The story of black businesses in South Africa remains underwritten. This book profiles the biographies of black people and communities who demonstrated impressive entrepreneurial and trading abilities both in the pre-colonial period and during the most difficult times of colonialism and apartheid.

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.

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.

Black people could buy land at £1 an acre and they could buy farms from white farmers. Many Africans had adopted the plough and advanced methods of cultivation that missionaries wanted to instil. Tini Maqoma, the son of the Xhosa warrior Maqoma, outperformed his white neighbours in cultivation. He produced maize and grain that was in contrast to the ‘white man’s weed’. In 1876, one of the sons of Chief Stokwe bought a farm containing Fort Willshire for £1 800 as part of a strategy to get back the land.