by Mansell G. Upham ©
He arrives (28 March 1658) at the Cape of Good Hope as part of the group of slaves from Angola being a Portuguese prize (neger prijs – literally ‘negro prize’) captured (23 January 1658) at sea off the South American coast by the Dutch East Indiaman the Amersfoort.
Recorded initially as Jacqje Joij – from the Dutch expression ‘jak en jooi’, he has several owners:
- the free-Saldanha fishermen Thomas Müller (from Leipzig),
- Jochum Elberts: (from Amsterdam);
- Joris Jansz: Appel (from Amsterdam) and Gerrit Harmensz: (from Deventer in Overijssel);
- Cape Commander Jan van Riebeeck;
- Cape Secunde Roeloff de Man; and
- the free-burgher Heinrich Heinrichsen (from Sürwürden, Oldenborg) who frees him in his will (15 May 1672) following his death (post 15 May / ante August 1672).
The freed slave and now free-black Joije van Angola aka Gratias Maialas van Angola embraces Christianity and is baptised in the Cape Church:
Den 13 October [1679 ] Jackie, of Gratias Maialas van Angola, vryburger
He purchases the slaves:
- Domingo van Madagascar (11 July 1678);
- Claes van Tuticorin (8 March 1679) and
- Jacob van Bengale (10 January 1680)
and with fellow free-black Anthonij van Angola, institutes (1678) legal proceedings against the free-black Anthonij Jansz: van Bengale.
He frees (23 May 1680) his slave Jacob van Bengale.
His marriage (5 November 1679) to Cape-born Zwarte Maria Everts: (1663-1713) ends in a legal separation (3 July 1680) following her attempts to poison him.
He likely fathers the Cape-born Manda Gracias: (1679-1719) – Company Slave Lodge matron from whom descend the JONAS and COMBRINK families.
He disappears from the written record (ante 14 February 1682).
His freed slave becomes a land and slave-owner in his own right whose daughter Adriana Jacobs: by freed Company slave Margaretha van Madagascar, later marries Cape-born Floris Brand – eldest son of Norwegian free-burgher Robbert Robbertsen Brand (from Christiania [Oslo]).
Finding and identifying the ‘right’ kind of role-models … #knowing-our-history …
What makes this man so intriguing is the fact that, although he buys into the colony’s slave-trading / slave-owning culture – adopted by the European Dutch who import holus-bolus to their African colony at the tip of Africa in keeping with Asian, but also African and Muslim slavery practices – he also elects to formally free some of his own personal slaves …
This is something that his estranged and toxic wife (yes, she tried to poison her husband) the Cape-born Zwarte Maria Everts: of Guinean slave parentage – the now-becoming-better-known as a so-called (also female) latter-day Black renaissance role-model, never does …
Muatze 