Rijkaert Jacobz: (from Rotterdam) and a Khoi, Claas Blank are thrown into the sea with weights tied to them in August 1735

by Mansell George Upham © 

18 August 1735

                Two prisoners on Robben Island are sentenced to death for committing sodomy

• Claas Blanc and
• Rijkaert Jacobsz:

– They are accused of ‘mutually perpetrated sodomy’ according to trial records from Cape Council of Justice (August 1735).

Jacobsz:, VOC sailor (from Rotterdam), accused (1713) of sodomy in Batavia  (aged 18) is banished to Robben Island for 25 years due to insufficient evidence.

Blanc, a Cape Khoe, convicted (1715) of stock theft, is sentenced to labour for 50 years on Robben Island.

The trial is precipitated by complaints laid against Jacobsz: by a slave from Batavia, called Panaij van Boegies (July 1735) who reports Jacobsz: making sexual advances towards him.

After his complaint, Hermanus Munster (from Steenwijk) and Jacobus de Vogel (from Rotterdam) also submit testimonies claiming to see Jacobsz and Blanc fornicating (April 1732).

Following this, another prisoner, Augustijn Matthijsz:, gives an eye witness account corroborating the accusations against Jacobsz: and Blanc.

Faced with these eyewitness accounts, Blanc and Jacobsz: confess their guilt.

They are sentenced to death (18 August 1735) and taken aboard a vessel and drowned in the sea.

The death sentence is carried out the next day (Friday 19 August 1735).

Gaetano Cellini – ‘Humanity Against Evil’ [National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome]

References:

• Film: Proteus (100 mins, 2003, Canada / South Africa, John Greyson & Jack Lewis, Afrikaans, English & Nama) (ASL)
• Susie Newton-King ‘For the love of Adam: 2 sodomy trials at the Cape of Good Hope’, Kronos: Journal of Cape history, 28 November 2002, pp. 21-42.
• Nigel Worden, ‘“What are we?”: Proteus & the problematising of History’ in V. Bickford-Smith & R. Mendelsohn (eds.) Black and White in Colour: film & history in South Africa (Cape Town, Athens, London, 2006) 
• Susan Newton-King ed. ‘History & film: a roundtable discussion of Proteus’, Kronos: Journal of Cape history, 31, Nov 2005.