Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We have a stack
of research on the table today that I think is
going to fundamentally change the way you look
at a map of South Africa. It really might. We
usually talk about history in very, you know,
binary terms, right? Black and white, colonizer
and colonized. But today we're looking at a group
of people who existed in the gray area. Or maybe
they created their own area entirely. That's
a better way to put it. It's a story that really
challenges that whole rainbow nation concept
because Well, it suggests there was a Rainbow
Nation happening about... Two centuries before
Nelson Mandela ever used the phrase. Exactly.
We are talking about the Greek people. And just
looking at these sources, it is a paradox from
start to finish. I mean, you have a group that
considers itself South Africa's first multiracial
nation. Yet if you look at standard history books.
They're a footnote. They're a footnote. Or they're
just lumped into the colored category without
any real distinction. But the reality is, and
the sources are clear on this, these were state
builders. I mean, they had constitutions. They
had standing armies. were trekking across the
interior of Southern Africa long before the famous
war trekkers were even, you know, packing their
wagons. And that is the part that I think surprises
people the most. We all have this image of the
Great Trek, the white boars moving away from
British rule on the Cape as the defining pioneer
moment of the 19th century. Right. It's a big
one. But the Greek were already doing it. They
were doing it first. They were the pioneers of
the interior. They were the ones mapping the
routes, finding the water sources and establishing
the towns that later settlers would eventually
occupy. OK, so here's the mission for this deep
dive. We have a lot of ground to cover. And I
mean that literally. We're going from the Cape
Colony. up through the rugged, arid interior
of the Northern Cape, then over the Drakensberg
Mountains, which is no joke, and even up into
Namibia. It's an epic journey. It really is.
And along the way, we need to unpack the origins
of this distinct ethnicity. How do you get a
group forming from Dutch colonists, Kwekhoi slaves,
and other indigenous groups that doesn't just
dissolve into the population, but forms a hard
political identity? That is the absolute key
question. And as part of that, we have to deal
with some very... heavy, very loaded terminology.
I'm looking at words in these historical records
like bastard and Afrikaner. And I think you're
going to be shocked at how the meanings of those
words have completely flipped 180 degrees. That
part about the word Afrikaner, honestly, it stopped
me in my tracks when I was reading the prep.
I had to read it three times, but we'll get there.
Let's start at the very beginning. We're in the
17th and 18th centuries in the Cape Colony. This
is the soup, so to speak. What are the ingredients
that created the Greek of people? Well, it's
a very specific set of circumstances. You have
the Dutch East India Company establishing its
refreshment station at the Cape. And it is a
very male -dominated society. Not a lot of European
women around. Very few, especially in the early
decades of the colony. So naturally, relationships
formed across the color line. The primary patriarchs,
the... Fathers of this new group were European
men, mostly Dutch, but also some German, some
French Huguenot. And the matriarchs, the mothers.
The matriarchs were primarily Khoi Khoi women,
the indigenous pastoralists who were already
living in the Cape, and also women who were enslaved,
who were brought in from places like Indonesia,
Madagascar, or East Africa. So initially, you
just have these children of mixed descent. Now,
in a lot of colonial societies, these children
would just be absorbed into the lowest rungs
of society, right? But something different seems
to have happened here. The sources say they didn't
just assimilate. That's the crucial pivot point.
If they had just married back into the white
settler population, they would have eventually
been absorbed, you know, over generations. If
they had married back into the traditional Khoi
tribes, they might have lost that European cultural
connection. So what did they do? They started
marrying each other. They formed an endogamous
group. By marrying among themselves, they created
a community that was distinct. It was a conscious
choice. So they were sort of caught in the middle.
Exactly. They were too European for the tribes.
I mean, they spoke Dutch. They were Christians.
They wore European clothes. But they were too
non -white for the colonial administration to
ever treat them as equals. So they created their
own space. And modern science actually backs
this all up, doesn't it? I saw a note here about
some 21st century... genetic studies. Yes, the
genetic data is fascinating because it confirms
the oral history, but it also adds all this new
nuance. It shows a clear mix of European Khoi
Khoi and slave ancestry, which you'd expect,
but it also shows lineages from Tawana, San,
and even Exosa groups. So it wasn't just a one
-time mix. No, it wasn't just a Cape phenomenon.
