Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Remembering the Khoikhoi Victory over Dom Francisco de Almeida at the Cape in 1510: Luís de Camões and Robert Southey
- 2 French Representations of the Cape ‘Hottentots’: Jean Tavernier, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and François Levaillant
- 3 The Scottish Enlightenment and Colonial Governance: Adam Smith, John Bruce and Lady Anne Barnard
- 4 African Land for the American Empire: John Adams, Benjamin Stout and Robert Semple
- 5 Historical and Literary Reiterations of Dutch Settler Republicanism
- 6 Literature and Cape Slavery
- 7 History and the Griqua Nation: Andries Waterboer and Hendrick Hendricks
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Remembering the Khoikhoi Victory over Dom Francisco de Almeida at the Cape in 1510: Luís de Camões and Robert Southey
- 2 French Representations of the Cape ‘Hottentots’: Jean Tavernier, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and François Levaillant
- 3 The Scottish Enlightenment and Colonial Governance: Adam Smith, John Bruce and Lady Anne Barnard
- 4 African Land for the American Empire: John Adams, Benjamin Stout and Robert Semple
- 5 Historical and Literary Reiterations of Dutch Settler Republicanism
- 6 Literature and Cape Slavery
- 7 History and the Griqua Nation: Andries Waterboer and Hendrick Hendricks
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Having started with a speech by Thabo Mbeki that invoked successful anticolonial resistance to European incursions in Table Bay in 1510, I want to conclude with another Mbeki speech in which he acclaimed an earlier moment of co-operation between the peoples of Europe and Southern Africa. In this second speech, delivered to the Mozambican National Assembly on 2 May 2002, Mbeki referred to the arrival of Vasco da Gama on the shores of Mozambique:
As we know, the first recorded contact between whites and blacks in southern Africa happened on the 11th January 1498 when Vasco da Gama anchored his ships up the coast off a small river identified as Inharrime, south of Cape Corrientes […] With further attempts they anchored at Inharrime and found such friendly people that they named the place Terra da Boa Gente, the Land of Good People. Today we are happy to be amongst boa gente. In fact, we will all agree that there are very few Africans, across the entire continents, who are themselves not boa gente. I am recalling this story of the boa gente, to indicate that these good people of Africa, who comprise many nations, speak many related languages, displayed to the strangers who appeared at their shores the spirit of ubuntu, which is the spirit of kindness, selflessness, solidarity, service to the people and innate humanism.
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- Information
- Imagining the Cape ColonyHistory Literature and the South African Nation, pp. 188 - 193Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011