Calls for Cape Town International Airport name change

What do you think should be the new name for Cape Town International airport?

  • Krotoa - they already have Dawid Stuurman Airport - Gqeoberhgha

  • Desmond Tutu

  • Taliep Petersen-muslim and brown people awareness and a GBV victim

  • Other

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Fulcrum29

Fulcrum29

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dualmeister said:
Read a bit further and they also say that she was a drunkard, abandoned her children and banished to Robben for Island immoral behaviour.

But hey :laugh:
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That is the Dutch version,

mg.co.za

The history of Van Riebeek's slave Krotoa unearthed from the masters' view

The first nursemaid in Van Riebeeck's household and one of the first interpreters between the Fort and the Khoikhoi, ousted after her husband died.
mg.co.za mg.co.za

The history of Van Riebeek’s slave Krotoa unearthed from the masters’ view

...

Doctor Yvettte Abrahams is based in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape. She says it’s important to understand that the Khoi did not have a history of violence, of owning and selling people. That the first recorded Khoi killing was in 1510 and was as a result of an attempted slave robbery, when they were trying to protect their own from the Portuguese. “The first time they were recorded fighting was in defence of their children,” she says.

“Both the Khoi and Krotoa were constantly trying to understand the Dutch and their motivations. They were trying to figure out what made the colonisers tick. And if they didn’t it’s because slavery and violence were simply things that weren’t a part of life as they knew it. Try to consider a life where there was no hierarchy; just people. There was no royalty and there were no commoners. Consider being a generation to whom gender-based violence was news. But that in order to protect your children you needed to understand it.”

She refers to a Karl Marx quote: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Dr Abrahams says that Krotoa didn’t have a choice of the circumstances under which she had to make her choices. “The only choice was whether to assimilate or not to assimilate.”

...

Dr Boezak speaks to how, while living with the Van Riebeecks, Krotoa grew to become very knowledgeable about the Dutch way of thinking. That she vehemently disagreed with Doman, also an interpreter who initiated the first Khoi-Dutch War of 1659-60. “She knew that should her people lose the war, the Europeans would also take away their land – which is what happened. Doman was a brilliant strategist who had been sent to Java by Van Riebeeck for a year to further hone his skills as an interpreter. Ironically it was there that the young warrior of the Goringhaiqua tribe saw some weaknesses of the colonial masters. He used it as resistance in the war, but was wounded early during the conflict. It was at the end of the war that Krotoa emerged as a successful peacebroker – probably the highlight of her career at the Fort.” She was 16.

Krotoa straddled two worlds; two cultures, two ways of life, two aesthetics, two belief systems, two languages. Calvyn Gilfellan, CEO of the Castle Control Board, speaks to these opposing binaries and the respective pressures that would have ensued. “At 11 she was a child. She was obedient – to both sides, loyal and trying to please. She was both a traitor and devoted; both good and bad.”

...

In the years that Krotoa worked for Van Riebeeck there is no record of her ever receiving remuneration. For Dr Boezak it’s not a leap to imagine that she may have received alcohol instead of money as payment for the deals she bartered. Perhaps an early iteration of the dop system.

“She is also the first abused woman who was forced into the tot system that became such a widespread practice on farms in the Western Cape. Her relatively secure life at the Fort changed radically when a successor, Commander Wagenaer, appointed Van Meerhof as superintendent of Robben Island. Her husband was killed on a trip to Madagascar with the goal to capture slaves, and for a short while she was allowed to stay at the new Castle with her three children. After alleged misdemeanours she was thrown into one of its dungeons and later banished back to the Island. Her children were taken away and put into foster care.” He continues: “One should remember that the colonists had the power to write history from their side and finally they depicted and demonised Krotoa as a drunkard, a whore and someone with loose morals.”
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I am more curious where these researchers hide their time machine because I want to go back too.
 
Fulcrum29

Fulcrum29

Honorary Master
Joined
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Messages
55,064
ForceFate said:
It's said her history and work are well documented.
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To quote SAHO, on their sources when they published their article,

Krotoa (Eva) | South African History Online

www.sahistory.org.za

References

'Islands' by Dan Sleigh (Secker and Warburg, 2004) "Translated from the original Afrikaans version by Andre Brink, drawing on the early Dutch East Indies Company journals, archival researcher Dan Sleigh reads between the lines of official entries and creates a fictional voice for Krotoa".

Groep Sonder Grense - Die rol en status van die gemengde bevolking aan die Kaap' by Hans Fredrich Heese. For those interested in geneaology and the complexity of Coloured identity in South Africa.

Morris, M. (2004) Every Step of the Way: The journey to freedom in South Africa. Funded by the Ministry of Education. Published by HSRC Press, p 62 ”“ 64.

Giliomee, H. and Mbenga, B. (2007). New History of South Africa. Tafelberg Publishers, Cape Town, pg 51.

Dalene Matthee's books, 'Pieternella Van Die Kaap: Historiese Roman Oor Pieternella En Eva-Krotoa' (2000) and 'Susters Van Eva' (1995)

‘The Leader’ (date unknown) Supplement series in The Sowetan.
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Now what is true is that she was indeed captured within VOC records, personal records, however it is stylised in what can be considered poetry, but her civilian records do add a timeline. A view like this,

However, her work as an interpreter was not easy at this time, as she was torn between her loyalty to the Dutch (who had taken her in and given her new clothes) and her own people (whose land was being taken over by the Dutch in the late 1650s). Due to this dilemma, Krotoa often struggled to maintain trust on both sides.
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who came to that conclusion? There are several more remarks like this.

It is the exact same thing with the battle which took place at Salt River, it is all captured in poetry by the Portuguese which took centuries to be reinterpreted.

I didn't live in that time, but I have seen too much history being 'rewritten' to substantiate modern claims, amongst other things. Currently due to Russia invading Ukraine, some WW2 history is also being revised… You are not going to change written history, but you can manipulate how it is to be understood and could be adding pieces which wasn't there back then to bring upon alternation.

Anyhow. People want to rename Cape Town International Airport, then so be it.

EDIT: From the MG article, as Dr Boezak stated,

He continues: “One should remember that the colonists had the power to write history from their side and finally they depicted and demonised Krotoa as a drunkard, a whore and someone with loose morals.”
Click to expand...
 
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