As they moved, as they trekked, they absorbed
other people. It was a true melting pot in a
way that very few other groups were at the time.
Okay, so we have to talk about the name. The
sources are very clear that for a long, long
time, this group referred to themselves as bastards
or bastards. Now, in modern English, that is
a slur. If you call someone that today, you are
absolutely looking for a fight. Absolutely. But
the notes suggest it had a completely different
vibe back in the 18th century. You really have
to strip away the modern English pejorative.
The word comes from the Dutch bastard, which
essentially just meant hybrid or mixed. In the
context of the 18th century frontier, it wasn't
necessarily an insult about the legitimacy of
your birth. It was a classification. A classification.
Yes. And for the people who use it for themselves,
it actually became a badge of honor. How on earth
does that become a badge of honor? Well, think
about the hierarchy at the time. You had the
civilized colony and then you had the savage
interior as they saw it. By calling themselves
bastards, they were signaling, we are not savages.
We are Christians. We speak Dutch. We live in
houses. We ride horses. We shoot guns. Ah, so
it was a way of distinguishing themselves. Exactly.
A way of distinguishing themselves from the tribal
Khoi Khoi or from the enslaved population. It
was a claim to status. to a higher rung on the
social ladder. So it's almost like saying we
belong to the class of people who are part of
the colonial economy, who have these valuable
skills. Precisely. They were highly skilled.
They were the craftsmen, the transport riders,
the people who could fix a wagon wheel in the
middle of nowhere. If you were a baster, you
had skills that were incredibly valuable to the
colony. But then we get to the other term, Afrikaner.
And this is the big one. The source material
here notes that for over 350 years, the word
Afrikaner was used to describe mixed race people.
This is a massive, massive historical reclamation.
If you look at the records from the 1700s and
the early 1800s, when people wrote about Afrikaners,
they were almost exclusively talking about these
mixed race groups, the Orlum. Not white people.
Not white people. They were the Africans of European
culture and descent. The white settlers at the
time referred to themselves as Dutch or Berger
or Christians. They did not call themselves Afrikaners.
So when did that change? Because today, of course,
Afrikaner is completely synonymous with white
South Africans of Dutch descent. It's a surprisingly
recent shift. It didn't really happen until around
1876. There was a political and cultural movement.
By a group of Boer intellectuals, specifically
a group called the Genutskap van Rekte Afrikaners,
which means the Fellowship of Real Afrikaners.
The Fellowship of Real Afrikaners. Right. And
they wanted to build a white national identity
specifically to counter the growing British influence
in the region. They needed a name, a label that
tied them to the soil, to the continent of Africa.
They just took the name. They appropriated it.
Effectively, yes. They took the term Afrikaner,
which had been used by the Grieca and other mixed
race groups for centuries, and they completely
redefined it to mean white Dutch speaker. They
racialized it. That is ironic on so many levels.
I mean, it means the Grieca are the original
Afrikaners, at least in terms of the terminology.
It completely flips the script. If you restore
that original definition, the whole history of
African internationalism starts to look very,
very different. It implies that the cultural
roots of that identity, the language, the frontier
lifestyle, were actually pioneered by people
of color. Okay, let's go back to the bastard
name for a second. Even though they seem to have
been proud of it, eventually it became a PR problem,
didn't it? It did. And for that, you can thank
the missionaries. specifically the London Missionary
Society, the LMS. They arrived in the early 1800s
with the goal of converting and civilizing the
people on the frontier. And they found it incredibly
awkward to have a congregation that was proudly
calling themselves the Bastards. I can just imagine
the letters back to London. Dear Board of Directors,
the Bastard congregation is doing exceptionally
well this month. Exactly. It just didn't fly
in polite Victorian society. It sounded terrible
in English. So in 1813, a missionary named Reverend
John Campbell sat down with the leaders and basically
said, look, we need a rebrand. And he's the one
who suggested Grieco. Was he just making that
up? Did he pull it out of a hat? No. And this
is really important. He didn't just impose some
European name on them. He actually looked at
their history, their lineage. He knew that many
of them, a core group, descended from a specific
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Right. The sources mentioned that the first big
leader, Adam Koch I, had married into that specific
line. Yes. Adam Koch's wife was the daughter
of a Charu Grika chief. So by adopting the name
Grika, they were doing two brilliant things at
once. First, they were satisfying the missionaries
by dropping the bastard label. But second, and
more importantly, they were proudly reclaiming
their indigenous African heritage. They were
saying, we are of this land. We have roots here.
