In the story of colonial settlements in Africa and America, only the Spanish and German rivals wallowed in blood, while the English overcame challenges of nature and man. Even in the story of the slave trade, the English, with their antislavery legal enactments, emerged as the heroes of the abolition movement and not the villains of its earlier expansion.

One of the overtly under-told stories of the Cape of Good Hope is that of descendants of manumitted slaves who despite their roots also participated in slavery. Simon van der Stel himself came into the world from the womb of a women with a history of enslavement. Van der Stel’s mother was Marie Lievens, a daughter of Monyca da Costa from the Coromandel Coast of South India and Heyndrick Levensz, a Dutch captain in Batavia. Da Costa is associated with a group of enslaved women who were bought by the VOC in South India.

Louis from Bengal had arrived at the cape from present-day Bangladesh as a teenager. He is estimated to have been about nineteen or twenty years old when he had saved enough money to buy himself out of slavery. The piece of land he received in 1675 at Table Valley is now located in the Gardens Shopping Centre precinct. This specific garden spot was apparently given to him so that he could produce fruits and vegetables. In 1676, Louis was granted an erf in town, in Hout Street, at what is now the corner of the St George’s Mall. On Hout Street, Louis from Bengal bult a house with living accommodation which he let. He had enslaved people staying on that property too.

The most fascinating black female entrepreneur in the early colonial era in the Cape was arguably Maria Everts, known as ‘Swarte Maria’. She was the daughter of an enslaved couple from Guinea, Evert and Hoena (Anna). Born in 1662, Maria grew up enslaved and in her life rose to become enormously wealthy. Among her assets was the farm that became what is now known as the affluent Camps Bay in Cape Town. Maria Everts also owned De Mosselbank farm in Klipheuwel, Kalwervlei in Darling, and grazing and hunting rights in the Sonquasfonteyn field and in the Drooge Valley next to Groen Cloof.

Her grandma, a former domestic worker, had used her entrepreneurial skills to save up and buy a house in the multiracial area of Sophiatown in the years before my mum was born. When police and bulldozers forcibly moved more than 60 000 residents in February of 1955, the Mxakato family was deposited in Soweto’s Diepkloof Zone 1. Her grandma saved up once more, eventually buying the two-bedroom house that is still the family home. Back then it usually had around 15 people living in it; relatives from the Eastern Cape, friends or people who just needed a place to stay for a while.