The Cape outpost founded by Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 was never intended to be anything more than a victualling station (not only for food, but for all types of maritime replenishment) for Dutch East India Company (VOC) ships bound to or from the East. A cure for scurvy would only be discovered a century later, but the Company had already worked out that stopping midway through the eight-month voyage to take on fresh provisions had a positive effect on the health of both its men and its balance sheet. The Company, which made all its money importing Asian goods like spices, textiles and ceramics to Europe, had no desire to establish a meaningful colony in ‘dark’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘unprofitable’ Africa.

When the fleet from Batavia (present-day Jakarta, the VOC’s administrative centre in the East) docked – bringing with it copies of documents which showed that an official complaint had been made about his behaviour – Willem Adriaan went into publicity overdrive. His actions would have made a modern-day reputation manager proud.

Before the fleet sailed on to Amsterdam, Willem Adriaan summoned all the male inhabitants of Cape Town to his official residence at the Castle of Good Hope. Whites, blacks, liberated slaves and ex-convicts mustered at the unpopular governor’s residence. Artisans and labourers of every description, fishermen and farmhands, all gathered in the handsome courtyard overlooked by Table Mountain.

Imagine their surprise when, instead of receiving the moering they’d come to expect, they were plied with wine, beer and coffee. Even their pipes were stoked with the finest tobacco at the governor’s expense. They should have known there was no such thing as a free lunch – not even in 1706.

Once sufficiently loosened up, the men were required to sign a certificate in which the governor was described as:

A person of all honour and virtue in his whole conduct, government, intercourse, and treatment. That he always set, and always has set, a splendid example of modesty, of zeal for the public welfare, of religion in the Christian form; further, that he is affable towards everyone, in listening and in granting audience, and finally, that he is of a very kind and gentle nature. During the time of his presence and government here, he has conducted himself always as a peace-loving, just, and faithful chief towards the Lords his masters, and in the interests of the people. He has done right and justice to all, protected the good, and punished the evil, and helped forwards and placed on their legs all the people who had by their good conduct deserved it…by giving them lands on which they could properly earn a living; by taking care as much as possible of their corn, vineyards, and cattle, so that they were able to supply everything to the Company, as much as was required here from time to time, as well as to the passing ships’ crews and others, selling and getting rid of their produce to their satisfaction.

Not that the men who signed the document were aware of its contents. They only got to hear a few lines, read by a clerk in ‘an extremely indistinct voice’ before being politely ‘requested’ by some heavies to put pen to paper – presumably while the governor leered over their shoulders.

Beelzebub comes to Satan’s aid

A bit of free booze may have been enough to secure the signatures of the townsfolk on Van der Stel’s certificate of good character; getting the burghers to sing his praises, on the other hand, would prove far trickier. It was, after all, the burghers – under the leadership of Adam Tas, Henning Hüsing, Jacobus van der Heiden and Pieter van der Bijl, who were more literate (and wealthy) than most of the other burghers – who had lodged an official complaint about the governor’s corrupt practices.

In an effort to get the burghers on board, Willem Adriaan resorted to violence, intimidation and torture. Or at least his henchman Jan Starrenburg, did. Starrenburg was the landdrost of Stellenbosch, a town that Willem Adriaan’s father, Simon van der Stel, had founded and named after himself. Starrenburg, who’d only been landdrost a few months, had already earned himself the nickname Beelzebub among the burghers, thanks to his status as ‘Satan’s’ right-hand man.

Together with a band of armed ruffians, Beelzebub went from farm to farm trying to persuade the burghers to sign the document. His tactics, as per Adam Tas’s diary, were not subtle: ‘First the Landdrost tried to induce them to sign by promises, and afterwards with fierce threats. During the time he was so overcome with wrath that he became livid in the face and was shaking as he read out the document. A ruffian stood guard at the door, which he had locked.’

Similar scenes played out at farmhouses throughout the Boland. Beelzebub would sit at a table with his sword and pistols drawn while armed thugs stood guard at the door. There, he would induce the landowners to sign their names, trying ‘every possible means; fair promises of favour and land, dire threats of how the governor should deal with all who refused to sign, how they would be stripped of every privilege, how they should be punished as rebels….’ But still, as Tas recorded in his diary, many of the burghers refused to sign.

This evening, the table being ready set for a mouthful of meat, there put in two Frenchmen, Etienne Niel and Jaques Malan. They told me that at Hercules du Pre’s, Landdrost Beelzebub had made question of them, if they had aught to say against the Governor, and if they did not know him for an honest man, that did govern well, and was an upholder of religion. The same was read out to them in a letter, in order to their signing, but Mr. Niel declared to know nothing of it, and that he would not sign. Then come the Landdrost aboard him with harsh threatenings, but he give him for answer that he would not sign, no, not though Haman’s gallows was building for him, and that he would make bold to affirm the same to the Governor his face, that he was dismayed of no man, and that rogues and robbers might be afeared, and more of like purport. The Landdrost declaring they should meet again, the man departed. Then Jaques Malan entered into the apartment, and received the same treatment, but give for answer that he would not sign, whereupon the Landdrost did call out. Then get you gone from here, and with that the man went off.

Between the free lunch at the Castle and the strongarm tactics of Beelzebub, Willem Adriaan was able to muster 240 signatures on the document attesting his good conduct. But it (people whose opinions weren’t normally canvassed in those days) in an attempt to bump up the numbers, and of the remaining signatures, many are suspected to be fraudulent. As one of the fathers of South African historiography, George McCall Theal, puts it:

Many of the ‘respectable names found on that extraordinary document are certainly not genuine, for they appear with a cross, though the men they professed to represent could write letters and sign other papers as well as the Governor himself could do’.

Considering the tactics used by Willem Adriaan, and the fact that the Cape’s European population in 1705 numbered 526 adult men, 240 signatures was actually a rather poor showing.