We are the Grica. And that brings us right to
Adam Kokes. This name, Cook, it means cook, right?
In Dutch. Yes. It's Dutch for cook or chef. So
we have the founder of an entire nation, a dynasty,
who is named after his job when he was a slave.
That's his origin story. And it's an incredible
one. Adam Koch. I was born a slave. He worked
as a cook. But he was clearly an extraordinary
individual. He didn't just escape. He navigated
the system. He actually bought his own freedom.
Which must have been incredibly difficult. Incredibly.
And not just that. He went on to acquire burger
rights, citizenship rights that were usually
reserved for whites. And he even bought his own
farm near Peckerburg. So he made it. By the standards
of the time, he had the farm, the rights, the
freedom. So why did he leave? Why trek into the
unknown? Because in a colonial society, rights
for a person of color are always, always precarious.
As the white settler population expanded and
the racial laws started to harden, he saw the
writing on the wall. He was facing constant discrimination,
social pressure, and land encroachment. He knew
it wouldn't last. He realized that to be truly
free, he couldn't just be a free black inside
a white -run colony. He had to go where the colony
wasn't. He had tied his own society. So he packs
up. And this isn't just a single family moving.
He gathers a significant following. He becomes
a magnet for people. Other freed slaves, other
bastards, coy people who were losing their land
to the settlers, they all rallied around him.
And he leads them north. beyond the official
borders of the Cape Colony up towards the Orange
River. And this is where the state building part
really kicks in. The critique we saw earlier
mentioned that we often gloss over this. We might
say, oh, they had a government and then just
move on. But looking at these notes, this was
sophisticated stuff. This wasn't just a chief
sitting under a tree making decisions. No, not
at all. This was a constitutional republic in
the making. They drafted a written constitution.
Just think about how radical that is for a group
of semi -nomadic frontiersmen in the early 1800s
in southern Africa. It's incredible. So how did
it work? Who was in charge? The leader held the
title of captains, which is Dutch for captain.
But he wasn't a dictator or an absolute monarch.
His power was checked by the rod or the council.
And the rod was like a parliament. Sort of. It
was a body of nominated counselors who would
debate policy. judicial matters, decisions about
war and peace. The captain had a veto, yes, but
he couldn't just rule by decree. He had to work
with the rod. to get their consensus. It really
sounds like they were mirroring the Dutch systems
they had seen, but adapting them for their own
use on the frontier. Precisely. They had magistrates
to hear court cases. They had a police force
of sorts. They used titles they were familiar
with, like Veldkornet for their local officers.
If you committed a crime in Gricketown, you didn't
just get beaten up. You went before a magistrate
and your case was heard according to their written
law. They were projecting an image, weren't they?
Absolutely. They were projecting the image of
a civilized Christian state to the outside world,
especially to the British, to show that they
were worthy of respect and, crucially, worthy
of treaties. And the capital of this state was
Gricketown, which was originally called Clearwater.
Right. Clearwater means clear water. It was renamed
Gricketown after that big meeting in 1813. And
it became a real hub. It wasn't just a few tents.
They built stone houses, a church, schools for
their children. For a long time, it was the most
significant town north of the Orange River. So
if you were a traveler, an explorer, or a missionary
going into the interior. Gricketown was your
last stop. It was your last chance for supplies,
for news, for a bit of civilization before you
plunged into the unknown. OK, let's talk about
the military aspect, because you can't build
a state in this kind of environment on a volatile
frontier without being able to defend it. The
sources talk a lot about the commando system.
How did the Greek become such fearsome fighters?
It's another one of those ironies. Their skills
were given to them by their oppressors. It goes
all the way back to their time in the Cape Colony.
