Jan Woutersz

"[1656] Den 21:en meij is Jan Woutersz van Middelburch adsistent voor den raet deser fortresse, getrout met een swarte jonge dochter genaemt Catharijna Anthonis van Celagon in Bengale, Godt gelievede zelvige te zegenen."

"According to Heese, the first such [mixed] marriage at the Cape took place in 1656, before slaves started arriving in significant numbers. One Jan Woutersz, late of Middelburg Neherlands, married an Indian woman called Catherina Anthonis van Bengale when the return fleet on which they were travelling to Europe called in at theCApe. Wotersz and his new bride contrived to stay behind when the fleet sailed - among the first, but certainly not the last, birds of passage who arrived at the Cape on their way to somewhere else but chose to go no further. Since freemen could not marry those in bondage, this means Catharina van Bengale was probably also the first slave to be freed at the Cape." Steenkamp, Willem. (2012) Assegais, Drums and Dragoons. The early military and social history of the Cape of Good Hope, 1510-1806. Jonathan Ball Publishers. Jhb & CT p35

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/first-slaves-cape
Catharina van Bengale
Catharina Anthonis van Bengale is one of the most well known and important slaves of those first few years of the settlement. Catharina was the first slave at the Cape colony to be freed. She was freed in April of 1656, only four years after the founding of the settlement, by her owner Dirck Sarcerius of Batavia. Catharina was freed so that she could marry the Dutchman, Jan Woutersz. On 26 April Catharina received official permission to marry Woutersz and on Sunday 21 May 1656 the two were married in a ceremony in the castle. The wedding between this ex-slave and the Dutchman marked the first documented mixed marriage in South Africa. Their marriage was also the earliest marriage to take place at the Cape. The entry from Van Riebeeck’s journal on the day of their marriage reads:

To-day the banns having been published on three Sundays, the assistant Jan Wouterssen was married before the law or the Council of this fort to the honourable young maiden, Catarina Anthonis, from Salagon in Bengal, formerly a slave girl in the service of the Hon. Boogeard, in the open Council chamber after the reading of the Sunday service, in accordance with the relative resolution.

Jan Woutersz had joined the company in 1644. In 1653 he was sent from Batavia to the Cape where he acted as Assistant and bookkeeper. There is some indication that Woutersz may have been disabled in some way as he twice refers to himself in documents as ‘cripple Jan’. At the Cape, Woutersz had enough standing in the company to be allowed to eat at Van Riebeeck’s table, and when he was not at the fort his wife, Catharina, would sit in his place, socialising with what was essentially the elite of Cape society at the time. The logs seem to imply that although there were only six white wives of VOC officials at the time, Catharina, described as a ‘black woman’, was offered the same respect and treatment as the other wives and was part of their social company. Catharina was baptised as a Christian, which at the time was the most crucial barrier to entry into settler society, thereby formalising her full acceptance into Dutch society. Once she was a Christian and the wife of a Dutchman, the records seem to indicate that Catharina’s skin colour did not make much difference to the way in which she was seen and treated by the settlers.

Portrait of Dutch ships in Table Bay South Africa in the 17th century Source

A year after her marriage to Woutersz, Catharina’s fate was to take a turn for the worse. By March 1657, some of the settlers had been complaining that Woutersz consumed too much arrack and that he had slandered against Van Riebeeck and his wife, Maria. Dissent of any sort was not tolerated in the VOC and so Woutersz had to make a public retraction of his claims, beg forgiveness on his bare knees, have his tongue pierced by an awl and lose his rank as Assisstant, as well as his possessions, and be banished to Robben Island. Catharina, however, was heavily pregnant at the time, and so, in sympathy for her condition, parties in the Cape society bandied together to alleviate her husband’s punishment. As a result, Woutersz’s tongue was not pierced and his banishment revoked. Two months later however, stone suitable for quarrying was discovered on Robben Island and Woutersz was sent to the island as superintendent, to supervise the work of four servants, slaves and exiles in the quarry.

Robben Island at the time was windswept and desolate, a place for the company to raise sheep without the threat of predators, but it had also taken the first steps in its long history as a quarry and penal colony. At the time there were only five people living on the island, in empty isolation. It was in these lonely and harsh conditions, far from her home or any people she knew, that Catharina had to raise her first son. By March of 1658, after Woutersz had been in charge of Robben Island for 10 months, Van Riebeeck felt that he had returned to his previous bad behaviour and neglected his duties. Disgusted by his behaviour Van Riebeeck ordered that Woutersz and his wife and child be sent to India. In 1658, Catharina, the first slave to have a married a colonists, left the Cape and is lost the records of Cape history.