. Cattle found in the area after that would be taken [MS]. He also said the Commissioner had ordered that the mission accept no Khoekhoe person who had served a farmer without a certificate from that farmer saying the service was over [MS]. One man answered that he could not go back, because the farmer had driven him away [MS].
In January 1795 Marsveld went to Cape Town to ask Sluysken to withdraw the order. The company’s cashier told him it was “the doing of Baas Teunis at the post” [MS]. Sluysken received Marsveld kindly, but said he was overrun with complaints from farmers that Khoekhoe who were taught “would get behind their secrets” [MS]. Marsveld answered that the farmers had no secrets except ploughing, sowing, and reaping, and those they had learned from the Khoekhoe [MS]. Sluysken replied: “That is all very well, my dear man, but because of the war I cannot change it” [MS].
Later that month sixteen of the Khoekhoe went to Cape Town themselves, and saw Sluysken twice. He told them to take their cattle away, because they were taking the neighbouring farmers’ grazing [MS]. They told him they meant to stay and not move away again [MS]. When they tried to speak to him about their faith, he told them to hold their tongues and to see that they left, or he would have them beaten [MS]. The Fiscal, Willem Stephanus van Ryneveld, told them he would gladly help them keep their cattle, but that the Commissioner would not give way [MS]. The Khoekhoe also learned that a Khoekhoe captain named Stoffel had backed Baas Teunis’s complaint for drink and two shillings [MS].
In February 1795 a farmer told a woman from the mission that the Landdrost would soon bring an order from the Commissioner for the missionaries to leave within three days and settle where no Christians lived, or be sent to Batavia [MS]. No such order came. On 18 February three men visited the mission: “Mr Clüde, to whom Constantia belongs”, which points to Hendrik Cloete of Groot Constantia, with a former official from Stellenbosch named Hoffman and the field corporal Andreas Otto [MS]. One of them, apparently Cloete, said that the field between the mission house and the river alone could feed a thousand sheep, and that the Commissioner “has not been told the truth” [MS]. By April the order about the cattle had been largely withdrawn, after a visitor the Diaries now call Mr Claude had put the Khoekhoe’s case to the government [MS]. Mr Claude is probably the same man [TBV].
Diaries: A363595, lines 12549 to 12683; A363595, lines 13680 to 14134; A363595, lines 14509 to 14712; A363596, lines 863 to 899
The Nationals and the British (July to September 1795)
On 29 July 1795 an order from Commandant Bisani told the missionaries to leave Baviaanskloof within three days, and they went to Cape Town [MS]. Bisani is probably the Pisani who, with Petrus Delport, led the Swellendam revolt [TBV]. On 4 August Sluysken told the missionaries he was astonished at Bisani’s presumption, but that they had done well to obey, because the rebels were “filled with fury” [MS]. On 7 August he told them they could go home in peace, and gave them a letter to take with them [MS].
The same day British troops attacked the Dutch position at Muizenberg [IC]. The missionaries left Cape Town in the uproar, and saw the Commissioner ride out on horseback at the head of the burghers [MS].
In September Sluysken’s government sent orders to the valley through Baas Teunis. On 8 September it ordered food for the wives and children of the Khoekhoe men serving at the Cape, and the missionaries counted 42 women and 74 children [MS]. On 14 September it ordered every Khoekhoe man who could be found to be sent to the Cape [MS]. These men probably served in the Pandour corps, the company’s corps of Khoekhoe soldiers [TBV].
Diaries: A363596, lines 2050 to 2146; A363596, lines 2199 to 2291; A363596, lines 2381 to 2482
The surrender, and after
A British fleet arrived at the Cape on 10 June 1795 [IC]. Sluysken refused to hand over the colony [TBV]. After the fighting at Muizenberg in August and the arrival of British reinforcements in early September, he surrendered the Cape [IC]. Sources give different dates for the surrender, from 14 to 19 September 1795 [TBV]. The historian George McCall Theal dates the end of his rule to 16 September [TBV].
In October 1795 Marsveld visited Sluysken, now “the former Edle Heer”, to thank him for his protection. Sluysken told him: “I have done what I could. I wrote to the Major-General on your account, told him how you had been recommended to us by the Company, and asked that he too would grant you his protection; and I have received the answer I wished” [MS]. The Major-General was James Henry Craig, who commanded the British land forces [IC].