The Dutch East India Company was constantly at
war with. the San or Bushmen, and the Exosa on
the eastern frontier. And they didn't have enough
soldiers? Not nearly enough. So they conscripted
the so -called baster men into their commando
units. So they taught them everything they knew.
They handed them guns and trained them. They
gave them guns. They put them on horses. And
they taught them commando warfare. which is basically
a highly mobile guerrilla style of fighting.
You ride fast, you shoot accurately from the
saddle, you disengage, you flank. The Greek became
absolute masters of this. Better than the Boers?
Many contemporary accounts say they were better
shots and better riders than the Boers. This
was their specialty. And this leads to this concept
of the Orlum. We need to define this because
the term pops up a lot in the sources. Orlum
is a fascinating and slightly slippery term.
It generally refers to people who were acculturated
to the colony. They spoke Dutch, they were Christian,
they used European technology, but they had moved
out of the colony to live independently. So the
Graeca are an Aurelian group. Yes. In this context,
it often refers to these highly mobile groups
of armed, mounted, Dutch -speaking marksmen who
left the Cape to live a free and often predatory
lifestyle in the interior. They were the trek
boars before the actual Boer Great Trek. You
said predatory. We have to be honest about the
history. They weren't just peaceful farmers looking
for a new home. They were heavily armed men entering
territories that were already occupied by other
groups like the San, the Tswana, the Karana.
They needed cattle. They needed resources. They
needed grazing land. So there was conflict. A
lot of conflict. Sometimes they traded, but very
often they raided. This brings us to a specific
event that I really want to zoom in on. The tragedy
of Mordkopp. The notes here paint a really cinematic
and just horrific picture. This was a clash between
a Greek commando and the end of Belorite. Yes,
and this is a story of hubris, of overconfidence.
You have a Greek commando, several hundred strong,
led by a man named Gert Hoeyman. And they decide
to launch a major raid into the territory of
the Ndebele people. And the Ndebele at this time
were led by King Zilikazi. Zilikazi, one of the
most formidable military strategists in all of
Southern African history. He was a former general
of Shaka Zulu. You do not mess with Zilikazi
lightly. But the Greek had a massive technological
advantage. They had guns and horses. The Ndebele
warriors had spears and shields. Exactly. And
that technological superiority made them arrogant.
They rode in. They managed to raid a massive
number of cattle, thousands of them. And they
started driving them back toward Grika territory.
So far, so good for them. So far, so good. But
Huimin, the leader, he was nervous. He knew Menzilikazi.
He told his men, we need to keep moving. Don't
stop. Menzilikazi will send a regiment after
us. They will follow us. But the men didn't listen.
They were victorious. They were tired. And they
were hungry. They're looking at all this cattle
they've just captured. They decided to stop at
a hill. near the Val River to feast. They slaughtered
some of the captured oxen, they started the fires,
and they had a massive barbecue. A celebration.
A huge celebration. And afterwards they fell
asleep with full bellies, completely confident
that their guns made them invincible. And Zilikazi's
men were watching the whole time. Zilikazi's
impi had been tracking them silently. They attacked
at dawn, or just before, in complete silence.
They used the classic Zulu horns of the buffalo
formation to completely encircle the hill. The
Greek were caught sleeping. Completely. Their
guns were useless in the dark and the chaos of
hand -to -hand combat. It was an absolute massacre.
The sources say around 1 ,000 Greek men were
killed. 1 ,000 men. That's a generation of fathers
and sons wiped out in a single night. It was
utterly devastating for the Greek nation. The
hill was named Mordkop, which means murder hill.
But there's a twist to this story that I find
fascinating. It wasn't just a massacre. It was
also a moment of unexpected cultural transfer.
How so? What do you mean? Well, the Ndebele captured
some of the survivors, mostly women and children
who had been with the wagon train that was following
the commando. And this included the granddaughter
of another famous Greek leader, Berend Berends.
Her name was Trudy. And what happened to them?
These captives were integrated into the Ndebele
nation. They were absorbed. So they became Ndebele.
