Antonij Janz from Bengal, a slave who had permission to own land – a so-called free black. Antonij and Groot Catrijn raised Christoffel. Both died around 1682 – it may have been in a smallpox epidemic – so perhaps it was Christoffel’s inheritance that enabled him to buy the farm.
Little is certain about Christoffel, apart from the fact that he married Margot around 1690. She was the daughter of Jacques de Savoye and Marie-Madeleine du Pont who arrived at the Cape with the Huguenots in 1688.
The cemetery lies on an open piece of land among the vineyards. It’s tidy, and I can see that it has been weeded. The artificial flowers on some of the graves are new and must have been put there fairly recently. Harold Louis Silberbauer, Anna Sybella Schelpe, Gustav Kemp, Josina Klue and Thomas Ellanes Withington all lie buried here. I walk from one grave to the next. Sylvia Elizabeth Bouwer. John Bester. In tere herinnering. In loving memory. No Christoffel Snyman.
The slender shadow of a cypress moves on the ground, like an angry pointing finger.
Not one Snyman is buried here. This could be because Christoffel was the only Snyman ever to own the farm. After his death, Margot married Henning Viljoen, and from here on, her and Christoffel’s nine children – seven daughters and two sons – spread throughout the country.
As I walk back to the yard, I wonder whether this footpath was here in Christoffel’s time. At some time, each of those nine children, the first nine Snymans, must have followed a road away from the farm, whether by foot, on horseback, in a horse cart or ox-wagon, to settle somewhere else. Some, like those on our side of the family, crossed the mountains and moved inland. First to Graaff-Reinet, then with the Great Trek, on to Natal. More children and grandchildren were born, each following his own path, no longer with a wagon and oxen, but by car or train or bus. Much later it was Oupa’s turn, then Pa’s, and then mine, each of us following his own path, one that began here on the farm of Christoffel, our dark-skinned ancestor, here where the rain is blanketing the vineyards in a haze.
Apart from his signature preserved behind glass, nothing of Christoffel remains on the farm. Not even an old wine barrel with his name carved into the wood.
I cross the yard again and pass the restaurant where an aroma from the kitchen reminds me of bean soup. I hear the pop of a cork as a bottle of wine is opened and then a woman’s laugh as if something inside her has been released too.
In Christoffel’s time there were elephants here. That first farmhouse was probably built from clay. It can’t have been a romantic existence. There were clashes with the Huguenot and the Khoi and the San. The Huguenots also disagreed among themselves, yet Christoffel’s marriage to Margot wasn’t unacceptable, he with his brown skin, she the daughter of Jacques and Marie-Madeleine de Savoye from Aeth in France.
The separate marriages and separate neighbourhoods and separate hospitals and separate schools and separate parks and separate beaches, and the police who enforced the laws to keep everyone separate, only came much later.
I go back inside the museum. Tiaan the guide comes over again. He shakes his head when I ask whether Christoffel is buried here. A team of archaeologists came to the farm to dig, searching for graves and the remains of buildings, but no one was able to find his grave. “But why are you looking for his grave?” He strokes his sparse beard. “Are you writing everything about the Snymans, sir? Then you must talk to oom Koos. He’s a Snyman. He lives just over there.”
Oom Koos doesn’t own the farm. It’s jointly owned by a neurologist from Cape Town and a British businessman.
“Oom Koos just works here.” Tiaan points towards the cellar. “You drive past the cellar, and then down there, through the vineyards. You’ll see the small white houses. The third one is his.”
The road to oom Koos’s house hasn’t been tarred. I drive slowly past a shed. Over towards Franschhoek, the sky is clearing.
Pa should have been here, and so should my late grandpa, for that matter. Oupa loved tracing the family tree, but he never mentioned Christoffel and Groot Catrijn. I doubt if he knew about them.
As far as my oupa and pa were concerned, the Snymans began with great-grandpa Coenraad who went on the Great Trek and fought in the Battle of Blood River.
Then I remember The List. When was that again? Could it have been the eighties? All I can remember is everyone in our town asking one another: “Are you on The List?”
At the time, Dr Hans Heese, a historian, researched the mixed-race population of the Old Cape, and this led to magazine articles and newspaper reports. There was also a list of well-known Afrikaans families that weren’t perhaps as pure-blooded and pedigreed as they’d have liked to believe.
The List remained a topic of conversation for a while and then faded away as if it and the issues surrounding it had never existed. The reason we were so certain of who we were was because we couldn’t afford to admit where we really came from.
The narrow road lurches deeper into the vineyards before it reaches a row of labourers’ cottages on a bare patch. The semi-detached houses remind me of once typical working-class neighbourhoods: row upon row upon row of houses, each with a stoep, a path leading straight to the door, and a silver-painted garden gate.
There’s a washing machine on the stoep of the third house. I pull up outside and get out of the bakkie.
At home I have an old black-and-white snapshot of the house my parents lived in years ago in Newcastle, Natal, when Pa was a fitter and turner with Iscor. It was a semi like this.
Three kittens are playing on a blanket next to the washing machine. Next to the front door is a flowering geranium in a paint tin. I knock.
A man opens the door and puts out his hand to greet me. “Good morning, Meneer. I’m Koos Snyman.” Oom Koos.
I tell him that I too am a Snyman.
“Grieta!” oom Koos calls down the passage. “Griettt-aaa!”
The sitting-cum-dining room in Ma and Pa’s Newcastle semi could easily have looked like this: a colourful couch and chairs with crocheted armrest covers. Sunfilter curtains. A painting of pinkish waves breaking on a pinkish beach.
Somewhere in my garage I have some of Ma’s ornaments in a box – ornaments much like the ones on the shelf in this room: a porcelain dog, two egg cups, a small purple vase with a spout.
For years we had a kitchen table just like this, with a melamine top.
“Grieta!” he calls again. “Griettt-aaa!”
A small woman enters the room.
Oom Koos gestures in my direction. “This gentleman’s surname is Snyman too.”
Tant Grieta’s hand goes up to her mouth. “O, jinne, really?” She points to the table with the melamine top. “In that case, Meneer must sit down. We must have coffee.” She gestures at the sparkling clean, tidy room. “Please excuse the state of the room. The children always make a mess.”
Ma was the same: always making excuses for her spotless home.
Tant Grieta switches on the kettle and oom Koos and I take our seats at the table, me on one side and he on the other. He, the coloured Snyman, and I, the so-called white Snyman; between us, years of heartache and laws and anger and prejudice and misunderstandings.
The
