Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains - whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.

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.

One of the fascinating stories of formerly enslaved people who started trading on their own and building wealth is that of a woman called Angela from Bengal in India. Angela was also known as Angila, Ansiela, Ansla and Hansela. She had arrived in the Cape together with her husband and three children, shipped to the Cape by a Batavian landdrost, Pieter Kemp. He then sold the family to Van Riebeeck. In 1662, Van Riebeeck sold Angela to Abraham Gabbema was promoted to a post in Batavia. He then liberated Angela and her three children. No mention is made of her husband from India. After she was freed, Angela was given land in Heerestraat with a title deed signed by one Cornelis van Quaelbergen. Part of the conditions for liberation included understanding and speaking the Dutch language, being a confirmed Christian and a member of a church.

Before the turn of the eighteenth century, the status of a Free Black in society was often influenced by the abilities of the individual rather than purely the colour of their skin. There is the story of the two formerly enslaved men, Anthony and Manuel from Angola, who had a white worker as their employee. Despite the upward mobility of a select few Free Black people, the vast majority were not in the same position. By the eighteenth century, poverty was a common feature for Free Blacks.

Slavery is so abhorrent that, before getting to grips with the historical scholarship on the topic, I assumed that abolition must have been inevitable. But now I’m not at all sure. Though it’s impossible to know for certain, it’s entirely plausible to me that, were the tape of history rerun a hundred times with slightly different starting conditions, in a significant proportion of those reruns, there would still be legal slavery in many or most countries in the world, even at today’s level of technological development.