Yes, but they brought their Orlum knowledge with
them. The sources note that these Greek captives
were the ones who introduced brick building technology
to the Ndebele. They taught them how to repair
wagons, how to repair guns, and they even introduced
elements of Christianity. Wait, wait. So you're
saying that years, maybe decades before the first
European missionaries arrived to bring civilization
to the Ndebele, the Ndebele are already learning
these skills from the Greek people they captured
in battle. That is exactly what the sources suggest.
It completely challenges that simple timeline
of colonial influence. The Greco were the intermediaries.
They were the vectors of technology and ideas
moving into the interior, even when they were
on the losing side of a battle. That is just
wild. Let's look at the map again. Segment four
in our outline talks about the great migrations,
and it really emphasizes that. These guys were
constantly moving. It wasn't just one trek and
they were done. No, it was a state of perpetual
motion. And it was almost always caused by dispossession.
The pattern was tragic and it repeated itself
over and over. What was the pattern? The Greek
would move to a frontier area. They would settle
it, build a town, maybe a church and establish
law and order. Then white trek borers would start
to arrive, attracted by the stability. And then
the government would follow. The colonial government
would eventually extend its borders to include
the area. And the Greco would be told, you don't
really own this land because you aren't white
or your land titles aren't valid under our law.
And they would be pushed further and further
north. So they go up to the Orange River. Then
some of them go all the way to Natal on the East
Coast. And then they have to turn back. It's
this epic zigzag across the country. They went
into Natal, hoping to settle there. It was good
land. But then the British annexed Natal. And
the Greco leadership realized. We can't stay
here. We'll be under the British thumb again.
So they turn around and... trekked back over
the Drakensberg Mountains. Let's talk about Greekland
West. This is the area around modern -day Kimberley,
and this story is basically a legal thriller
that ends with the discovery of diamonds. It
is the ultimate story of a resource curse. The
Greek in this western area were led by captains
like Nicholas Waterboer and Andres Waterboer.
For decades, nobody cared about their land. It
was dry, it was scrubby, it was semi -desert.
So the British were happy to leave them alone.
More than that, the British were happy to sign
treaties recognizing Waterboer as the sovereign
leader of a treaty state. They essentially said,
you keep the peace up there on our northern border
and we formally recognize that it's your land.
And then 1866 happens. A child finds a shiny
pebble on a farm. It turns out to be a diamond.
Then another is found. And suddenly, this dry,
worthless scrubland is the most valuable patch
of dirt on the entire planet. And what happened
to those treaties? Effectively, they were shredded.
You suddenly had three players all claiming the
land. The Graeca, who legally owned it, according
to the treaties. The Boer Republics of the Orange
Free State in the Transvaal, who suddenly decided,
actually, this has always been our land. And
the British. And the British, who decided that
they needed to stabilize the region, which is
a convenient way of saying they were taking the
diamonds. I'm reading here about the Transvaal
president at the time, Pretorius. He just declared
the diamond fields were Boer property. By proclamation.
Yes. In 1870, she just issued a proclamation
and sent in some officials. But the British weren't
going to let the Boers have it. So the British
moved in and annexed the entire territory in
1871. And the Graeca, the actual owners. They
were the ultimate losers. They lost their sovereignty.
They lost the mineral wealth. Nicholas Waterborne
was eventually jailed in 1876 for trying to support
a rebellion of his own people against this very
dispossession. It completely broke the back of
the Gricca nation in the West. So if you lose
the West, you go East. This leads to the most
famous trek of all, the trek to what became Gricca
Land East. This was an incredible feat of human
endurance, led by Adam Cocke III. In 1861, he
realized they were being squeezed out of their
lands in the Free State area, and he made a momentous
decision. He would lead his entire people to
a so -called no -man's land that the British
had offered them. Where was this land? It was
a piece of territory wedged between Pondaland
and the colony of Natal. But to get there, they
had to cross the Drakensberg Mountains. I've
hiked in the Drakensberg. It is spectacular,
but it is brutal terrain. We're talking about
3 ,000 meter peaks, sheer cliffs. It's not wagon
country. And imagine doing it with ox wagons.
They had 2 ,000 people, something like 20 ,000
sheep and other livestock, and 300 wagons. In
some places, they had to completely disassemble
the wagons to lower them down precipices with
ropes. They blasted rocks out of the way. It
took them two years to complete this migration.