Sluysken sailed for the Netherlands on 12 November 1795 [TBV]. In 1797 he published an account of events at the Cape from 10 June to 16 September 1795 [TBV]. One source says many protested against his surrender, although he was thanked for his service [TBV]. He died at The Hague on 18 January 1799 [TBV].
Diaries: A363596, lines 2612 to 2652
Links to other figures
- The Missionaries of 1792. Marsveld, Schwinn, and Kühnel dealt with Sluysken for most of his time in office. In their diaries he protects their right to stay and refuses their requests to build. He is the same man seen from their side [MS].
- Sir John Cradock. British governor from 1811 to 1814, in whose time the Netherlands formally ceded the Cape to Britain [IC].
- Hendrik Marsveld. The missionary who dealt with Sluysken most, in January 1794, January 1795, and October 1795 [MS].
- Bisani. The rebel commandant whose order drove the missionaries away in July 1795, and whose presumption Sluysken said astonished him [MS].
- Hendrik Cloete. The Diaries record a visit to the mission in February 1795 by “Mr Clüde, to whom Constantia belongs”, who said the Commissioner had not been told the truth about the mission’s grazing [MS]. The Mr Claude who then put the Khoekhoe’s case to the government was probably the same man [TBV].
His legacy in the valley
The mission stayed at Baviaanskloof through Sluysken’s rule, as he had promised in January 1794 [MS]. His ban on building ended with the company’s rule: under the British, the missionaries built, and a chapel was consecrated in 1796 [IC]. The dispute over the Khoekhoe’s cattle was settled by the British in 1796, when the mission’s grazing was marked with boundary stones [MS]. See The Valley Through TIME.
What is still open
- What the company’s own records say about his decisions on Baviaanskloof, and whether they confirm the missionaries’ account.
- Whether the cattle order was his own decision or, as the company’s cashier said, the work of Baas Teunis.
- What the Khoekhoe who went to Cape Town in January 1795 said of their meeting with him, in their own words. Only the missionaries’ account survives.
- His exact year of birth (1736 or 1737) and the exact date of the surrender.
- Whether the Khoekhoe men of Baviaanskloof served in the Pandour corps in 1795.
- Whether the Mr Claude of April 1795 was the Mr Clüde of Constantia who visited in February.
Related
- Valley History
- Dutch East India Company
- The Missionaries of 1792
- Hendrik Cloete
- Hendrik Marsveld
- Bisani
- The Genadendal Diaries
- The Valley Through TIME
References
- Wikipedia. Abraham Josias Sluysken. His birth at Deventer, Surat from 1765, his appointment on 2 September 1793, the revolts of 1795, the surrender, his return to the Netherlands on 12 November 1795, his published account of 1797, and his death at The Hague.
- Weet. Kaapse goewerneurs, 1652 tot 1795. His years (1737 to 1799), his journey from India, the problems of his government, and the reaction to his surrender. Nederburgh and Frijkenius at the Cape.
- Theal, G.M. Abraham Josias Sluysken, Commissioner-General, from 2nd September 1793 to 16th September 1795. Chapter LIV of History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi, volume 3. The dates of his rule. Not yet read in full for this page.
- Wikipedia. Battle of Muizenberg. The British arrival on 10 June 1795, the attack of 7 August, the reinforcements of September, and the Pandour corps.
- Wikipedia. Republic of Swellendam. The expulsion of Landdrost Faure on 17 and 18 June 1795 and the “national burghers”.
- Swellendam Tourism. The rise and fall of the Swellendam Republic. Delport and Pisani as leaders of the revolt.
- Die “Corps Pandoeren”, 1793 tot 1795: Krygers ter verdediging van die Kaapkolonie teen die einde van die Nederlandse bewind. ResearchGate. The Khoekhoe corps of 1793 to 1795. Not yet read for this page.
- Genadendal Diaries repository. Genadendal Diaries. English translations of the Utrecht copies of the missionaries’ diaries, cited here by file and line number. Unreviewed machine translations.