It's comparable to Hannibal crossing the Alps.
But with families and livestock and all their
worldly possessions, it's an epic of survival.
And they established Coxdad on the other side.
Named after Adam Koch, yes. And here, in this
new land, Koch tried one last desperate innovation
to try and save his people's territory. He introduced
the concept of private land titles. Why was that
considered so innovative at the time? Well, traditionally,
African land tenure was communal. The chief or
king held the land in trust for the entire tribe.
But Koch had seen how the British and Boers operated
with their legal systems. He thought, if my people
have a piece of paper, a title deed, that says
this farm belongs to me under British -style
law, maybe the white settlers won't be able to
just take it. A logical idea. Did it work? Tragically,
no. It completely backfired. Because once you
have a title deed, it means you can sell the
land. And the Gricca people were impoverished.
They lost most of their cattle during that brutal
trek over the mountains. So they were vulnerable?
Extremely. White settlers arrived with cash,
with liquor, with goods, and they bought up the
farms, often for a pittance. Within a single
decade, most of the prime land in Grickoland
East was owned by white farmers. That is just
heartbreaking. It feels like they tried to play
by the colonizers' rules and the rules were just
used against them again. It's a real tragedy
of good intentions. Adam Koch tried to modernize
his state to save it, but the economic pressures
were just too great. Let's shift gears a little
bit. We've talked a lot about war and politics
and land. Let's talk about culture and economy.
How did they survive day to day? They weren't
just soldiers. No, not at all. For much of their
history, they were the great middlemen of South
Africa. They were the intermediaries who facilitated
trade between the Cape Colony and the deep interior.
They traded in ivory, cattle, ostrich feathers,
and hides. And they also had a unique export,
according to the notes. Something called Grickatown
Gold. I love this name. It sounds so romantic.
But it's not actually gold. What is it? It's
tiger's eye. That beautiful, shimmering, golden
-brown gemstone that's found in abundance in
the Northern Cape. The Grieco were the first
to really commercialize it. They were mining
it and trading Grieco town gold long before it
became a staple in jewelry stores around the
world. And religion played a huge role in their
culture, too. We mentioned the missionaries earlier,
but the Grieco seemed to have taken Christianity
and really made it their own. They absolutely
did. They were devout Protestants, very much
influenced by the Dutch Reformed Calvinist tradition.
But they grew tired of being treated as second
class citizens in churches run by white missionaries.
Yeah. They wanted their own space to worship.
So they founded their own church. Yes. They established
the Grica Independent Church. And you can make
a strong argument that this was the first. Truly,
indigenous, independent African church in South
Africa established decades before the more famous
Ethiopian church movement began. And that church
is still around today. It is. If you go to places
like Kockstad or Campbell or even in parts of
Namibia today, the Greek church is the absolute
heartbeat of the community. It's not just a religious
institution. It's the repository of their history,
their culture, and their identity. We also need
to touch on language again. We said Afrikaner
meant mixed race. It seems to follow that the
language Afrikaans was largely developed and
spoken by them too. Absolutely. The simplified
Creolized Dutch that evolved into what we now
call Africans was the lingua franca of the mixed
race servant class in the Cape and of the Grieco
and Orland communities on the frontier, long
before it was standardized by white academics.
So they were speaking at first. They were speaking
Afrikamans while the educated Boers were still
trying to speak and write in a formal high Dutch.
Many of the words, the idioms, the grammatical
structure, it was all cooked up in the kitchens
of the Cape and on the commandos of the colored
and Grieco people. So there are linguistic pioneers
as well as geographic ones. They are, in every
sense. Okay, let's move forward into the 20th
century. The apartheid era. 1948 comes around.
The National Party takes power with its ideology
of strict racial segregation. Where do the Greek
fit into this new system? They fit nowhere and
yet everywhere. The apartheid government was
obsessed with categorization. They had Bantu
or black homelands. They had a white South Africa.
And then in the middle, they had this catch -all
category of colored. And the Greco were just
lumped into colored. Yes. And this was a profound
form of erasure for them. Unlike, say, the Zulus
or the Exosis, who were given their own admittedly
fake independent Bantu stands like KwaZulu or
Transke, the Greco got nothing. There was no
Greco stand. Their specific history was just
ignored. Their entire history of being a sovereign
nation with captains and constitutions was completely
ignored. They were just coloreds, period. So
what did that do to the people, to their identity?
It fractured them. To survive in that system,
many people began to downplay or hide their Griega
heritage. If you could pass as Cape Colored,
maybe you got a slightly better job or could
live in a slightly better area than if you insisted
on being a tribal Griega. It led to a terrible
loss of identity for generations. People stopped
telling the stories. But that's changing now.
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, there's been
a renaissance, hasn't there? A massive one. A
huge resurgence of pride. People are coming out
of the woodwork to reclaim the identity. The
current population is estimated to be around
775 ,000, but it's incredibly hard to count because
of that history of hiding and assimilation. And
is the new South African government recognizing
them? Slowly. It's a process. We now have the
National Khoisan Council. which represents their
interests. They are fighting for the same recognition
as other traditional leaders, like the Zulu king.
And there have been huge symbolic victories.
Do you remember the story of Sarchi Bartman?
The coy woman who was taken to Europe in the
early 19th century and exhibited. Yes, she was
displayed as a freak in London and Paris because
of her steatopygia, her anatomy. She died there
and her remains were dissected and kept in a
museum in Paris for over a century. It was grotesque.
A terrible story. And the Greek people were at
the absolute forefront of the campaign in the
1990s to bring her remains home to South Africa
for a proper burial. It was about honoring the
ancestors, wasn't it? It was about restoring
dignity to the Khoi mother as they saw her. When
she was finally returned and buried in the Eastern
Cape in 2002, it was a massive moment of healing
and reclamation for the Grika and all Khoi -descended
people. Before we wrap up, I just want to ask
about the connection to Namibia. You mentioned
bastards there. Are they the same people as the
Grika? They're cousins, really. The Rehoboth
bastards, who live in central Namibia, share
the exact same origins, mixed descent from European
men and Khoi women in the Cape. They also trekked
north to escape colonial rule. But they went
a different way. A different way, yes. They settled
in a place called Rehoboth, south of Windhoek.
They consider themselves a distinct ethnic group
from the South African Grika, but the history
is almost perfectly parallel. They also had their
own constitution, their own captain, and a fierce
tradition of independence. It's just amazing
to see how these threads of history spread out
across the entire subcontinent. It really shows
you that the frontier wasn't a simple line on
a map. It was a zone of intense creation and
conflict. So we've covered centuries, we've crossed
mountains, we've lost and regained names. If
you had to summarize the so what of the Greco
story, what is it? Why does this matter? I think
the Greco story destroys the simple narratives
we like to tell ourselves about history. We like
history to be clean. The British did this. The
Boers did this. The Zulus did this. The Greek
show us that there was a fourth, a fifth, a sixth
option. They represent a fusion that created
something entirely new, something that was both
indigenous and European, both African and Western
at the same time. They were the future South
Africa. That's a perfect way to put it. They
were grappling with multiracialism, with hybrid
identity, with how to combine Western law and
African reality long before the modern state
of South Africa even existed. And for me, the
takeaway is just the resilience to build a state
and lose it. To build another one and lose that,
to trek over the highest mountains and lose that
land too, but to still be here, to still have
the church, the name, the pride, that is an unbelievable
tenacity. It truly is. I want to leave our listener
with that thought we touched on earlier, the
rugby team. You might be watching a Curry Cup
match and see the team from the Northern Cape,
the Grequas, playing. And you might just think
it's a cool historical name for a team. Just
a name. But every time that team runs onto the
field, they are carrying the name of a nation
that trekked across deserts and over mountains
time and time again just to find a place to call
home. And here's the question that I think lingers
long after you close the books. If the word Afrikaner
meant... mixed race person for 350 years and
was only changed by a deliberate political campaign
in 1876, if we were to hit undo on that change,
what does South African culture look like today?
Who are the real Afrikaners? That is a question
that completely rewrites the history books in
your head. Thank you for taking this deep dive
with us. It's been a fascinating and really important
journey. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. We'll
see you in the next one.